You who holds the throne
You must atone
You were just a second son
Are you truly the destined one?


First it was your brothers betrothed
The lucky one
The one who got to escape your soon to be heinous acts
Years will come, and your name engraved in everyones memory
She was older, and bare you no son
She must be gone.
You introduced divorce
And like a con,
She was.

Next was that poor maiden,
Her face still hidden,
Such a tragedy
It was the red of her lipstick that caught your attention,
She bore you a girl,
How dare she?
She must die, right?
Blame the blood-like lipstick, her being with her brother if necessary,
She mustn’t live.

Then it was your true love,
Or what others thought to be.
This one gave you a son
Howver neither of you could watch him grow.
Was it worth it?
I think not.
And once again,
Just like that the never-ending chain,
Started going going around
Once again.

This one was short lived.
All the way from germany.
The neighbouring country.
They sent you a painting of her
What a beauty!
But when she came
Opposing thoughts came in like a clutter.
Annulment is what you wanted
So it was what you got.

The cousin of the second wife is next
(You should’ve known better)
She was young, lively and such a beauty.
But just like her beloved cousin,
Her lipstick was a bright scarlet red also.
She got what she deserved right?
A beheading. Execution. Whatever you want to call it. Its over now anyway
How dare she, do such a treacherous, scandalous act?
Embarrass you, humiliate you?
Commit such an unlawful dubious thing?
Off with her head is what you wanted,
So it was what you got.

Finally, we’re at the end.
You who had the most wives in your bloodline, how does it feel to reach the finish line?
You got fat, and old, whilst this new one was much better off
She survived,
lucky one indeed!
You died
How does it feel to have it end with no true successor?

Not a boy in sight to take your throne
Only your two daughters

But they’re just girls
What good could they do?

Berlin, Berlin, just what art thou?
A cake of layers baked from fates
by many bakers, cold and proud,
who filled it with chunks of bitter dates.

The cream on top is cloying, sweet,
to compensate for the stale flour
and brownish yeast of marching feet
with bruised crabapples, soft and sour.

To try a slice of this complex taste
isn’t easy: It’s baked in haste.

Up hiking on a hill that once housed a king
whose golden age had gleamed long ago:
His former realms filling all that I’m seeing
but little trace of him now, just shadows.

Standing alone, his abandoned throne,
overgrown with brambles and weeds
that crack its old stone, unbemoaned,
while the vines spread more of their seeds.

Many years later (or less?), a hiker will pass
up and down this very same hill
and look back on us past, wondering at last
why our gilded age didn’t last like we’d willed.

You were so absent while washing
your face in the morning, you never saw
how the linden in the courtyard reached a limb
through the bathroom window and shook
sticky seeds into your hair. Your hair grayed
in this working class neighbourhood you’d heard
already as a child smelled like a ruined life.
The turrets of the little Russian church
once looked so fragile to you – you wanted
to feed them carrots from your hand
and croutons. Your heart was alive.
Your heart was like an iodine rain
over a crowd of crushed heads.

By Dan Sociu, from Sentimental and Naïve Poetry, translated
by Oana Sanziana Marian

spectacle society or a faceless society? who could tell. after historical laughter comes a historic dread. when the sky is the limit of power we are doomed to endure the mania of failing floors. nothing is trully free to harm reality, not even poetry, and whose reality is more real. words like disfigured worlds,  they hack the body time. what is beauty and what is truth, this complex breathing creature in an unknowable form, this  hidden vulnerability: we can't bear who we are, we want to sink in a history without memory.

An
c
u
r
StateMent                 H
e       a                 Making
d       r           T    e     s
         Through    a     t
         y        Melancholy
         r            s    s     r
         i            e           You'Re
         z                                i
         e                                s
         d                               k
                                           i       R
                                        Another
                                           g      a
                                                   d
Of.

In the stillness, a soldier lies,
Dreams of battles, now faded skies.
A uniformed figure, once full of grace,
Now gone, lost to a forgotten place.

Tears fall like raindrops, cold and clear,
A mother's love, lost in fear.
She holds the memory, a fleeting spark,
Of a child who dreamed beneath the dark.

Fallen soldiers, silent and still,
The world moves on, against their will.
But in the dreams of those left behind,
The echoes of war will never unwind.

Culture rich, a heart of flame.
A realm upon seven hills it rose.
Barbarian winds blew strong and cold,
The empire is reborn.
Roma Aeterna!
The spirits reigns, through shifting sands and distant plains.
A world reborn,
all roads lead to Rome.