HAIKU JAM

Llevo un par de días enganchado a esta aplicación en la que entre muchos desconocidos creamos mini poemas, que ni son Haikus ni son nada, puesto que nos pasamos la estructura por el forro, pero me apetecía compartir por aquí las que más me gusta como han quedado.

CIRCULAR RAILWAY (YANGON, MYANMAR)

Inside any public transportation in the world you can see a pretty accurate portrait of the society where it belongs. A trip on the metro of any city in the world gives you a brush of how middle class, which means most of the people, of that city behaves and interacts with their siblings. In Yangon city, at the south of Myanmar, there is a very special example of it. A circular train makes laps from the very deepest heart of the city, place for young people’s hang outs, studies and businesses, to the countryside bordering the city, where the salary men and women carry all the collected grain and vegetables along the day.

  From my first step in the car of the train, I felt truly welcomed by all the passengers. They kept smiling at me and greeting, apparently curious for seeing such a tall man and with those strange clothes. I took my camera and I was a kind of fun for some of the Burmese people, no matter young or old, male or female, many of them offered themselves to be the protagonists of one of my pictures. When the train got full, some people woke up from their seats to offer them to me. They were kind like that, even the elder ones. I gently declined they offer, I thought they need it more than me, plus I was enjoying walking around the cars of the train. Sometimes, food from the homemade meals, either with noodles or rice, some people were eating was offered to me. I wonder why, maybe is because Myanmar opened their borders to the tourist recently and seeing foreigner visitors is exciting for locals, or maybe is just their nature, but Burmese people are extremely kind and friendly.




 I looked around and I saw kids, mothers, elder people, young fashionable students, Buddhist monks dressed in garnet, nuns in pink, and I see a girl with an extremely exotic beauty staring at me with her deep intense black eyes. After a few seconds staring each other, I ask her to be in one of my pictures. She assents with a shy smile and I still get seduced every time I look at the picture taken. The train makes many stops along the way, but there is one special stop because the loud noise of voices yelling heard coming from outside. It iwas the first stop in the limit of the city, a train station surrounded by corn and wheat fields. The scandal outside were the peasants rushing and organizing the way they had to carry all the foods collected along the day. Sacks full of different vegetables were thrown inside through the windows and then the field workers jumped in too. There was a big contrast between the people coming in now, with all the dust on their clothes and their big hats to get protection from the sun, and the young modern and fashionable students that came in the train at the stops nearby the University of Yangon. No doubt that was an interesting mosaic of faces.
 I’ve spent about three and half hours inside the train to make the whole lap. And every single minute was worth it thanks to the amazing inhabitants of Yangon.

So, Fuck You.

Crying? Fuck you!

Pay for your mistakes,

you don’t deserve her care.

She came by you,

then you offered a lace,

that hid a chain,

which destroyed her freedom.

You got her at your feet,

and instead of offering your hand,

and rise her by your side,

you used her as a carpet,

trod her.

And it made the chain shorter.

She was brightness,

and you switched off her light.

She was water,

and you dried the river.

She was air,

and you polluted her,

but she didn’t give up.

She gave you thousand chances,

she thought that was love,

but you didn’t want to change,

but she did.

Now you cry, so fuck you.

You overpassed the edge,

and the Stockholm syndrome was finished.

She now flies free,

and you crawl seeking her feet,

but you don’t find it,

because she flies high,

so, fuck you.

Now you have the chance,

to learn from your mistakes,

to fly by the side,

but of someone else, not hers.

She gave herself to you as a present,

but you miss appreciated,

and now you cry, so fuck you.

She shines again,

and won’t go back to your side,

the happiness she tried,

and wasn’t with you,

but with herself instead.

So, fuck you.

MIND CAGE

You can’t see the cage,

but fills you up with rage.

You shot the kid in the waves,

but you could do nothing else,

you wouldn’t live with less,

do you really need your wage?

That is the mind cage.

Anger, sorrow, fear,

bars you can’t bear,

you order another beer,

but bars won’t disappear.

I know it looks so real,

but you feel the pain

that's only caused by your brain.

Do you really want to scape?

You just don’t dare,

so you blame someone else,

forgetting you own yourself.

Act like there is no fear.

Laws are made to be broken,

fears you`ll have to overcome,

it is the great escape from the mind cage. 

