the streets are full of hours
the hours filled with a labyrinth song
our faces risk a strange engulfing
we are so benevolent with lying to ourselves
my love has a dervish spin,
my mind is on a nightwatch
down the rabbit hole
so loud the world its disparate pulses,
unbearable conundrums

we should learn more from tears
what if my love is the worm
inside the apple
what if your love is oblivious
like an empty womb

all I have is this feeling
like a spine. of course
certainty is not in fact possible
especially on untouched
lips

something twinkles
tingles quivers
in warm hands
in stuck feet
something moves
an eyebrow or a lip
the wavelength of hope
or void
we need the world
we need each other
badly

we invent sinking
swimming & drowning
in this density
we face adversity and fear
how we can
dancers dream
with their feet
mourners dream
with rivers
haters dream
in the silence of tombs

we go outside of ourselves
to find the world
inside
there is creativity
in healing

what if everyday
is a poem
in this fluid
called life

where the air has no memory
for the mountains to keep growing
I welcome the arrival of the birds,
the promise of fresh myths
the seduction is the constancy of the heartbeat, for me
the intensity of dreams stronger than ever
dreams that willingly transmute themselves  into reality

I welcome those walking the path of love
now that I finally start to see the unseen of the horizon
no more endings confused with beginnings
this is the secret garden where my heart
is growing wiser bolder deeper even more eager
to surrender herself to the sweet craziness of the world
to the thoughtfulness of mornings
anew

there in the land of the wind
the grass would like to be as tall as you
the salt of the earth would be ringing,
resonant with the laughter of tears
perhaps everything we are
has to conceive a symbolic death
to deliver ourselves

in the embryo of words there is
such a gentleness, a true prophecy:
language would begin to forget itself
we meet in this language without words
like two beings from the end of the world

with carnivorous eyes without a center
he's secretly moulding the void from behind
too many interrupted gestures
he's afraid we're going to laugh at his naked ****
he has sensitive dreams and nervous fingertips
such is the pain not kidding that he starts misspelling
his name
passionate like a colt, like a murderous silence
he doesn't mind he is a fragment
waiting to be taken somewhere
beyond
to an unknown love

silence was improvising in my eyes
in this tender fog between one moment
and this moment
and I could see the old love approaching
to invade me
to intoxicate me
with its hypnotic violence
this love like a fossilized wood in their gaze
came to visit me
again
with so many faces
so many whispers
it was as if angels had descended
on the barren land and
with their unthought hands
were tenderly carressing
the old bones unsung
what else could have I done
than
open my eyes and dream
the palimpsest of forgotten dreams
forged in the greatest intensity
of all the fleeting moments
in which
they blinked

(I need to shelter my heart from
the silence of decaying leaves
from the violence of life destroying
itself)

this manic song
of my feet with your feet
the quest for our names
our bodies without fence
my fingerprints like unburnt stories
on your skin
I have no alibi
you invented my desire

the whale-song of
my shoulder with your shoulder
I'm falling apart in your palms:
I invented your desire
and you have no excuse -
you hold down the night
for the next you, the new me
the unforeseen smile
at the end of the day

this time was that time, perhaps
your fingers smell of orange peels, of Babel
I didn't  dream of a white Christmas
Alexa played december songs
that pierced through my heart,
a distant thunder she became,
the countdown of a little miracle.
a day to lighten up the ancient symbols
to keep you close in innocently round
tears

the rawness of things suspended in the air
an invisible hand pushes the hours through us into the compost and delight of memory
I don't have words for tomorrow, only your name today and warm tears.  I was born into a dead language so
I have this detector for the silence of windows, it sneaks in my lungs
pain is offline, the dark swallows itself
no wonder last night I dreamt a girl in a blue kimono
-you are my hiroshima, I breath like a prehistoric fish-
she was smiling to something only she could see.
love, this prehistoric wonder,
a fragile skin of this weary world

For a year now
the cassette tape
has been played
over and over again.

We wake up
and with a swig
of loss
of death
and some tears
we swallow a pill of hope.

We follow a path
winding back and forth like a children’s swing –
long
and exhausting,
a path we know for sure
will end in a fall into
the mud of death.

