Romeo Origun

In the Presence of Desire

What steadfast things make up a life?

The roots of the baobabs are joyful tonight,

and the stars, distant and forlorn strangers,

are looking through the windows

searching for companionship

or for the grittiness of love, that heat

that arises between two bodies.

I would know, I have always thought of you

as a river on fire. Once or twice, I imagined

you humming a tune by Etta James,

and I thought that you were a flute,

or a crane passing through water while singing

a fable, a song that had to do with love

in a broken-down country.

It has been years since I last saw you,

and what dreams I have are now fireflies

that only come out at night. I am still alive.

The island is still ringing out in the small dreams

of desire. I was born this way, first as a pilgrim

dedicated to movement, then as a man

who must wander through love. It is quiet

now, and what calls out to us, calls us

into the last light of the moon—that summoning

that begins from the silence of our bones,

and then finds its way into the dive bars

and forgotten corners of the world.

​

​

The Cinema of Lust

​​

Faded by time, the old pornography cinema

has fallen into disuse, and yet its billboards

still advertise The Paradise of Small Men, Naked Desire,

and The Small River that Flows Beside the Factory.

It was raining when I walked inside slowly

like a veteran who has come to visit the last cathedral

he saw before a bullet shattered his pelvis,

and underneath the rusted awning an old man

walked back and forth, muttering to himself,

there used to be men from here to the other block.

I, too, have arrived late to the house of passion.

The burgundy carpets were no more, the linoleum floor

was littered with gums and cigarette butts,

and all over the seats the souls of old men waited

for the cinema to go dark.

The screens came alive, and in the desire of men,

I considered the despair of their beauty,

their dreamlike death, something I have known

in that dark room where I once loved a man,

and when we were done, we walked outside,

going our separate ways.

In the fields, the scarecrows that were dried

and useless were chopped and burnt.

I was still watching the screens, and within me

a large fire raged through the dried husks, burning down

the house that once stood on the edge of my old life.