Testimony of Circumstances

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."