In Armenian, Tsavd Tanem (Ցավդ տանեմ) is a colloquially phrase used to express sympathy or affection. I, on the other hand, am taking it literally. In Buddhism, Hungry Ghosts (餓鬼) are spirits who are driven by unquenchable emotional needs, often depicted as tormented by grotesque desires that they are unable to ever fulfill. If that doesn’t sum up my entire life in a nutshell I don’t know what would.
“I was much further out than you thought/ and not waving but drowning” ~ Stevie Smith.
Start like this. Add [D-ball Blight/~ Mama told
me/~ come, son, ain’t the way to have fun/~ bawd
bones/~ son. Gangsta boogie?] To [Blue beard mold.
Blauh! jock cock Blauh! war raw Blauh! spinster’s rod
Blauh!/~ L’gangsta pussie?] Mix. [Ire in wack.
Pulsar north/ scar helm way/ home Holmes hell way
sugar bay] With [on your rock cock/~ slick sacque]
That’s how I wanted this to start. “To spray
[something?][a thing?] across your [thingy-thing?].”
Pathos?/~Bathos?/~ [whatever] such simplex
set of instructions. [ … … … … …] I’ll never get to
say what. Never say how now brown/~ [Stopping
you there, Herr Doktor Blight.] Mama’s next sex
swears [like this, Holmes] by the goat’s early rue.
][][
Notes.
One thing I’ve noticed about having tendinitis is that my mind spends a lot more time these days focused in on and trying to make sense of the endless static loop in my head. A translation process I won’t pretend to understand; what I get in return are endless fragments that not connected to anything, as if I was randomly switching through radio stations, white noise and all, which both gives and takes away. I tried highlighting all the different voices at work in this poem and the end result looks like: