FAMILIAR STRANGER

You see time going by
in the lazy stroll of the seasons outside your window
in the premature aging of your body, and the unstoppable growth
of your children criticizing your dresses as you do
their choices, envious of their nonconformism
you buried under dirty plates, birthday cakes, and 911s
bakers baking air, butchers and lawyers with blood on their hands

You bear witness to its clandestine presence in the quickening
of your heartbeat prompted by births, deaths, births
and its decision to come to a standstill
at never-ending meetings you attend
laughing at your boss’s blonde jokes
complimenting his wife’s meatloaf and approving

Time is dripping down your double chin and slipping
between your cracked fingernails you’re trying to hide
its phantasmagoric existence playing a trick on you
you’re losing it, wasting it, running out of it, running after it
can’t get enough of it

Comprehended yet ungraspable
a second-class citizen worthy of your scorn
A real phony! That’s what you are
You should be booed off the stage

Cheater! Liar!
Throw it to the lions!
Eat it or let it die

like a popsicle on
the 4th of

July

ANTONYM

I am a word that is opposite
in meaning to another
my content is clearly stated on the bottle

I am of a contrary kind
the other of a contrasted pair
I am no simile

I am against stop at the traffic light
anti bathroom labels man and woman
(how about human?)

I don’t want to be in contrast with you
make me lose my balance
let me be your synonym

GONE FOR THE DAY

when your ideas of salvation
wear off and recovery time

turns to zero, will you put your
notions of happiness on hold

and just for today (promise to)
meet me in our dreams by the sea

for some shared tears
under an oak tree

TITLESS

I always thought
my final resting place
would be in the kingdom by the sea

with no one to attend the flower laying ceremony
but you and me
My priest, My undertaker, My mourner, My beast

A ceasefire was agreed as a prelude to full peace talks
(again)

Oh damn!
until

she drove you mad
you shot me dead but buried me
long before when
alive and kicking,

laid me in a marble orchard
of your venomous words
and killing my trust

you died with me

ALLEGRO FOR HARP, STRING QUARTET, FLUTE AND CLARINET

Chirp, chirp, chirps a rainbow-billed bird in a hollow tree as
the pendulum arm ticks left-to-right-to-left-to-right like windshield
wipers wiping off the past you don’t want to harp on about
not today, not now.

Far from the jarring dissonance of the rest of the world
faster than allegretto and slower than presto
beats per minute measure the newly strung heart’s tempo
grabbing it like the northern gannet grabs fish by plunge diving.

Behind the curved neck the wings shed off their porcelain presence
and disperse noxious fumes that poison the air
disappearing into a pillar of harmony
the string quartet, flute and clarinet are belly breathing in the lobby.

REDGREEN AND VIOLET-YELLOW RHYTHMS

You dwell in my simplified compositions
in a world filled with squares and rectangles
pulsing with the rhythm of Mozart and Rilke
You’re my color master, my Blue Rider

I am a playful sense of absurdity
a prolonged line across your pages turning bolder
I’m your recovery from numb unresponsiveness
your deadness wiped away

You are my throbbing forms
my dancing hieroglyphs, and otherworldly creatures
children play in your head with paper patterns

I am your topsy-turvy checkerboards
in the metaphysical realm you inhabit
under screaming Tunisian suns

You are my Expressionism
I am your Creative Confession
on a star
amongst stars

We are Anne Frank’s marbles rediscovered
in the attic
toads populate our brains
returning to the pond of their birth to breed

Bojana Stojcic is a teacher from Serbia, living in Germany. She writes in English, swears in Serbian, quarrels in German, and reads in all three. She gets a kick out of stream-of-consciousness, sarcasm, criticism of sentimentality and society, and talking about the human condition. You can read more of her work at her blog Bojana’s Coffee and Confessions to Go.

@BojanaETC