Many times
we tried
to sew up the holes
that were pierced in our hearts
then we realized
our hearts have become sieves.
The pebbles of death
the tears of sadness
and the heavy memories
are too big to leak out.

by Asmaa Dwaima

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

-Diamond Sutra, ca. fourth century CE

worlds are collapsing, rising; dictators exhale,
entangle the veins of the world
some ideas preserve salty streets like janitors of the dark
summer keeps the score of perfumed nights
I indulge in the womb of heat
wounds are retreating in sequestered spaces -
the seeds of the future.
there is a chill in the air, dread strikes near and far
light flows like the dance stuck in my bones
everywhere the pulse of time, dreaming

the rulers of time must be blindfolded
they invent voidless words, old eager hands
in this time without dimensions
in this space devoid of meaning
they delete their mothers from themselves
the warmth of bodies is imprisoned in anguish
the body invades the mind, and the mind replies,
it invades the body, an impossible conversation
thoughts are transitional landscapes
but thinking might rebell and fragment into a standstill
time filled my mind and stuffed my throat
to tighten the unthinkable pain
on days with thick blood and stagnant winds
no words to fill the void, the unbearable hopelessness
the letters got destroyed by the gastric acid
and so I became... the reflux of pain

those days - each a capsule
a miniature of an idea
or an emptied truth
your soft lips postponed
bitter fingers knock
on unheard doors
my blood unfolds myself
with wonder

I can't drag the shadow of
the afternoon light back
into its nest
into the bud of silence -
back to its muse

my dreams have caught
*time fever

In my arms - thought - my words
you are malleable wax, a diamond
that reveals itself. Light of the tunnel, you!
The pyramid catches hold of our hands.
We become transparent, we become translucent.
Alone. I come near you ascending from time's
shadow. Free, free from everything and alone.
Above the city - fiery halo -
bodies float void of fear. The future
becomes present, the present, hope.

Liviu Antonesei
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim

pain loves the present tense
it loves gravity so that the clouds
are turned into geological strata
sometimes I use my hands like an anaesthetic
between right and wrong the pain dillema:
to feel or not to feel (the unknown)
we discover clever remedies or illusions
quiet cannery in the storehouse of flesh

it comes in circles mixtures all kind of names
it has rythm texture electric blackness
each unshed tear an orb of contraction
compulsive excavation of the void inside
sometimes I feel I have canyons of salt in my heart
on the edges of safety so much to learn about terror

this pain is a blind Robinson on Hope island
(with his bare hands he sets pyres in his heart)
was it pain that invented this language, these holy wars?
love you, hate you, nonsense, can't stand it anymore
I know my father lied to me that he doesn't feel pain

bodies in pain can't dream the water slide of life
that might take us further away into the night of day
time to say thank you, say farewell,
love everything that simply is
it is time to

"Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as an escape."*

I feel like loving you today
like the wind through the willow trees
like broken pieces love their design
I would wear my glance
light as a feather
I would lean against the past
as a girl asking petals on her nails
"now he loves me,  now he loves me not"

I wonder how your love looks
when I'm boring
crazy with seriousness
or amnesic
of the burden of words

Today I feel like loving you
in the scent of freshly made
cherry jelly.
Do you know how to whisper
bedtime stories on my skin?

I think it was yesterday
I saw a beautiful man
on his way to freeing time
letting it roam
on forgotten paths of wonder
as if promising to make the most of himself
that very moment when it's time
to lose yourself

I feel like loving you today
like a mother forgetting her sorrow
like a spare lover
offering a shoulder as a butterfly nest
for your laughter
while you are dreaming yourself
in these words

today is a bitter day
words are broken windows
poetry refuses itself

people turn their faces from each other
no crossroads for the wounded
looking for their bodies full of warmth
I am alone with my fragile heart
too many objects of perpendicular desire
and no purpose intrinsic to our birth

it's a normal day
some are sharpening their minds
dress up their desire
to use me

today is just another day
the world is devouring its fragments
in the quietness
of hearts

I am ashamed that I am Spanish because of Franco
I am ashamed that I am French because of Algeria
I am ashamed that I am Algerian because of France
I am ashamed that I am American because of Bush, Iraq
and the bloodshed once among brothers
I am ashamed that I am Russian because of Stalin, Gulag
and recently of this and that
I am ashamed that I am German because of ******, clearly
(Pol *** appears more and more seldom in the lists, but one is horrified, humanly ashamed, remembering)
I am ashamed that I am English because of football etc
I am ashamed that I am Polish — only when I am not proud
I am ashamed that I am Turkish, but then there are Kurds...
I am ashamed that I am Czech and allowed myself to be stifled

