s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Life Out of Balance
Matija Pavicevic & Nadja Kastratovic

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Life Out of Balance

sleeping pills and nightmares
and whiskey and beer and xanax
and more xanax, and a guilty conscience,
and anxiety, and depression
and girls, and the girl,
and our non-existent future, and the alignment of the stars,
and the possibility of failure, and the ever-present aura of death,
and the ever-present fear of the latter,
and this idiotic country, and my worthless passport,
and deadlines, and alarms, and appointments and meetings,
and a lack of time, and a lack of money and self-confidence,
and a desire for something bigger, and a fear of something bigger,
and my fear of this, and my fear of that,
and mind-numbing social networks, and my love/hate relationship with pornhub,
and real literature, and phony, lazy literature,
and this non-existent revolution, and the revolution that could have been,
and social anxiety, and my stage fright
fuck my stage fright,
and literary evenings, and poetry readings,
and the reading of my own poetry, and sadness,
some kind of inexplicable sadness,
and death in my family, and my broken jaw,
and a broken fist, and unemployment,
and the prospect of no more income,
and the reality of no more income,
and drunk driving on curvy roads,
and events you can’t change, and words
that are forever etched onto the page, or
into her mind,
and words you have failed to say,
so you just hoped she knew,
and beautiful eyes that you love, but
that you never treated the way you should have,
and eyes that you pretend not to notice, yet
you think about them often,
and I don’t know if I already mentioned sadness,
but the theater as well, and art
and something that resembles art
and true values and true emotions,
and lies, and men of action, and princesses,
and the fact that they are all evil, they really are,
and that dream, yes, your dream,
the dream as well,
and the struggle, the constant struggle,
the constant war,
our great war that we are so clearly losing,
and somehow, it’s hard to fall asleep,
no matter how much you have to drink,
no matter how many pills you swallow,
and it’s truly hard to fall asleep,
however tired and tormented you might be,
and then, just then
it becomes too difficult to dream, because
you are no longer able to sleep,
and then this dream dies, and in turn so do you.

so we are all pretty much
dead,
but
for whom, all this time,
for whom do these
bells
truly toll?

Poem by Matija Pavicevic. Photographs by Nadja Kastratović

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Nadja Kastratović: “I was born in Montenegro and I’ve lived there most of my life. I spent my university years in Belgrade, Serbia. While living there, I started buying and using old analog cameras as a hobby. It was beautiful taking photos because Belgrade has a lot of what’s left from different periods, like socialist Yugoslavia. I am a Landscape architecture student, also interested in photography and illustration.”

Matija Pavicevic: “I was born in Belgrade. I don’t write for any blogs, I have never won any awards and don’t follow me on any social media platforms. I spent a good amount of my childhood in Berlin and Athens. However, I grew up metaphorically and literally in Belgrade, Serbia. I write poems, short stories and prose. I have done so since I was 15 years old and I will continue to do so until the day I disappear into thin air. My work has been published in various online literary magazines that, chances are, no one really reads. I am currently a student of Communications in Rome. Alas my first novel, The Morning Blues was published in Serbia, in Serbian, in 2019.”