Valery Oisteanu

Rent My Shadow

Once I had a liquid shadow, kept it in a jar
But I know it hid in a black box at night 
And in the morning stained my curtains bloody
An imprisoned shadow stinking of fossil and fear

The closet was full of sweating specters
I had to choose one as my constant companion,
   which landed me in trouble with my ancestors
Others I rented out to my followers

The shadow had its own shadow traveling through air
Sometimes emerging from my tombstone-imagination
A cardboard shadow darkened by the full moon
Escaping and climbing over the rooftops

A stalker at dusk, smoking a pipe, smelling of agony
It didn't resemble me, so I chased it away
It just looked like a fern, like a cold seawater algae
   that broke through windows passing on the street

It held hands with strangers in the alleys
It moaned frequently, ambushed trembling visitors
It danced on top of the doorways of abandoned buildings
The wicked thing had the color and shape of gloom
Finally, it disappeared in a wreckage of bodies, beneath a cloth
And when I slowly opened the jar, 
Invisible ink spilled onto the bottom of my shoes
Right foot, left foot, skimming the ground
Rising into a sky of tattered silhouettes.  

Assisted Revolution

(in Central Park)

The faces of granite sculptures in transitory loneliness
Sadly interlocked trees hang over benches
Flowers disturb the textures of footprints and hoof marks
Along-haul chessman receives the call of an apprehensive spring

Pandemic masks, outfits of doom
Mask robbers unite, the future is yours
Shot three times and a booster
Anonymous face-shielded heads and pandemic shoes
Revolution by post-pandemic sex drive
An effortless flow through the bridges of eyes
Stuffed horses pull carriages sheepishly
Bikers snake along the path
There is no melody in the string of noises
It is a sad afternoon of wounded souls
The melted remnants of daylight are chained forever to water
Birds chat savage mad love by the fountain
Small boats and ducks are lost in the wind
All compete in arousing colors under the sunlight
It’s a touch of grace in the sound of bird talk
On the other side of the space-time continuum

Valery Oisteanu is a poet, writer, and artist of the avant-garde. Born in USSR (1943) and educated in Romania. He debuted as a poet with the collection PROSTHESIS in 1970 (Litera Press, Bucharest). At the age of 20, he adopted Dada and Surrealism as a philosophy of art and life and a few years later English as his primary language. Immigrating to New York City in 1972 he has been writing in English for the past 45 years. He is the author of 18 books of poetry, a book of short fiction,” The King of Penguins” (Linear Art Press, 2000) and a book of essays (in progress):  ”The AVANT-GODS”.  Two new books are: In the Blink of a Third Eye (Spuyten Duyvil Press NYC, 2020) and Perks in Purgatory (translated in Romanian) Itaca Publishing Dublin 2020 & was chosen best poetry book of the year in diaspora. Recipient of the Kathy Acker Award, NYC, 2013, for contribution to the American avant-garde in Poetry Performance, he is known as: The Voice of East Village.