Desperate Lies Told By Latvian Lovers

Love happened and everyone got the wrong idea
Love was a substance that smelled okay
Love invaded our privacy and we complained
Love forced us to make concessions, after which we got angry
God is love, they say
Love is an illusion
Or a projection
Or a strategy
Or possibly a misnomer

Say it!
I love you.
Really? what does it mean?
What do you mean what does it mean?
I mean what does it mean to you?
It means everything to me, and also nothing.
So to you, love is nothing.
Yes, but in the best possible sense.
In other words, you want to have sex.
Only because I love you.

Love in Latvia, apparently, runs rampant
Making love is as common as making tea
Making money is next to impossible
Hence very few Latvians can afford to pay for love
But then there is no need
Everyone in Latvia loves everybody else
Latvian girls learn the intricacies of love in school
Latvian boys learn how to make tea, as well as Baltic bath salts

In Latvia, all life is lateral in nature
Which means that all interstices when accumulated in imaginary space result in a vector whose sum is zero
Which is another way of saying that everything in Latvia is both very familiar and completely alien
Love minus zero
Walking around is not safe, as every street leads to a kind of madness
In the style of a persistently recurring daydream
Often in the form of love
Followed inevitably by tea

And it's certainly true that a cup of tea can help keep the demons at bay.
A cup in the morning and it's almost possible to tolerate the waking state
Yes, but for how many fucking hours?
Fortunately, there is love
And rumors of Latvian gypsies who, in the act of love, can fortell the future
Enabling dead men to smile and go on with the rest of lives
As if none of this had ever happened.

Care for a cup of tea?
I daren't.
A kiss, then?
I can't promise anything.
At least promise me that you'll finish your tea.
In bed? With a monster? You expect me to sip tea as if we were in Surrey, in the spring, with
a spot of nostalgia in my Nordic skull to ease the pain? As if this thing between us has a future?

As if you had a future.
You're saying I don't?
Perhaps all I'm saying is that your concept of time is faulty.
Which, for a Latvian harlot, is saying a lot.
I'm only telling you what you don't want to hear.
If we were in Japan, we would have already missed the train.
There will be others.
Maybe in your bizarre world. Not in mine.
I love you when you talk like this.
Please don't say that.
Why not?
If I tell you, will you stop loving me?
You might as well ask the wind to stop blowing.
Which I frequently do, owing to the fact that I hate the wind
You're a man without a soul, but at least that's not your worst quality


It is probably a mistake to confuse the lovers we've had with the lost love we find it advantageous to pretend to have suffered. Love, let us be frank, was rarely if ever the goal.
Besides, love is never lost. It is merely repositioned to become a more effective tool in the complex arrangements we compulsively make in order to avoid the real issue.
Whatever that may be?
Still, where is the deception?
All of this is nothing more than the life of commerce among the maniacs, the fictive transliterastions of self-absorbed insomniacs, the non-linear accusations of phantom poets.
So go ahead, lie if you must, but, for god's sake, do it well!