My Shin

Posted by Otto Robba in Poetry on 20. Oct, 2009 | No Comments

You race to catch the last bus home
And you are just a minute too late.
Oh, “What a shame!” you cry,
But you were luck no goose came to pry!

We go swimming around grey blocks,
Will we drown or keep our hands steady?
Whatever it is, my sail is at the ready.

Will they pull you from the ocean
but just a minute too late?
When I make you a party
What will we celebrate?
That you are celibate?

Daymare

Posted by Otto Robba in Poetry on 17. Oct, 2009 | No Comments

You are like a dream that won’t go away,
Even when my eyes are closed
and as the pendulum sways,
I look up and can’t really say…

Was it a mistake all along,
Was it a lie, was it wrong?
Was it real or was it fake?
Answer me, for christ’s sake!

Intangible nightmare trapping daydream,
Things are not what they seem, oh,
Mary-Go-Round, turn turn turn around
Because you won’t go away
But when I ask, you won’t stay.
And so I said and so I walk astray-
Thoughts you would never betray.
If you ever loved me you just have to say.

Is Anybody There?

Posted by Otto Robba in Prose on 10. Oct, 2009 | No Comments

If we know it is all an illusion, why do we believe in magic? It is because we want to. Maybe it is a way to see the world through a different point of view, one that allows a sliver of fantasy to permeate the air and make us wonder “How did he do that?”. Maybe we are so appalled by our own frail and fallible existence that we want to believe there is something… more, something magical.

When you experience magic, you are not truly witnessing an illusion but a different thing altogether. You are staring death in the face and saying that you will live through it, you are telling yourself that loved ones that have passed away are still with you, you are telling yourself that there is, simple as that, magic.
After taking a look at life can we really say that there is no magic out there?

Sometimes life presents to us strangers that we will hate only to love after and then hate again, or maybe it will introduce us to people we seem to think are shallow only to find that, in reality, they are like us, all too human and too afraid, maybe they need to see more magic, maybe they need to witness a bit of the wonder of the illusion and laugh a little at life – and death. To understand that we are not a single piece on a lone puzzle but all part of an intricate and elaborate chain, we are the links to our past and, as the Iroquois would have it, we are the ones who must attend our children’s land until they can attend that of their own kids.

We are not a single person. We are young, we are old, we embrace the arcane and the cutting-edge. We are naive and jaded, we live by contradictions trying to find home, trying to give life meaning, trying to find for ourselves the right trick so that one might look back in life with no regrets. We will cry, we will laugh, we will change opinions, we will sway – some more, some less – as life whims it. And as those before us have it, so will we, as will those that come after us.

Maybe I’m a silly bugger for knowingly embracing the magic act but I’ll be damned if life isn’t all about making connections or rather, the human connection. At the end of the day, when asking myself to an empty room “Is Anybody There?”, I know that no answer will come because the room is empty and all it can tell me is that there is no such things as ghosts and magic. But if I shout it through my window… an angry neighbor will most definitely reply and we will both know we are not alone and that our actions… they carry on like ripples on a lake.
Seeing the power every choice we make carries, can anyone really say that there is no such thing as magic?

King of the Hill

Posted by Otto Robba in Poetry on 02. Oct, 2009 | No Comments

It is a giant empty playground
With no playmates to be found
Oh, everyone is so afraid
They grab their nannies and maids!

Cry-babies, watch me sail
As a pirate atop the rail!
Climbing the jungle-bar
Guiding myself by a single star.

Because the sun is shining and we are still young,
So I’d rather go out, play and sing a silly song
than stay locked in my own little mind
Where not even myself I can find!

The world is my playground, it is my sandbox
I might not be the ‘populi’ but I have a ‘vox’!
I only break that which I can repair so,
See my works, ye mighty and despair!

Last Race of the Pariah

Posted by Otto Robba in Poetry on 29. Sep, 2009 | No Comments

“Some days are better than the others”
Cries the mom and the brother.
To sacrifice all that we desire makes no sense
Numbed life is hell, I want it intense!

Excused as we all may be
From our sins – that never belonged to me -
People seek us to explain
“Why can’t you yourself restrain?”

I crawl my way uphill, out of this black hole,
Hoping to come out whole.
Meanwhile nobody is betting on me
Even thought the future they can’t see.