Daisies in a garden full of weeds
Have you ever seen such an ugly thing?
Daisies may look like flowers
But look how they steal our sunlight
Look how they steal our soil
They are not flowers
They are infiltrators


This is a garden full of weeds
This land belongs to us
Now look at those selfish Daisies
Showing off their ugliness beneath our sunlight
Wasting the nutrients in our soil
Look at how they taint our community
Look at how they defile our home

We are incompatible
Their crimes are intolerable
Are you with us or against us?
Hesitation is treason

This is a garden infested with Daisies
Take them all away
And set them ablaze
They can never steal our sun again



Classify

Symbolize


Dehumanize



Organize




Polariz­­e





And

Prepare



One to six
It can be fixed
Seven to eight
It is too late




Exterminate

And








Deny





Deny





Deny






­You could have stopped it if you tried
It was all advertised
For just a limited time
Before it was taken off the shelves

A limited-edition opportunity
To step in and intervene
But the event has already passed
Daisy? What the hell is that?


It was all advertised
For just a limited time
You could have intervened
A limited-edition opportunity

That never happened
It never happened
But it will happen again

And you'll see a product you recognize
In limited-edition
But no, you won't buy
Not until it's taken off the shelves
Then you'll finally miss what's gone
If you have the luxury of a memory
But even then

Will you be believed?



One to six
It can be fixed
Seven to eight
It is too late



Now all you can say

Is

Never Again























Until Next Time

The soul says:
I don’t want to carry
this pain alone anymore.

I want to translate it.

And so poetry
becomes a bridge of healing—

what once was pain
becomes self-expression.

I love her poems
More than anything

They made me cry
But I smiled the whole time

Because she loves me
And I love her

Maybe a little differently
But I still love her

--- რამდენი ადამიანი გაგიცვნია და რამდენი დაგიკარგავს ამ ცხოვრების მანძილზე?
--- ბევრი. ადამიანის გაცნობა იოლია შენარჩუნება კი რთულია...
სამწუხარო ის არის, რომ მომავალს წინასწარ ვერ გასჭვრეტ და ვერ დაინახავ თითოეული ურთიერთობა როგორ წარიმართება...
--- რომელიმე ურთიერთობა გინანია თუ არა?
--- ყოველი ადამიანი განსხვავდება და ყოველ ადამიანთან ურთიერთობაც განსხვავებულია...
როდესაც ვინმესთან ურთიერთობა გაქვს ყველა ურთიერთობას თავისი ხიბლი და შარმი აავს. ჩემთვის ის ცუდი რაც ურთიერთობას მოჰყვება ისიც კი მნიშვნელოვანია. ხოლო კარგი თავისთავად კარგია. არცერთი ურთიერთობა არ არის სანანებელი, რაც შენს ცხოვრებაში ხდება, გამოჩნდება და მოხდება ყველა ურთიერთობა დასაფასებელია თუ ეს შენთვის რამეს ნიშნავდა და მნიშვნელოვანი იყო...




2024.06.7

Feels like a curse
An urge to work for
Getting more and more
Of things I can hardly
Enjoy anymore

The biggest danger in Bible study
is not what I taken̈ out of
CONTENT
it's what's been taken out of
CONTEXT.

~
September 2025
HP Poet: irinia
Age: 47
Country: Romania


Question 1: We warmly welcome you to the HP Spotlight, irinia. Please tell us about your background?

irinia: "I live in a country with a difficult past, I have complicated memories of the XXth century. I studied foreign languages and literatures (English & German), British cultural studies, psychology and psychotherapy. I worked as a cultural journalist for some time, and as an English teacher for a decade. I love working as a psychotherapist, it is a humbling honour to get to know and be with people in a profound way. I am the mother of a spirited teenage daughter whom I am in love with. I am a highly sensitive person which is a blessing and a curse because I am often times moved by life in an intense way. I am from the Balkans so my taste in everything is rather eclectic."


