Testimony of Circumstances
(1st WARNING)
A warning
I’m not a psycho
they call me “insane” but those who call me “insane”
are also called “insane”
just like people say “buddy”
—sometimes people call me “buddy”
and a real buddy of mine calls me “stranger.”
But, I warn You and Your Lordship
that, truly,
I am not CRAZY
despite labels
vulgarly referred to as diagnostics
that distinguished specialists
have applied to my case
moistening the glue of labels
with plastic sponges
their hands gloved in latex
—talcum powder while fitting on latex gloves
—denatured alcohol on plastic sponges
—the immaculate white of priest-like aprons
—liquid or conductor jelly on my temples or skull
(whether EEG or EST
good-for-nothing—)
that I’m not even that much more neurotic
than the average of my contemporaries
that I have a good prognosis
that I haven’t been lobotomized yet they haven’t given me a
lobotomy
that my computer still works, and enough
to write this
without misspellings, without spelling
mistakes
or punctuation errors,
(this part ends with a coma,) (,),
(1st CONFESSION)
I do confess though
that sometimes I have to clench my brain with both hands
that sometimes Great Thoughts and Solutions
begin to boil
accumulating pressurized steam in my head
swaying me into a bubble bath
—hydrotherapy, they call it—
or something along those lines
and other times
the world loses color
it becomes something like street pavement
someone paves my world
and everything is a path or a highway or a road
but never a destination
and I’ll die waiting to arrive somewhere
two steps back for every step forward
seeing it all gray gray
not feeling joy or happiness
and the sun causes well-known
visual distortions on hot pavement
and even when the sun sets
sometimes the pavement heats up
this doesn’t necessarily mean
it’s hot outside
the world
is like gravel covered in cement
in drying cement
and the cold can become dreadful.
Rodrigo Lira committed suicide on Saturday December 26, 1981, at the same time of his birth, in the place where he had lived the last years: Grecia 907, department 22. His poetry, distributed in photocopies, spread in recitals and printed in fleeting magazines, it was later anthologized in the COMPLETE WORKS PROJECT, a book that cannot be found today."
