Remember when we were
Like sticks
Rattling in the wind,
Bouncing around schools,
Homes, cinemas and, later,
Pubs.
So vulnerable
With crap hair
And cheap clothes,
Head down
Ashamed of everything –
Nobody cared yet
Nobody wanted us to win.
Those were
The best years of our lives,
They were,
And, luckily,
We won’t ever
Have to live them again.
Bogdan Tiganov
Stern, stiff and standoffish
Hard and dismissive
Pained and dissatisfied
But people expect things
All the time
A certain flexibility
A way in
We grow into these trees
Bolted to our roots
And everything is water
It takes a certain type
Your type
To walk away
From your sons
And don’t look back
Stone-faced
In the present
Asleep on the sofa
Drunk
Bogdan Tiganov
Half-answered prayers
Ghosted messages
Interest lost
Immediately
Superficial relationships
Contrived social media lives
Wannabes, credit cards
Paycheque to paycheque
Anxious corporate robots
Depressed
Flicking through Netflix
Spotify, Amazon, eBay
Living inside six glowing inches
Of banal fantasies
Bogdan Tiganov
Was in 1999 for my 18th birthday
He took me to the pub
Bought me a Guinness and said
Now you can drink
I used to be in awe
Of his grizzled face, cold eyes
And stern handshake –
I’d laugh nervously
Yes, dad,
I thought I had to please
To be loved
Ha. Ha.
Life is like that is it not
Nonsensical and shitty
Bogdan Tiganov
Wednesdays I shut my windows –
All of them –
To not hear the caretakers
Mow the lawn,
Trim the bushes
Or whistle.
I feel a little guilty but, honestly,
The noise gives me
Headache.
Bogdan Tiganov
After twenty years
Hank no longer seems as tough
or as wise – just a little put on,
and repetitive.
I’ve seen too much money
come and go, too many loved ones
die. Feed the machine,
nothing else.
I’m far too fucking jaded now,
old and tired of everything.
Even the contrived ugly truths
of Buk bore me.
Bogdan Tiganov
Bored, board some train of thought,
destination unannounced. Reality
creaks across TV backwards,
competing with, out in parking lots,
lots and lots of harlots. The phone rings;
pick up; some dumb whore
screeching in my ear I must buy more.
Hang up, sure as hung up I am
on combing through the honey of yet
a bit more money. Ask myself,
gazing out the window at birds
jerk worms from the grass: That phone
on the TV, inside me, nextdoor to insanity
or some other not quite reality
passing now by? Onto the
screen leaps a guy
training on me a gun.
This a problem, evil about to be begun,
or the answer to nothing better to do?
Recall then for a bit of peace and quiet
I am so long overdue. Snap in the horse’s mouth
a bit like the buy the whore hot to sell.
Cramming everyone, even a bored me,
onto this winding train
huffing and puffing straight to hell.
Why, oh why, if our lot be suffering,
must it be a lot of suffering?
And the dumb whore turns to me,
into myself dumbly turning.
Willie Smith
Owen Winn
The people shook
Death wipes his mouth
Your mortgage
Kids and car lease
Darkness everlasting
Overtime and
Weekends
Kissing the boss’s
Behind
Lock the doors
Silent dogs
Drinking.
Bogdan Tiganov
Dad, cut himself out
of every photograph
so one day I would forget him
Dad, cradling me as a baby
Dad, holding a tennis racquet
Dad, playing football in the park
Dad, watching Jackie Chan movies
Dad, who turned his back on me
A stone is always a stone
and my dad’s dead
Bogdan Tiganov
aiurea press 