Bướm Đen

Con thuyền ma của đời Gấu Cà Chớn
Chở khẳm hòm
Ra khơi
Vào con nước buổi chiều.

TODAY'S MENU

All we got, mister,
Is an empty bowl and a spoon
For you to slurp
Great mouthfuls of nothing,

And make it sound like
A thick, dark soup you're eating,
Steaming hot
Out of the empty bowl.

Thực Đơn Bữa Nay

Tất cả những gì chúng ta có,
Là một cái bát rỗng và một cái thìa
Dành cho Ngài,
Để có được những cú đợp lớn lao
Của… giả đỏ,
Hư vô,
Chẳng có gì
[Bắc Kít gọi là ăn bánh vẽ]

Và cứ làm như là đang ăn thực
Một tô cháo gà Ngã Sáu Nguyễn Tri Phương
Cháo cá, cháo bầu dục…  Chợ Cũ
Hơi nóng của cháo tỏa ra làm mù mắt
Từ một cái bát rỗng không
Mang từ Hà Lội vô
Trong ba lô anh Sài.            

None of the willed imagination of the professionals. No themes, developments, construction, or method. On the contrary, only the imagination that comes from the inability to conform.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       -HENRI MICHAUX

Đếch có thứ tưởng tượng tới chỉ, thần sầu, của 1 tên làm thơ nhà nghề.
Đếch cần đề tài, phát triển, kết cấu, hay phương pháp.
Ngược lại, chỉ là tưởng tượng, tới, từ cái không làm sao phù hợp

1 dream of immense cosmologies, sagas and epics reduced to the dimension of an epigram.
                                                                                                                              -ITALO CALVINO

Tớ mơ những vũ trụ học bao la, những “xa ga”, những sử thi, co rúm lại, và trở thành cái nấm vú của em tớ [epigram: 1 câu thơ trào phúng, 1 lời nói dí dỏm, 1 bi khúc, 1 lời khắc trên mộ, hay một bài hát…] 

 Writing a prose poem is a bit like trying to catch a fly in a dark room. The fly probably isn't even there, the fly is inside your head; still, you keep tripping over and bumping into things while in hot pursuit. The prose poem is a burst of language following a collision with a large piece of furniture.
    So, why do it? What is the attraction of such a seemingly idiotic undertaking?
    In my own case, the so-called prose poems I wrote were the results of my attempt to get away from myself. To be free of my own imagination and my own brain, to embark on an adventure of unforeseeable consequences, continues to be my great dream.
    Others pray to God; I pray to chance to show me the way out of this prison I call myself.
    A quick, unpremeditated scribble and the cell door opens at times. I have never had any idea how I accomplished what I accomplished. In such writing intuition rules. One depends on one's own literary savvy to make the right moves and to recognize the presence of a poem. For me, the prose poem is a pure literary creation, the monster child of two incompatible strategies, the lyric and the narrative. On one hand, there's the lyric's wish to make the time stop around an image, and on the other hand, one wants to tell a little story.
    The aim, as in a poem written in lines, is to arouse in the reader an unconquerable desire to reread what he or she has just read. In other words, it may look like prose, but it acts like a poem. The second, the third, and the fiftieth reading will be even better. You'll never get tired of me, it promises. If you don't believe what I say, read some of Rimbaud's Illuminations or Russell Edson's finest poems. They are inexhaustible.
    It's pointless to attempt to give guidelines for what is really the product of the free imagination, but I can say the following:
    The secret of the prose poem lies in its economy and surprise. It must dazzle, and it must also have a lightness of touch. I regard the comic spirit as its true Muse. Playful and irreverent treatment of every subject is usually the custom. In order to free poetry of its mannerism and tics, the prose poem must not take itself too seriously. Impossible to write, illegitimate in the view of so many poets and critics, it must remain a pariah and an object of ridicule to survive.

Charles Simic: The Life of Images, Selected Prose

From Verse 13, no. 1 (1996): 7-8, written for the special issue on prose poetry

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