PROJECT MAYHEM REJECTED FILES II: Singing Birds Of The Ultimate Suffocation

Sir:

  Peak season arrived to Ibiza Island, famous to be the place where money can get you whatever you wish. And with it, all the tourists who thought nothing changed here, and everything is still about parties, beaches and bitches. And we gave them a big surprise.

  At the ‘Sea Beach Club’ a highly overpriced bar at the shore which can be only reached by boat, big parties with Arabian sheiks, top models, soccer stars and big business men happen along the summer season all the time. But this time is going to be different. The party is going to be enjoyed by the ones who used to be at the bottom: the service workers, the no ones, us, the space monkeys.

  First, let me tell you about the attendants of the day of the ultimate suffocation. Among others I will tell you about Abdullah, who last year bought a 3000 bucks champagne bottle, shook it, and poured all the content over the beautiful dancer of the bar, just for fun. I will tell you about Leo Renaldo, a soccer star considered a kind of human god by a lot of people who still think they are their fucking khakis. He used to get high on cocaine and alcohol, and have fun dropping bills to the floor so he could laugh at the humiliated waiter who got to his knees for those useless papers. Humiliating the staff used to be his favorite hobby. Then Doris Hilton, international top model who used to throw the glasses against the waiter if she considered that her gin tonic had too much gin, or not enough lemon. They are a kind of money built gods who are worshiped by many people, whose icons are not in churches, but on television, which is more popular and convincing nowadays. Those three are just a small example of the kind of arrogance and disrespect shown by the customers of the ‘Sea Beach Club’, and the staff used to accept for money. All those three individuals, among others, showed up the day of the ultimate suffocation.

  All the staff one day agreed to don’t work once the bar was opened. The arrogant rich clients were shocked to see that there was only one thing on the menu: Rize or die. When Abdullah asked for his champagne bottle, the dancer who was humiliated herself brought it, shook it and shot all the expensive liquid over the sheik. The soccer star started to cry when no one accepted to serve him, tried offering big tips, but his money was not valuable for us anymore. The scared top model, Doris, ran in to the boat and tried bribing the captain of the boat to bring her out of the island, but the captain showed his hand, and there was a lips shaped burn signal there. He was one of us, the Singing Birds Of The Ultimate Suffocation. At this point, and for first time in their lives, the gods fell to the ground, then they realized that they are nothing more than us but with money. So now we don’t want their money, we are over them, and the fallen gods asked us what we want to let them go out, what if isn’t money? Money, money money. Everything is about money for them, so boring. Then I said:

-          We want a fight

-          A fight? – Asked Leo Renaldo incredulous

-          Yes, a fight – I confirmed

-          So, if we win, you will allow us to go away, won’t you?

-          Win? Is not about winning or losing, that doesn’t matter, in a fight we all win, and the rules are the following. The first rule of fight club is…

And you all know how it continues. The fights were awesome, intense. The ungodded TV gods and the waiters fighting each other, showing that we are all the same, that we all bleed. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lose, but it didn’t matter. At the end of the day we let them leave, and they were gone with the feeling that they are no more than anybody else. May any of them join the project mayhem? Only time will say. 

PROJECT MAYHEM REJECTED FILES I: The Flower of the Utmost Devastation

Reporting from Ibiza:

 Sir, the project in Cambodia is going well, so I took a flight to come back to what is defined as “my country” to see how the project is evolving here. From here, I would like to tell you the story of a very special and encouraged Space Monkey. She used to be a professional pleasure manager deluxe in Ibiza. What we usually know as a slut, bitch, whore, prostitute. She used to hang around all the VIP’s rooms in the most worldwide known discos, sharing expensive champagnes, mojitos or cocaine with rich magnates of petroleum, soccer players, stupid deejays or drug dealers. She used to think that, some day, she would be able to get that same unconcerned life style if she had kept attached to those successful menfolks and fucking them for money. But, at her late thirties, and looking the end of her physical beauty approaching her, she found out that she will never be nothing else than the flower to decorate the success of the rich men. A flower that soon would be withered and no man would want to have next to him. She didn’t save much money, she didn’t have experience in any other job, she only could live out of her beauty, and once it had ended she would had nothing, and that pissed her off.

 The first fight she had was against a client who used to abuse her. She almost killed him, and enjoyed the feeling of taking the reins of her life. Then she joined the club at the basement of a trendy beach club, and she gained my trust. She was an example of Angel of Change. She used her connections to seed the chaos in many massive party events where tons of high people waste their lives. And then she volunteered to be the first Flower of the Utmost Devastation.