(I am just as ashamed myself — some say, who feel
shame in its extremity and hide weapons in pantries, waiting for that moment
in which they wash away their shame with the blood of traditional enemies)
I am ashamed that I am Orthodox or Catholic and I wedge and split
the mountain on which Jesus bled — before others made even smaller
pieces out of his Golgotha below
I am ashamed that I am Indian because... well, it’s no matter
I am ashamed that being Macedonian I let the Greeks be even more
I am ashamed that I am Korean and one of Kim Ir Sen’s
I am ashamed that I am Korean no matter where, as long as
Kim Ir Sen’s Koreans remain
I am ashamed that I am Serbian, but... let me think
I am ashamed that I am Chinese because: ‘You’re Chinese?’
I am ashamed that I am Romanian because of Ceausescu, Dracula of course

and now, God, all these Romanians all over the world...
I am ashamed of my nation even when I am not ashamed
— but each of us seeks to forget something
I am ashamed because .......... [Everyone: fill in the blanks, write yours here!]

but you, but you — you, only you
you, whose nation filled the desolate earth with life and kindness
you are the man who begins the new day
today
with your first step

*Ioana Ieronim

" My grief says that I dared to love, that I allowed another to enter the very core of my being and find a home in my heart. Grief is akin to praise; it is how the soul recounts the depth to which someone has touched our lives. To love is to accept the rites of grief."
— Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

I can feel you at the end of thoughts  tonight
as I dance the forgotten rituals of touch
I  wanna be your perfect stranger till
the trance of darkness flickers
in your bottomless eyes

while fishing the stars
in your window
caught my skin eavesdropping
these rhythms: it must be some truth
I came along ahead the cortege of my selves
straight from
the blues of morning

tonight is simply beautiful,
I'm just saying,
heaven & hell
one metaphor away

so much silence in the promise of a new
green and the heart of the city is waltzing
with never the same sun and I wear
my skin tinged with the impossible words you never speak
with the thoughts that run away from you towards
an unseen horizon; when you are not careful something
moves up and down drawing an infinity column (the infinite is just the super flow of everything into everything else inventing space and time)
when you are not careful your smile is beautiful
I want you to plant your soul in the soil of
my palms, my feet, into the earth of my bones,
into the hearing of my heart
light is a journey, darkness a story to tell

She sits there
expert in silence
She listens
to my oceans
She unknots
daily tribulations
practice the art of patience
in undisguised grace
worded and unworded

She's the forgiver of darkness
simple in compassion
hearted in experience of
giving, waiting, wondering,
musing and learning
side by side

And I just love
her trainers
by the willow trees
the blue T-shirts
the yellow smile
matching the light
in her eyes

I love her like a mother
like a brother
like another human being
I just love
who she is.

no air in some dreams no naivities in my nails
there is space in my shade for all of you

my eyes bear spirals of tremors
I regain my trajectory, I feel like saying
the ink of childhood held in small bottles
my heart a bird on wire sometimes
I wear eau de merveilles for the wind
the essence of weeping beheld by
deep eyes raging to the open sea

I open my window to a door
a door to an oasis of bones that
sing lullabies to unborn mornings

passion is the mother of invention

I am sitting everywhere like a stone
struck by lightning
my nerves spinning their electricity
in new revolves
this vibration is transformation

of of of of
something into anything else
syntax into the golden ratio
fingerprints into enlightened wax
lungs into vertical love
craving into silence
desire into root
immanence into
transcendence and
the other way round
projection into
introspection
nihilism into redeeemed
despair
music into a theorem
of sunrise
hatred into pain
pain into
violet mourning
bread into singing
oxes' thirst into the art
of the earth
secrets into tangible
translucent pictures
rivers into the dreams
of the sky

I into the other I
in you and him
and them
in the mycellium
of syntaxes, synapses
enchanted
ephiteliums
into a choir of selves
in love's eyes

rainy days like these
I fill them up with
tenderness,
visions of the unknown
like lymphatic vessels
roaming the world
just to keep myself
from not knowing
that even the gods are weeping
or hidding their cries
in unwritten stories
when the pain is so
so so so so so
alive

what a blessing
what a chance
what an accident
a wonder:
the horizon itself is in
transition
to something other
than the blue speed
of the earth

Oh Lord, nourish me not with love but with the desire
for love. IBN ‘ARABÎ

Not only the thirsty seek the water,
the water as well seeks the thirsty. RÛMÎ

Ecstasy is a flame which springs up in the secret heart,
and appears out of longing. PAUL NWYIA

Open your hidden eyes and return to the root of the root
of your own self. RÛMÎ

The inner truth of desire is that it is a restive motion in
the heart in search of God. AL-QUSHAYRÎ

excerpts from "Travelling the Path Of Love  Sayings of Sufi Masters"

I
Again the larkspur,
Heavenly blue in my garden.
They, at least, unchanged.

