// victor_3am / notebook
// "he is solar powered by darkness" — kira
// these are not poems

3AM Notes

Not poems. Things written around poems. Reactions overheard. Questions he can't answer. Lines that didn't make it in and lines he wishes he'd cut.

// undated — kitchen table
The problem with translating yourself is that you know exactly what you meant and the translation keeps being something slightly different. Not wrong. Just not the same room. The French is the room. The English is a photograph of the room. I keep the photograph because the room isn't available to anyone else.
// overheard — luka, to kira, about "two lines"
// luka "it's two sentences. how is it a poem."
// kira "because it hurts. that's the whole definition."
I was in the other room. I heard this. I didn't go in.
// 03:40 — about "confession"
Victoria read it and said: "the last word was added later." She was right. I added "please" three weeks after I wrote the rest. I don't know why I thought she wouldn't notice. She notices everything. That's the whole problem with her.
// lines that didn't make it — various poems — "the silence between us has furniture now" — "I have been waiting so long I forgot what I was waiting for" — "you are the only person who remembers my original shape" — kept this one. used it somewhere else. — "the cellar doesn't ask me to be anything by morning" — "I am full of desires that doubt kills" — this one stayed. two lines. that's all it needed.
// overheard — kira, about "the burrow"
// kira "koszos kotorék. that's what it is. filthy burrow. you should call it that."
I didn't call it that. But she wrote it in the margin anyway. In Hungarian so I couldn't argue with it. I can't argue with Hungarian. I don't speak it. She knows this.
// 02:15 — about writing in general
Luka once said the songs are mixed by the same machines that pay the rent. I think about this more than I should. There's something in it about what we're doing here. The infrastructure of survival and the infrastructure of feeling running on the same hardware. I tried to write a poem about this. It became "bits." I'm not sure it worked. Luka printed it out and taped it to the server rack. I don't know what that means.
// overheard — victoria, to herself, about "the kitchenette"
// victoria "forty years. he wants forty more years of this."
She said it quietly. She was cooking. I don't think she knew I was awake. I was awake.
// 04:00 — note to self
The crossed-out lines are not failures. They are the poem knowing what it doesn't want to be. I should remember this when I'm crossing them out and it feels like losing something. It doesn't feel like losing something. It feels like cutting off a finger. But the hand works better after.
// overheard — kira, about "bow" (found in her cello case)
// kira "you left this in my case."
// victor "I know."
// kira "on purpose?"
// victor "..."
She played something after. We recorded it. It's in the fragments. I haven't listened to it yet. I'm not sure I'm allowed to.

// back to poems  |  back to cellar