Written by Yasin Ertas
to remember you in a smile. my dear I don't have one. but you're in my
mind. it's a spiritual thing. no it's more. it doesn't have a past. doesn't have
a future. there is no where where it begins. nowhere where it ends. it’s just
a repetition. a repetition in the repetition. the creativity of the repetition that
comes out from the shell of the repetition. say if I am a gramophone and my
mind is a record that is filled up with you my dear. filled up with you. in my
mind you are playing. I hear. do you. do you my dear. you are the only and
most beautiful piece that is playing there. there is my mind that is you. you
are playing there. rotating. twisting. dancing. dressing undressing. it’s
playing 24 hours without stopping. don’t you think that makes me the
hardest worker in the world. you are. you are playing in my mind. this is
your music. your lyrics. you grow up in my mind. keep growing. transform
everything. destroy the distances destroy the time. ruin the language. I kiss
the eyes of your lyrics.
to remember you in a smile. my dear I don’t have one. instead of
remembering you in a smile to remember you in an orange light at midnight.
how nice your face would be seen. your nose. your neck. no one can
describe them better than me. to remember you in a wine glass that perfectly
resembles your body. to remember you when I even look at the curves of a
3. to remember you when a train delays. when a hand opens a mailbox. one
gets a hair cut. learns spanish. when snow melts. when a flower blooms or
fades.
when I have only 13 dollars in my bank account and in my pocket many
quarters I go to a deli and make these quarters singles then deposit the
money into my account so I withdraw twenty bucks and go back to the deli
and buy twelve bottles of beer. to remember you my dear to remember you
in what I wrote in brussels in ’14
the most beautiful wind is
neither on gentle leaves
nor on any nation’s flag
but when a woman releases her hair
you are that woman I desire. to remember you in what I didn’t write. in what
I will write on saturday. may 1 2021. to remember you in remembering you
is to remember you.
each time when i hear my name. that’s not happening a lot. getting even
less. but again you are there. you are my loneliness always with me. no. you
are not. because once I tried to leave my loneliness at grand central train
station to be more lonely. do you believe that. but I cannot leave you. you
are everywhere. you are a dress. first a mom whom i’ve never seen wear
that dress now her daughter marie wears it.
you are on the streets when elderly people who look like bread crumbs left
on the table in the 1950’s 40’s make their turns unnecessarily safely like a
long vehicle although their deaths won’t come from a car accident or from
a street fight or I don’t know how because they passed that exam a long time
ago. a long time ago. a long time ago. each of them has ten twenty even
some have forty different long time agos when I talk to them. you are also
in each of these long time agos. it’s hot it’s cold you are there too. as I do
jaywalk I first look at the left of me then to the right then cross the street.
you are first on the left then on the right and later you appear in front of me.
a few weeks ago I wrote my shortest poem called I, Myself
to think of you I go to new jersey
february 4 2020
new york
you were there. but you were not only in the words. because you were also
all over the empty spaces on the page that I left deliberately. you should’ve
seen yourself. you should’ve seen yourself my dear. how you became
crowded. As if the echo of your body appears everywhere. does a body have
an echo on the empty page. yours does. can an echo be seen. yours can. no
one saw you but I. to remember you on an empty page.
if I live because of you. because of where you are. my dear I haven’t found
you yet. but I know you are somewhere. somewhere I don’t know.
somewhere who knows where.