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Writer's pictureA Too Powerful Word

Andrei Zbirnea

Updated: Oct 7, 2020


Andrei Zbîrnea (1986) is a journalist@realitatea.net, copywriter, sometimes poet. Handy man@ Mornin’ Poets Wokshop. Borussia Dortmund fan and also big lover of The Office (US) Tv Series. He hopes to write prose someday. Published Books: 2011 – Rock în Praga (Herg Benet Pusblisher), 2014 - #kazim (contemporani cu primăvara arabă) (Herg Benet Publishers), 2017 – Turneul celor cinci națiuni (frACTalia), 2019 – Pink Pong (with Claus Ankersen, frACTalia).


Run Like Hell Delicate Sound Of Thunder 1988

Pink Pong #2

The mothership is afraid of beginnings

The mothership leaves the oceans

flowing into stardust untouched

an affectionate voice is broadcasting from the shipboard

a calm voice breathes with every new birth and death of the galaxy

cities by cities are made into clusters of debris

we will demolish the historical buildings

we will build other clusters of debris

around hysterical malls around overground parking lots

voice-actioned

we will create new acrobatic dance moves

we will sell overpriced vinyls

constraining our potential customers nonstop

it will go by the name ’marketing’ and it will be our secret

it will go by the name ’marketing’ and we will lay our heads

on our pillows every night

the mothership is the hideout which we all have been searching for

the mother ship holds the principle of a warehouse

for the sake of those times when you could not escape

the moos surrounding the cities nearby the pastures

They're gonna send you back to mother

In a cardboard box.

You better run.

I do not fear technology as much as I fear the force of the frantic masses

I do not fear the mothership as much as I fear the pollution in springfield

I do not fear the mothership as much as I fear the sunsets and sunrises

adeptly modified in photoshop I do not fear mother I’m not allowed to fear

because the moos surrounding the cities nearby the pastures are like a mirror

hanging above the bed

I do not fear animal cages nor of the provincial drama I do not fear

I’m not allowed to fear


Sheep

Pink Pong #6 feat. Irina

The machinist goes by innocuous the machinist

is the new version

of WALL-E

a version which almost all

hypermarkets

have in their monthly promotional sales

best before/lucidity is becoming

more scarce

I counted sheep flocks of sheep as

I was waiting in queue

there was an inside joke at the protests

george soros was giving away milk and croissants

at the only shop and go from victoriei square

during that evening I thought about that catchphrase

I have one more wish

Dragnea for Sheepish

(#NOT)

dragosh l. almost borrowed it

for his banner

still at last minute decided

for some popular lyrics

of some pop dance song



Get out of the road if you want to grow

old


in the engine room at the entrance the displayed message

the message that influenced many

regional communities

t h e m o t h e r s h i p

s h r i v e l l e d s c a r l e t

w a l l s

t h e t o w n

b e d

some kind of an ophthalmologic test

when you are six and you

learn letters and numbers by picking up

so you do not have to wear glasses with thick frames

memory is playing tricks on you/ fourth row

where the mother ship forgot a subway ticket

like a rite of passage studied on

the scribbled school desks

hostility in electromagnetic field

cardinal versus cartesian

the machinist is counting sheep

the machinist does not know that

by multiplying the painting’s

width with its length

he can find out the total number of sheep

and all this can be done with a calculator

a whole number suitable enough

to be written down

even rowan atkinson was overcome

by this number


High Hopes

Pink Pong #18

Fire walk with me

For hours and hours I’ve been staring at the table’s electronic display

I had escaped the pestering of the machinist

and WALL-E (finally) had received

the money for his vacation

the mothership had found a solution to the housing problem

expelling sunshine rays towards the southern outskirts of the city

there where the block of flats are either monochrome or come from

the jysk or ikea colour catalogues

And we would see each other every Thursday

in the Fire pub thinking about the last deeds of redbull

the machinist does not agree with these kind of names

that have been circulating in the public space

the machinist prefers the classical names as it follows

john tobias ebbe or even augustine

the pets need to have names easy to remember

even by those who have poor pronunciations in English

the decalogue will be modified

the machinist informs us daily

that the transition time has come on the mothership

what can I write with a silver pencil brought from Athens

or which is my favourite haruki murakami novel

do you prefer the short version or do we have a couple of hours

a contortionist would probably give you clearer answers and

he would never give away the insecurity through the modulations of the voice

after a while liv kristine disconnected the electronic table

and redbull said good-bye in his almost human manner


Hey You

Pink Pong #22

Sample post-punk (spp)