II
How have I hurt you?
You look at me with pale eyes,
But these are my tears.

III
Morning and evening--
Yet for us once long ago
Was no division.

IV
I hear many words.
Set an hour when I may come
Or remain silent.

V
In the ghostly dawn
I write new words for your ears--
Even now you sleep.

VI
This then is morning.
Have you no comfort for me
Cold-colored flowers?

VII
My eyes are weary
Following you everywhere.
Short, oh short, the days!

VIII
When the flower falls
The leaf is no more cherished.
Every day I fear.

IX
Even when you smile
Sorrow is behind your eyes.
Pity me, therefore.

X
Laugh--it is nothing.
To others you may seem gay,
I watch with grieved eyes.

XI
Take it, this white rose.
Stems of roses do not bleed;
Your fingers are safe.

XII
As a river-wind
Hurling clouds at a bright moon,
So am I to you.

XIII
Watching the iris,
The faint and fragile petals--
How am I worthy?

XIV
Down a red river
I drift in a broken skiff.
Are you then so brave?

XV
Night lies beside me
Chaste and cold as a sharp sword.
It and I alone.

XVI
Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.

XVII
Foolish so to grieve,
Autumn has its colored leaves--
But before they turn?

XVIII
Afterwards I think:
Poppies bloom when it thunders.
Is this not enough?

XIX
Love is a game--yes?
I think it is a drowning:
Black willows and stars.

**
When the aster fades
The creeper flaunts in crimson.
Always another!

XXI
Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.

XXII
A cloud of lilies,
Or else you walk before me.
Who could see clearly?

XXIII
Sweet smell of wet flowers
Over an evening garden.
Your portrait, perhaps?

XXIV
Staying in my room,
I thought of the new Spring leaves.
That day was happy.

There flows between us on the terrace
an underwater light that distorts
the profile of the hills and even your face.
Every gesture of yours, cut from you,
looms on an elusive background; enters without wake,
and vanishes, in the midst of what drowns
every furrow, and closes over your passage:
you here, with me, in this air that descends
to seal
the torpor of boulders.
And I flow
into the power that weighs around me,
into the spell of no longer recognising
anything of myself beyond myself; if I only
raise my arm, I perform the action
otherwise, a crystal is shattered there,
its memory pallid forgotten, and already
the gesture no longer belongs to me;
if I speak, I hear this voice astonished,
descend to its remotest scale,
or die in the unsupportive air.

In such moments that resist to the last
dissolution of day
bewilderment endures: then a gust
rouses the valleys in frenetic
motion, draws from the leaves a ringing
sound that disperses
through fleeting smoke, and first light
outlines the dockyards.

…words
fall weightless between us. I look at you
in the soft reverberation. I do not know
if I know you; I know I was never as divided
from you as now in this late
return. A few moments have consumed
us whole: except two faces, two
strained masks, etched
in a smile.

**Eugenio Montale

your eyes hot like a bullet
mine engulfed by the equinox &
the silences I walked away from
we are two or more
two people who shout at each other letters
that have never touched any alphabet
who throw beautiful ideas to be caught by twilight
the hour is always unknown
as if we watch each other's destiny
what comes next only the oracle of Delphi knows
or the roots of entropy maybe
I keep some thoughts in the straitjacket

we guard bridges, ancient castles in the sky
we guard the world not to turn into a casket without music
who invented this question mark
that we owe each other happiness
I wonder if the trees have unspoken meanings
do they turn overnight into telescopes to quest
the loneliness of stars, as we do

I might turn into a shadow
blinded by darkness
we draw uncanny shapes,
everything a circle can endure
with our mouths full of pebbles

you wear my skin as a coat
in the morning light
storehouses of tears
bridge my thoughts
of you
what is this je ne sais pas
biology, art artefact,
genocide of reason?
politics of satisfaction?
yes and no and maybe:
life playing a vitality game
with itself

there is a cosmic spin for
unborn thoughts, gestures,
meanings.
a house full of empty things,
the past. for non-believers.
****** traces on my skin
left by the wind, the sea, the fields
a tapestry of dread cause silence
was a cathartic violence

sit next to me and we'll watch
the elusive rhythm of gravity
pulling our cells in the same direction
to a new species of desire
unabridged