  The mission was to get infiltrated into a luxury elitist boat party in which the attendants were mostly sheiks who ruled one of the main energetic sources, so a big part of the world, famous soccer stars, and other capitalists managers. She set up the soap made explosives inside the boat and detonate them causing a big explosion that blew up the whole boat. Many obstacles for the New, New World were executed that day, quickly, ruthlessly, without mercy but with compassion, like you ordered. They died enjoying one of the best parties ever. And that is the way how the space monkey became the Flower of the Utmost Devastation. In death, a member of project Mayhem has a name. Her name is Paula Martir, and I think she deserves to be noted in the book of the New, New World.

  Before executing the plan, Paula poured one bottle of three thousand bucks champagne trough the drain and introduced a very clear message inside instead, a message that the waves brought to the shore, much more valuable: Rize or die.

Space Monkey Bartu Juan, singing off.

 

BYE

 If you want to cry when you say good bye,

 then cry, don’t be shy.

 It is not sadness that causes the tear drop,

 but happiness that you felt before

 so cry, and be thankful for the good days you had.

 And never forget, it is not sadness,

 sad is when the good bye causes relief,

 this tear drop is dropped by the happiness in your memories. 

Reporting from Cambodia: A Project Mayhem Tale.

Sir, as you can check on the newspapers, the project Mayhem in Spain is a complete success. The Euro is going to collapse and the country soon will see its borders blurred by the rise of the all dancing all singing crap of the country. I buried the seed and took care of the tree until it was independent enough to keep growing up by itself. Now is about to bloom. The project doesn’t need me there anymore. So I moved on.

Now I’m in Cambodia and after a deep analysis of the society I decided to move into the community, the country side, which is a mine of cheap labourers for the expensive business in town. Young men and women who are lied, they are promised to have the chance to promote in their jobs and get as rich as their employers are, but that is not gonna happen, and they realized, what makes them very pissed off. Meanwhile, the middle class tourists can get a luxury style of life that they can’t afford in their countries, and the owners of the lands get more expensive cars than the whole houses of their workers. Everything at the expenses of the health of the modern slaves called employees. The countryside folks have no formation or knowledge, so they accept any kind of humiliation from their bosses in order to get a couple of dollars at the end of the day. They feel the frustration, they feel the anger, but they don’t know how to drive it… yet.

Since I’m here, many young boys and girls showed interest for the project. They are good learners and they understand the purpose of the actions. The seed has been buried, and the first sprout is showing up. Project Mayhem keeps expanding overseas.  

MIDSUMMER TALE

summer, and summer, as every year, is time to come back home. A sweet and sour feeling is with me when I first step on my island every year. My little town, the place where I grew up, looks quite the same for the last twenty years. The old friends have the same old habits. They go to the same old bar. They have the same old jobs, and the same girlfriends. However, I see everything different. There is a new feeling about every single people, about every single place. They are the same, but the feeling perceived is different. The change is inside me, and it is irreversible.

 After some days of peace, getting adapted to the new time zone, I have to start the worst of the modern day mind engagement. I have to return back to my seasonal stupid work as a waiter of a hotel. As every summer, the season starts on June, and I start working, cancelling any chance of exploring my inner self in order to get spiritual peace. Call it mental peace or sanity if you want. There, I let the days pass by fast while I serve rivers of draught beer and vodkas that flow through my hands and leads into the thirsty mouths of the inebriate tourists mostly coming from the United Kingdom. It looks like a never ending story, every day the same. It is kind of funny how most of the people tells me how lucky I am to live here. They always tell me that I must go to the beach a lot; they always think that I must party hard every day in those clubs full of chicks, drugs and deejays. And they always say that I must fuck a lot, when I say I am from Ibiza. Nothing is further from the truth. Often, I go to the beach a couple of times along the whole summer. I don’t go to the big clubs unless I get paid for doing some job in there. And about sex… let’s say that I’m too busy for that while I’m working. My perspective of this internationally known as “the party island” is completely different. For me is the work place. Never happens something exciting to me when I’m there. Summers are just for work, that disgusting operation that has to be done to extirpate the tumor of poverty that grows on my bank account along every winter tripping around Asia. Every day here is like the copy of the previous day, sometimes hotter.