train’s timetable fashionable again

every city on the world map

keeps adding

new and new

trendsetters

I tried to decompose your voice in atomic elements I don’t

believe that I have succeded we drift away above the tavern

a shipwreck towards ephesus during this night

your fingers are the most beautiful

shortcut towards my brain you type ceaselessly on

whatsapp or messenger but your attention is displaced by

a whisper very close to my left cheek we

didn’t get to talk about the sound of the snow transmitted through

radio waves, neither about the fir trees from deva or

iasi your hair like an amphibian talks about New Year’s Eve

spent in denmark hamsters scene(ry) & arranged marriages by

family your voice sounds different on TV the same way

madalina manole’s voice would sound as a polyphonic ringtone

before chernobyl it was the volcano

before tridimensional space

there were two pair of twins

before bedtime I hold you in my arms

before leaving I collect my gloves from

the floor before you it was just

a black hall now silence sleep a postpunk

sample which will take good care of you

just you and a movie about levitation



Lost For Words

Pink Pong #26

A story that the machinist is telling to the mother ship to conclude a small dispute with WALL-E

Many butterflies float above the garden

the unfiltred beer bubbles accompany an imaginary dance

between a blue cocoon and endangered species

life on mars is still a mystery for the British

researchers so are the most recent results at britain’s got talent

in the summer gardens from papua was discovered a new

species of polychrome butterfly

the kids of the 21st century

won’t even notice it they will move on

between two sessions of swipe right & swipe left risking

to be left without battery just at the crossroads. another day, same continent

the kids of the aboriginal will never interact with pokémon GO

and they won’t be able to explain in front of an audience the word millennials

it is still a delicate moment for the love triangle consisting of the mothership, WALL-E and the machinist

the maximum security penitentiary is opening his gates wide

for the the curious visitors the cells are studded with strange forms made of plasticine and chalk

& your shoulders with the specific resemblance of some Peruvians going in a safari for the first time


Comfortably Numb

Pink Pong#32

turnstile/turnstiles

At dinner-time the antennas fell over

the turnstile from the underground. I feel like

an amphibian compelled to watch a talk-show

in which other amphibians build anti-aircraft

shelters. The demolitions were never written on

the agenda. It is expected that the next AdWords campaign

to contain them. We match the phone’s alarms according to

this information

I sit at the table with the emma stone before

lala land and I’m not afraid to hum songs popular

of my parents’ time. Paradoxically neither are you.

(sooner or later) we all end up displayed images

on the desktop of a work laptop or (best case scenario)

animated gifs for the human resources female colleagues

I have enough crayons; I’ll be as coherent as

I can. The advance offered by therapy is shattered

once your left calf breaks down. Always in front of the

grocer’s in the gazarului road. Always during the moments when you’re on the verge

of healing with the other therapist. (we’ll be calling him from this point on acupuncturist,

defining very clearly the nature of his activities).

At dinner-time the turnstiles are retiring to their den just as the little robot C-3PO

would have done it in contact with an army of stormtroopers

I haven’t noticed anybody (in the galactic empire)

to have such green eyes. Yet.


Time

Pink Pong#36

the machinist will evacuate the island in less than 24 h the right to vote guaranteed by the constitution will be suspended for an indefinite period of time with that alembic the mother ship will be able to build her own mother ship through a custom approach WALL-E got tired to keep answering to the letters that he received for 20 years on his work address for 20 years the machinist grows violets on mother ship’s lawn for 20 years the temperature in the living room has been constant a machinist or a thermostat a machinist or a thermostat time has expired WALL-E will turn himself from the little robot that was cleaning into a paper shredder that shreds paper from dusk ’till dawn if you were to choose one of these three characters (the mother ship, WALL-E and the machinist) who would become your BFF and with whom would you go on Sundays to church and on Tuesdays at the museum of natural sciences



A Nice Werewolf


for the Brautigan Library

O beautiful

was the werewolf

in his evil forest.

We took him

to the carnival

and he started

crying

when he saw

the Ferris wheel.

(Richard Brautigan – A Boat)

try not to deny the evidences

the sunrise halts timidly in the

lost and then found objects box

it’s not the case to traumatize a teenage girl

who can’t find the keys of her parents’

flat tik tok doesn’t mean the key around the neck

generation it’s more of an expose for everything

handbook for conspiracy theories we could talk about

for instance 2016 and pizza gate but I would rather not

break the character that was assigned to you

don’t cry werewolf we have enough time

to build a proxy for truth or our own

home delivery network where

commissions have their own route

my favourite chorus

your favourite chorus

there is a country for the socks from the washing machine

finally the city folded on your pulse

nobody sleeps anymore

everybody checks every two minutes

its phone never during shower always before always after

the werewolf looks at the carnival

this is his world


Translated by Iulia Stoichit

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