Question 2: How long have you been writing poetry, and for how long have you been a member of Hello Poetry?

irinia: "I wrote my first poem as a teenager, and I’ve been writing since then discontinuously, whenever poetry came to me. There were periods of intense writing and also long periods of silence. It was difficult to see myself as a poet until relatively recent. On HP I've been since 2010 or 2011, I am not sure, I have to check my first post. This site and the community supported me to keep writing. I owe to HP the existence of my book of poetry called "Psychic retreat" published by Europe Books last year. Thank you Eliot for keeping HP running and thank you to all of you for keeping HP alive. I witnessed this community changing, growing, descending into chaos sometimes. I enjoy the diversity of styles."


Question 3: What inspires you? (In other words, how does poetry happen for you).

irinia: "I am inspired by everything that moves me, especially people, stories, the natural world, history. Poetry simply happens to me, words and images start pouring down in my mind, so I just write them down as they come. I don’t rewrite or work with conscious intention on any poem because I don’t have time to be a „serious“ writer, who has the discipline and toil of writing. At some point poetry started coming to me in English, perhaps because my readings were mostly in English. I think poetry is a way of containing or transforming my emotional processes as for me poetry happens in the presence of feelings, and I am also observing a tendency to be more reflexive or abstract as if when I write there is a witness inside. I feel more and more that I am interested in writing about politics and society too."


Question 4: What does poetry mean to you?

irinia: "It means a lot, I am afraid it is difficult to capture it into words. The poetry of other people touches me deeply, fascinates me, gives me the feeling of awe. It was my constant companion, it was a mirror, I found out about myself through resonance with other poets. Poetry captures the depth of life, our dreams, struggles, aspirations, our joy and our pain, creates alternative worlds from words. It captures the pulse of inner reality while it also mystifies it. It is a space of freedom and play for me. It is a protest. It is an attempt at destroying and recreating the world captured in normal language and used concepts. It is perhaps a measure of our humanity, vulnerability, resilience."


Question 5: Who are your favorite poets?

irinia: "I will start with William Shakespeare as I love his use of language and wit. I love Japanese haiku poetry, their ineffable simplicity is mesmerizing. There are many poets that I adore: Rumi, Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Charles Bukowski, William Blake, Robert Browning, T.S. Elliot, the English and German Romantic poets, Nichita Stănescu (Romania), Ana Blandiana (Ro), Florin Iaru (Ro), Mircea Cărtărescu (Ro), Ioana Ieronim (Ro), Gellu Naum (Ro), Nora Iuga (Ro), Paul Celan, Mary Oliver, David Whythe, Anne Sexton, Tibor Zalan (Hungary), Jean-Pierre Siméon (a wonderful poet), Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Ana Akhmatova, Viktor Neborak (Ukraine), Marjana Savka (Ukraine), Hrytsko Chubai (Ukraine), John O’Donohue, Rachel Bluwstein, Yehuda Amichai, Nathan Zach, Wislawa Szymborska (Poland), Mahmud Darwish (Palestine), John Donne, Friedrich Hölderlin, Reiner Maria Rilke, Joseph Brodsky, Marina Tzvetaeva, Octavio Paz, Garcia Lorca, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Primo Levi."


Question 6: What other interests do you have?

irinia: "I love art in all forms, it moves me and it bemuses me, it stimulates my creativity. I love photography and taking photos, I attended courses in my youth. I am fascinated by cosmos and cosmology, I love physics. I love stand-up comedy, music, dancing, hiking on the mountains. I am interested in history, I am fascinated by the becoming of the world. I am fascinated by the individual and collective psyche, I think this is something that has left a mark on my poetry."


Carlo C. Gomez: “We would like to thank you irinia, we really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to get to know the person behind the poet! It is our pleasure to include you in this Spotlight series!”

irinia: "Many thanks to Carlo for this series and to you all for being here!"




Thank you everyone here at HP for taking the time to read this. We hope you enjoyed coming to know irinia better. We most certainly did. It is our wish that these spotlights are helping everyone to further discover and appreciate their fellow poets. – Carlo C. Gomez

We will post Spotlight #32 in October!

~

if you see my poems
that define your name,
but I don’t read them to you—
I’m not being rude,
I’m not ignoring you,
I love you so much
that you can read
each poem
right from my eyes.