Paradise Motel by Charles Simic

Simic's poems generally rely more on image and perspective than on music and rhythm. He wants you to feel off-balance reading his work. His language is straightforward--you won't see a glistening vocabulary. I read Paradise Motel as a brutally honest commentary on how we relate to war and suffering.


Paradise Motel

Millions were dead; everybody was innocent.
I stayed in my room. The President
Spoke of war as of a magic love potion.
My eyes were opened in astonishment.
In a mirror my face appeared to me
Like a twice-canceled postage stamp.

I lived well, but life was awful.
there were so many soldiers that day,
So many refugees crowding the roads.
Naturally, they all vanished
With a touch of the hand.
History licked the corners of its bloody mouth.

On the pay channel, a man and a woman
Were trading hungry kisses and tearing off
Each other's clothes while I looked on
With the sound off and the room dark
Except for the screen where the color
Had too much red in it, too much pink.

Charles Simic was born on May 9, 1938, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he had a traumatic childhood during World War II. In 1953 he emigrated from Yugoslavia with his mother and brother to join his father in the United States. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990.