“Anti-poetry”: Selections from Luis Cruz-Villalobos’ most recently translated work
We are passing on the following poems, which have been, as before, selected and kindly offered to us by the author, Luis Cruz-Villalobos, as they were translated into English only this year. He introduced them with the following words:
”…aunque son poemas algo extraños, se les llama "anti-poesía", que es muy irónica... todo el libro es así…”
[…although they are somewhat strange poems, they are called" anti-poetry ", which is very ironic...the whole book is like this..]
The only way, we might say, that one can encapsulate the mystery of the human person may require just such “anti-poetry.”
Enjoy!
Select poems of ‘Theory of Unhappiness’ (2021) by Luis Cruz-Villalobos
Part I: Nonsensical Wisdom
8
I’ll make another confession of trade
I am already for more than 16 years
A clinical psychologist by profession
It is a beautiful and sacrosanct work
That hurts
One is to witness how life definitely transforms itself into destruction
One comes to know the thousand and one theories
Of disaster
Of the so-do-not-do-it
Of the always-warned-by-my-mom
Of the I-only-want-to-die
Of the I-don’t-understand-what-happens
One right after the other
I must confess that I get tired
That sometimes I need to stand in front of a great blooming jasmine
And breathe deeply
But very deeply
Until I get dizzy from its aroma to paradise.
12
Are vampires happy?
Tell me
Here and now
Perhaps they are happy?
Does their eternal life have a purpose?
Their supernatural power?
Their baroque clothing?
Their slicked back hairstyles?
Their pure white skin?
Tell me
Are their millions of dollars and euros of any use to them?
Of what use to them is their wisdom that has more for devils than for old men?
What is the purpose of their high fashion?
Their neat gallantry?
Their elegant nightly fetes?
Their official vows and nobiliary titles?
Don’t you think they have a crappy life?
Do they have anything in the center of their chests?
Do they not have a profound and abysmal longing to disappear forever?
Part II: Bloody Windmills
5
On the other hand
Invisible evil is strictly one that we could divide pedagogically into three dimensions of the same cake
Like well deciphered by the brilliant P. Tillich
Evil as the clumsy entropy of the preliminary or the spree of the evil as the fundamental concern of existence
The centricities from that twisted nucleus of everything toward the very same hungry and miserable sameness
And the macro idiocy of feeling the center of the cosmos and superior to all the immensity of which it forms part although it is only a ridiculous point at a point in a point at a point that is our marginal local system of galaxies.
Part III: Rocinating Laws and Axioms
5
There are 10 axioms of unhappiness
I
You will have all the foreign gods that you crave
II
You will take all the images of the gods that come to mind and you will bow before them and you will adore them
III
You will always take the unspeakable name that we could call the abyss itself in vain
IV
You will work without rest like a beast
V
You will send your parents from hell and from there they will send you what little they have
VI
You’ll kill
VII
You’ll be unfaithful
VIII
You will steal
IX
You will lie and lie and lie that something will remain
X
You will cling wholeheartedly to what you don’t have and to everything that could become yours especially if you comply with some of the previous points (cf. VI-IX).
12
Worldly theorists
Come here
And cry out with me
Which theory of unhappiness
Is the most tasty and aromatic
Smooth and congested
The most harmonious and balanced?
Theorists
Those
Intentionally addicted to academic papers indecipherable to the common people
Those
Who know more than what could possibly be said during
The start of a dinner until midnight
Those
That are too blunt to recognize the latest scientific methods
Those
Who know how to juggle ideas and numbers so that their theses are approved and continue to pay their elusive scholarships
Those
Who are good for nothing except to spit out information that they have heard elsewhere
Those
Why don’t they go where the devil lost his coat and leave me to my uncertainties and my minimum certainties that are enough for me as a theory of unhappiness?