I don’t forge words
to crash and break like waves.
I don’t forge words
that Aškerc might have shaped,
nor those the canon keeps polished
for safer generations.

I am burdened by a culture
that burns through every screen,
by an air that shifts its scent
each dawn—
a world forever buffering.

Each day, a thousand truths arrive,
their headlines blooming, fading.
I live among concrete trees;
even wonder’s gone synthetic.

What I know
reshapes itself by noon—
ideas molt their meaning,
language sheds its skin.

And when I write what feels real,
a critic appears to inform me:
he knows better than I
what I meant to mean.
He swears I’m a prisoner
of some misguided heaven—
and of course,
he was born to say so.

And because it’s on the Internet,
I believe.

Tomaž Jevšenak