Five Poems from: Night Soccer

Enter Love's Absence

Coming back to my senses, I was at a deskwriting where you left off writing a screenplay.

What was I up to before arriving here?

Looks like I was set on being holed up in a white room,knitting my brows, holding a pencil.

If I squint, there's even a snowstorm raging outside the windowto make this white room picture perfect.

The movie would be about how one love causes another love to      die, and against the backdrop of a summer festival taking place      on Praça do Comércio, there were many autobiographical      details, but it seemed like you regarded revealing all of them as      distasteful.

Is that so? I scratch my temple with the pencil tip

and peer into the paper to finish the sentence,

that's to say, the story where in the Arab café we abruptly entered      while gazing at the shadows of those with their backs turned      to the sun setting over the plaza dotted only with pigeons, the      festival having ended, somebody comes up to us and asks, May I      write your story?

though it's hard to tell whether it's a gray-haired geezer or a      skinhead youth,

and hard to tell whether where we're sitting is in front of a circular      table or on the floor.

Despite that, laughing awkwardly, I politely said that there wasn't      much of a story here, that it'd be best if he left us alone.

That's as faras the screenplay had gotten.

Can I begin writing from here?

But a story surprisingly far-fetched in an unfamiliar country, a      story like a board game, a human story about how killing,      roasting and eating an unwelcome visitor is better than eating      tenderloin steak, a story about a ghost's insomnia, a story about      the past life of a plaza gone up in flames

is what I wanted to write,

not about how love doesn't roast and eat the other love, or how the      other love elucidates love's absence, or how our words blacken      into letters,

not about the Arab café or the festival,but how love keeps becoming primitive.

I need to write the next line that follows,

but thinking about what I wanted to write, I ended up altogether      forgetting what you wrote.

If I were to read from the start again,the story would be completely different.

As if a countless number of desks were placedin a field of snow

let's return to page one.The movie began in front of a door to a darkened room,

the world turned to an ashen heap,a scene where a palm tree burned to a crisp cracks.

Us still absent.

Love Me Tender

Someone grabs my shoulder.

Taking out one of my earphones, I look back. There's no one there,      the snow is falling in heaps.

Gotta keep walking. When I look forward, it's summer. Through      the thick shade of trees, the sound of cicadas reaches my ears.

Snow piles on my shoulder someone grabbed. When I turn back      the cicadas fall quiet. The field of snow lines the horizon.

When I look forward, there's a fountain in the distance and      children's shadows overlap like crazy,

and when I turn back the whole world is white. I squint. The cold      wind rakes my face, my feet are getting wet,

when at the sound of splish-splash I look forward here too, it's the      start of monsoon season, streaks of rain overlapping like crazy      and some hands getting sucked into the sewer.

Shaking a pine-needle tree,a pale child getting rained on by falling cicada carcasses.

Excuse me

Love me tender, love me sweet, the song continues playing in      one ear

Excuse me

Excuse me

Excuse me

Excuse me

Excuse me

Excuse me

Excuse me

Excuse me

Just as I'm about to put my other earphone onI close my eyes and fall...