Howard Firkin
(Warning: some of the nuances of a long evening’s splav conversation may not have been captured in the following fourteen lines.)
It isn’t Paris and it isn’t Prague.
It isn’t beautiful. Nobody, you
don’t fall in love with Belgrade, you just curse
its stupidness, its nothing making sense,
until, one day, you find you haven’t left.
One day you find yourself explaining it
to someone just like you, confused because
the bars, the restaurants, the clubs aren’t better
but they’re here. And nowhere else is here
because they don’t know Belgrade. No one does.
Do you use whores? It’s not a whore. Belgrade
would starve! New York, Berlin, they’d do all right,
but we could sell it free and not get laid.
But we’d be out there—working—every night.
It isn’t beautiful. Nobody, you
don’t fall in love with Belgrade, you just curse
its stupidness, its nothing making sense,
until, one day, you find you haven’t left.
One day you find yourself explaining it
to someone just like you, confused because
the bars, the restaurants, the clubs aren’t better
but they’re here. And nowhere else is here
because they don’t know Belgrade. No one does.
Do you use whores? It’s not a whore. Belgrade
would starve! New York, Berlin, they’d do all right,
but we could sell it free and not get laid.
But we’d be out there—working—every night.