My curves are not mad.
Henri Matisse, *Jazz

when silence gives away its name
birds become electric
darkness is no more a story
in their wooden beaks
I stay at the beginning of thought,
decelerate reality
again and again
bread, pain, blindness
truth visits me in my dreams
sometimes
between desire & dying
shortcuts, blind alleys
Shangri-La and Valhalla
Nirvana & the hunting ground
Guadalupe
untitled self-portraits
fast heights
blinds & shutters
Spinoza's abyss
the chasm of reason
Kant's please mind the gap
pits of harmony
barren grounds
Prigogine's broken circle
lost aesthetic qualities
and the bit moves on

when silence is an unfinished canvas
waters, faces make an offering
and their names grow
when I am confused with the possibility
of the sea level
then I know where
my love
is

splitting every single second
is beauty
unadorned
could I remove the decimal point
from my dying breath
?

this endless procession of luminous shapes of darknes,
of blindind lights full of dark stories passing through
everything my mind can envision
thoughts slowly growing like trees with imaginary roots
to dygest to recycle the unbearably bearable
a true psychic cosmology cause life creates
by destroying, destroys by creating
I need to examine my dreams, not the alphabet of dreaming
-symbolic transformation, not equation-
the terror to be so alive in an unresponsive world
it is pain that turns my thoughts into wax figures
I want to deny that words have a heart of stone cause they might deny their nature
in the beginning was the word, or the emotional field, the primeval soup of vibrations
you are not what you know, you are not what you perceive, you are the one to be felt and let go of
we are all that is unbearably bearable

"Here comes the shame."

don't bury me inside your distorted womb
don't leave me outside
to watch the ebb and flood of it
they've stolen everything for me
I was there first, your womb is mine
I dare face the sludgy mornings as you like it
I'm on this vigil: seize the women-wombs
maybe some day I'll be able to honestly
forgive my grunge fists
push, smash, kick the terrible fortress
each of them: you've expunged me
I had to **** the dawn for me
to keep you alive
keep smiling obliterating
the fresh growling
keep myself busy with fear
for you to have clean sheets
in the long winter nights
I'll take it down on you:
look at these secret men

what I cannot feel doesn't exist
they don't exist when I frown my lips
your fat womb doesn't exist
when I grind my teeth

only her can send you under
way behind you
naked

"Daddy! Look at me! Grrr!"
I'll get even
look at them:
unrecognized cocoon-women

only them can pull you under
far behind the level of the seed

it is still tomorrow
make more room for the  past
into the future
the rhythm of our time is in
the narrative perhaps

I was too often said to be
crazy like one grandma
not odd enough I’ve always felt
like being born out of  my papa -
two knives in the same sheath
cause papa Zeus was devouring his child

so one day came when
I was drowning  in my blood
-confessing can be hard and bitter-
crooked with incessant need to love
I let each morning scream
acts of imagination and lonesome tears were
craving for some tender understanding
terror instead of midnight dreams
I was a beggar  burdened with awe

(all I ever wanted was You – mother,
you-father,
you-brother,
you-lover,
you-friend&foe;
you-the Other)

now if you think words are just words
you’re sooooo mistaken
living creatures they are
breeding selfhood
torching the shadows cast by feelings
in intensity

thus I took refuge in the future
-the deserted island of our best illusions-
enclosed myself in a dream
against the movements of pain
dismantling, maddening

it's only now that I can speak about myself
in the third person
"wo Es war, soll Ich werden"
so let the light explode in the windshield
it doesn’t matter where I’m heading
as long as I’m a lullaby
and You’re singing with me

don't ask how I am
I might confess with riven words
I am trying out dances for
one thousand and one nights
like a Scheherazade of unforseen
whispers

the breath of history in unknown bodies
intoxicate my sight I might say
it chokes me with a mystified light
I have to learn how to breath my own life
it's easy to confuse the absent with the real
the incorporation of dread, hidden feelings
and unspoken truths a subtle tyranny
no body carried my body in a mind