  This summer -I wander why- I have started being more talkative with the clients of the hotel. I used to be the least speaker waiter of the world. I used to just speak the minimum amount of words needed to execute my task. But I’m acting different towards the people this year. Something had change, and isn’t about them, but me. Having some conversation with the people makes my days lighter, and gives me the impression that the summer is going to finish earlier so I can take off sooner. I speak with John, the family guy, about the profitable business he has in Scotland. I speak with Jane, the aged lady, about the book she is reading. I speak with most of the people about how they are enjoying their holidays or some other trivial conversation that I don’t really give a fuck about. But is entertaining to listen, as a bad song playing on the radio, it makes the time smoother. Until I speak with Jean or she speaks to me; to be more accurate. She was with her friends, giving the last farewell to the single life of one of them, and getting drunk, of course. She is an interesting person, looks nice. And she has a perspective of the world that I like. She has something more in her head than bullshit deejays and parties. And she works on the world of cinema, one of my many frustrated vocations. She is the one of her friends coming to the bar to buy all the shots. The conversation flows a little bit every time. I can feel like every shot she drinks, she is a step closer into my mind. The first shot she tells me how long they will be partying in Ibiza, the second shot she tells me about her work, the third shot she tells me about the kind of movies she likes, after the seventh shot she tells me how interesting she thinks I am. I notice she likes me, not because I’m good at that, but because she is giving me indications with lighting arrows. She can’t help herself and tells me to go with her behind the bar because she wants to tell me one thing. I have to say that she is drunk as fuck. She asks me to go with them to the party somewhere where I’m not interested to go at all, and I am to sober to go, so I kindly refuse her invitation. Instead I offer a meeting the following day, the both of us, after my work. She accepts giving me a long kiss on my lips as a sign of the deal. That escalated quickly. I have to interrupt her kiss in order to be able to continue working. I’m sure some client could see that, and it could result as problems for me.

  The next day I buy a bottle of red wine and I go to work. I am nervous, I’ve never done that before. Never with a client, never with a so unknown girl. When I see her, I ask if she still remembers that we have a date. That drunk she was, that I wouldn’t be surprised if she says that she doesn’t remember, or that she changed her mind. But she says yes, with a much shier smile on her face. After work I go to have a quick shower and I pick her up, who is waiting at the bar. It is a little embarrassing for me the fact that all my coworkers see me with her. Is the first time I have date with a client.

  I drive my car to a remote beach where we drink the wine together, we talk, we laugh, we kiss and then we have sex with the waves of the sea as a background soundtrack. We enjoy a good time together, and suddenly my work is not so a bad thing. At the second round she says she feels sour at her legs, she is having a hard time to keep them opened for so long, so we have to change position. No one said something like that to me before. I realize that flexibility on women is an important skill for sex. It feels good to have a special night like that. We have some nice time together, and I drive her back to the hotel with the first lights of dawn.

  The day of her departure we say good bye with a big hug. We exchange our emails. I would like to keep in touch, maybe have a new friend. But probably she thought something else, because she never answered back my emails. After some time had passed, I thought that she might had a boyfriend back home, and I was the crazy night in Ibiza. Quite sad, but anyway I feel thankful for that special day which made my summer less charging. 

Airports' things

It happened more than one year ago, I don’t know why, but, it came to my mind recently. I was in Prague’s airport ready to go to Japan and I saw a girl that was also waiting that plane that never took off the day before. It was more than one year ago, but today it popped up into my mind like a yesterdays’ fresh memory.

 I sat in front of the girl and I started talking to her. She was very nice. A Finnish girl, maybe Swedish, I don’t remember, who was going to Japan for work, performing in a circus. I was very surprised, such a young girl. She was twenty-two years old and was going to travel to the most far East to work, with all the visa stuff arranged and a work contract with her. She explained all those things without losing the brightening smile on her face. Not even a second.

 The boarding time arrived and I rushed towards the door to make sure that, that time, it would be possible to take the flight. It was my second try, as I explained back in that day in this blog. Meanwhile she went to the toilet, so many people stood up between us. Every time I looked back and our eyes coincided, she dedicated a cute wink of an eye with here gorgeous smile always turned on. That was one year ago, but, even though I don’t remember her name, I remember her face as if that had happened last night. When she passed across me in the alley of the flight winked an eye and smile. When I went to the plane’s toilet and I saw her, sitting in her seat, winked an eye and smiled. The same some more times.

