Bucharest

Whores in the hotel lobby...
“Would you like to buy me champagne?”
Colonnades of marble pillars with gilded Corinthian capitals,
Cathedral of loneliness...
Slender darkskinned prostitute,
Purple mascara matching her dress:
“Take me to your room and we’ll finish the bottle together.
I come with the champagne, for the same price.”
Crystal chandeliers, light reflected in polished glass mirrors,
Baroque columns inlaid with gold leaf;
A gypsy plays sadly on a violin,
While soft hands spoon the Black Sea caviar.

Gipsy flowersellers in the streets
Sell pink roses and yellow tulips.
Violence under Latin faces,
Smell of beeswax and blood...
What vampires lie in history’s unmarked graves?
Wolves rove the midnight forests
In schoolchildren’s songs.

Scions of Dacia, sprung from Roman legions’ lust,
In this land of impalers,
Where paper is harder than stone.
Long lulls of docile circumstance,
And circuses of terror...
Savage superstition in dark eyes,
Hatred in the bone,
Hatred from fear.
Who will be the next to betray us?
Who will crush us, spit on us, feed us to the wolves?
History is one long hustle,
One desperate deal after another
To stave off the end.


So it goes,
The usual fears and regrets,
Alone in a hotel room,in the dark,
Holding all Europe in my arms.