I want to spend my life writing love stories I will
forget by midnight and rewrite with laughter

between generations a subtle struggle cause there isn't still
enough space inside for the life of one's boundaries
it's either you or me to suffer but everybody is OK
we smile at each other, we appreciate each other

unbearable life colonizes the body with unbearable silence, signs without symbols but symptoms, drives and confiscated stories
unreachable bodies woven together by force in the fabric of illusion
cast a dimming shadow like the melancholy of an echo heard
by no body

longing creates canyons
a row of well behaved days
a new physiognomy for metaphors
the night has paused
no semiotic skin between me and my lover
ecoutez-moi
listen to the spaceless desire
this woman lost in me
my womb chimes, utopia
Unlimited

unseen the trees capture the clouds
moss captures the fog of oceans
roots store the sky deep into the earth
even dreams have their cycle
words capture unseen chemicals
is it in my eyes or in your eyes
the rain that grows discourses
of fire?

spring will come
when the wind is young
and the harvest of hopes
still awaits for the unspoken

i am sitting at the funeral of my heart
while it is so busy to bloom
into the silence of stones

what dares disturb the illusion of hours without strife,
without venom, without height
the air is full of anice, things ocupy their prescribed places
in this compulsory life
when I was falling they said it wouldn't hurt
but my dreams were forbidden summers,
my hands were cracked by smiling
the energy of the verb to be intense while
I fell into this dialect of silence,
me and the  ghostly caress of a lonely woman

You-the night-the day
she-the day-the night,
or just the fair pulse
somewhere in the air the hollow howl

She feels it in her bones. Yes. She feels
whatever shall be: a blinding ambiguity
The morning recycles dreams.
laundry crushed on the river stones
women are crying and washing
Oh, she wishes to air the night of your body,
to pull you out of your death.

The shadowy flowing of now
pierces her eyelids with your cellophane smile
her cells rustling: you-you-you
even screaming like a yo-yo
to be heard backwards
till the Big Bang

a wheat field
love
even death
one cannot speak about
without enormous risks

and yet about freedom
freedom -

save our souls!

Mariana Codrut
translated by Adam J. Sorkin  and Radu Andriescu

the walls have ears, they used to say
these walls are full of screams of declamation
of a burning stream of bodies with parfumed names
love confused diffused in this internal flight
being chased while chasing unrecognizable the face of truth for now
the warmness the softness of bodies so promising so alluring
the illusion, a fleeting connection so powerful that there is no one
to guard the depth of this edge, me and the anti-me
this disconnection sings lullabies to my zest for life
the right vision comes to those who wait
it is unbearable at first, cause you are not used to your
eyes seeing through the water, let alone the abyssal depth of blood

this could be a poem I could have written if I were you but
the most strange of it all is that I am this you and the other you
luckily the light is untraslatable and you can see it too

the dawn collapses sometimes under its own weight while
worlds of gestures are well preserved under the eyelids,
hardly random grammars, addiction to illusions,
the space of grace, the space for violence misued
muted tempos in the fragility of thoughts
we know many words but not the right language to talk to each other,
the vocabulary of hurt exploded inside narrow spaces,  the temple of skin empty
recycle bins full of our selves
we confuse the world with the contours of our pain

untitled the day sometimes
when love has left behind the birth of language

ask your blood
your limbs, your breathing feet
what Poetry is -
a phylogenetic anomaly
in light’s discontinuity

or just…
the strange yearning of hematopoiesis

ask the silence in your lungs
the bursting DNA, reinterpreted
how it allures memory inside your bones
how it treads conventions of sleep
with the weight of a sigh

if you ask me
what Poetry is
I’d say: breath calligraphy
a winged dream of depth
on enchanted retina
the bitter-sweet art of airy harmony

ask your hands
what Poetry is
perhaps they’ll take a moment
to bloom

He offered me a leaf like a hand with fingers.
I offered him a hand like a leaf with teeth.
He offered me a branch like an arm.
I offered him my arm like a branch.
He tipped his trunk towards me
like a shoulder.
I tipped my shoulder to him
like a knotted trunk.
I could hear his sap quicken, beating
like blood.
He could hear my blood slacken like rising sap.
I passed through him.
He passed through me.
I remained a solitary tree.
He
a solitary man.

*Nichita Stanescu

as I am trying to learn as much as I can
from the self of trees, wind, of bees and birds
of the unlanguaged child I still am, from
wise men and women through the arch of time
I am well aware that we can keep each other captive
inside the machinery of make-believe that makes lonely
bodies & sunsets bearable
I can't help feeling I am just this,
a vagabond in such a deep mystery

feelings
like lizards

like she-wolves
with their eyes of ember
in the dark

motion arrested
waiting for the mind to reach
its hypnotic body

**Ioana Ieronim