 Once we landed in Moscow, where our flight had to make scale, she approached me with more winks and smiles, and asked to me:

-          Can we go together to the terminal C? – Which was the terminal where our flight to Tokyo took off from.

 I noticed her a little bit overwhelmed of being alone in such an unknown place and, as I told to her earlier, I had traveled quite a lot before, so she might had thought that I could be helpful. We were walking together, chatting, and I thought about sex. It’s told that the men have an average of eight to ten sexual fantasies a day. I had all of them along the twenty minutes we were walking together. Then, suddenly, she started looking continuously at her phone.

-          I have to meet my friend over here – She said.

I was wandering if her friend was going to be a boy or a girl, until we saw him. There he was, behind the glass of the smokers lounge. And then she told me that she was going to smoke a cigarette too, before continuing the walk until the terminal. And then she went inside the smoker’s lounge and I saw through the glass how she kissed her friend on his lips.

-          Ok - I thought. - I confused her sympathy with something else – I told myself. And I kept walking on my own until the waiting room of the terminal.

 After a while, they appeared, happily speaking to each other. She looked at me, but didn’t wink. They sat in a seat a couple of files ahead of mine. After a boring span time, I decided to wake up and speak to them. He was nice, but she wasn’t. She was trying to get his attention speaking in their language and avoiding talking to me. I got it. She didn’t need me anymore, so she didn’t want to know anything more about me. She used me as a free guide trough the unknown airport and then discarded me as an old useless toy. Suddenly I felt very uncomfortable, but luckily my stomach started hurting and I had to go to the toilet to drop a big shit. As I do in almost all the airports I step on. And I had only seen them once again, while we were waiting for our luggage, but I didn’t bother to say them good bye before I left. 

THE PLATFORM

That’s me; I’m the kind of person who travels with three pairs of scissors. But I don’t do that because I’m previewing the need of them, or to have a supply of scissors in case I lose the first pair. I’m travelling with three pairs of scissors because when I was packing I forgot that I’ve already had one pair, so I took another. And I forgot again, so I took another, again. That’s me, brushing my teeth with a weird masala flavor toothpaste, a little bit disgusting flavor for a toothpaste, but is the only one I found in the only shop I saw at the train station, when I found out that I forgot my traditional mint toothpaste in the last guest house.

  Those who are staring at me, those are Indian folks. From deep rural India side, I can tell for the way they act. They speak each other in Hindi and, after arrive to a consensus, one of them who looks like he is the leader, the funny chubby one, asks me any stupid question. Looks like he is the only one who is able to speak a little bit of English, so the others ask him what to ask me. Even when they don’t know what else they can ask me, they keep staring at me, smiling. About twenty eyes stoke on me, not because the fact that I’m brushing my teeth at the platform, sitting on my lug and splitting at the floor. That’s a normal behavior for Indian standard. They keep staring at me for the fact that I’m the only white foreigner waiting at the platform.

---          So, you guy, look like you are a big show for them.

  I raise my head, surprised to hear a good English speaker, and it’s when I see her for first time. A beautiful Asian woman with American accent, with that kind of interesting looking of someone who is self-confident, and sure about what she is doing. The fact that she looks a bit older than me, and she is travelling around India by her own, makes me feel that she probably have many interesting stories to tell, and awakes me a wish to know more about her.

---          Looks like, I wonder why – I answer.

---          Don’t worry; they do that all the time.

---          So, have you been here for long time?

---          Yes, I work here; I’ve been in India for last six months.

---          In Varanasi?

---          No, I’m here because I’m taking a break, but I’m coming back to work now. What about you?

---          Travelling around the country, I started a couple of days ago. And I’ll be here for three months.

---          Cool.

  Then, suddenly, the amount of Indian who were listening our conversation very interested, stop paying attention to us and start a rushing walk to different directions. That’s the sign that our train has arrived, delayed, as expected.

---          My car is over there, see you around, have a nice trip – She says to me while she walks to the opposite direction where my car is. Going to an upper class of the train.

---          Likewise - I tell her.

  And she disappears into the crowd. I go to my economic lowest class car of the train, wishing that her words become true, and I see her around later.

  That’s the beginning of a longer story that, maybe, I will tell someday.