I want to listen to the playlist I used to play before, when I would carelessly throw thousands of music tracks into love, connecting with another world, traveling through it, finding the people I had lost, and telling them what I couldn’t say back then.

I would reread Mauriac, Hesse, and every book I’ve ever read.

I would relive those feelings, the initial emotions when I first discovered Francesca Woodman’s photography.

I would go back to that café I used to frequent, where I would sink into sadness, have something to drink—even though I neither drank nor smoked back then.

I would find a small dimension for myself, just as I wanted, to escape sorrow. I would shelter myself there for a few years and return with a clear mind—free.

Do not resemble another
For autumn won’t touch them the way it touches you.
Your taste receptors will never be the same.
Your dreams are not alike.
You won’t understand the same book in the same way.
Do not say you are the same,
Even if you are twins.
The déjà vu that grasps you for a moment
Detaches you from reality—
You are not another, not in another time,
You are one individual
In the present dimension.
You are not other.
Let us create catharsis for ourselves,
For we seldom feel it from others.

Words settled in the brain,
Left behind by others,
Remind us of them.
We often wish to erase them forever.
In moments of crisis,
The dirtiest and most tainted words come to mind,
While those drowning grasp onto good words.
Words are insignificant to some, they say,
Yet they still leave red lines on our white ribbons.

Red roses planted in a filthy ravine,
For the bliss of passersby.
Brought there by witches –
Visually stunning,
Left at the mercy of rain,
Blooming red.
The wise will say it is in honor of the mortals –
While the lowly will glance with irony,
Their eyes deceitful.
Just as Venus embodies perfect beauty,
Red creations have emerged in this filthy place,
Tender roses, the ravine’s charm.

My mind is like an overgrown field, mixed with thorns and weeds.
Like a wandering dervish, but not at peace.
I think I’ll smoke a cigarette on the veranda,
with coffee.
Or maybe I’ll take a long walk,
to open a door for these stifling thoughts.

You wear a long black coat,
your hair falls over your shoulders,
You  have  Chloe perfume.
Your life simply isn’t like anyone else’s,
you never wanted to be someone else.
You drink white semi-dry wine.
You have everything,
maybe that’s why you’re alone.
You read Agota Kristof,
you don’t smoke and you work out.
You are sad,
and everyone like you is sad.

The president drinks Coca-Cola, just like we do, says marketing. Oh, what a privilege.

If we are bothered by someone else's smell, imagine how uncomfortable they must feel, not being able to get rid of it themselves.

Clergymen live in luxury, I wrote to them, asking what they think about the idea that Satan might punish them for it if God doesn't have time. They blocked me.

Madness, like a human's mark,
It claims that everything is fine,
It plays, as for it, God has changed,
Faith is either exalted or diminished.
Signs are everywhere,
It has become the center of the universe,
It has absorbed every book,
This treacherous ailment
Has added uncontrollable power.
It plays with colorful thoughts.

I met a thief and told him, "Leave my wallet." He left, but that day he probably lost the desire to steal.

It's absurd to claim that I don’t place my slippers by the bed every day. They’re always there, untouched, just as I left them. But still, I’ve wondered before waking up, will they be there where I left them?

I always wanted to have a white dress like Emily Dickinson's, and if I could, I would never leave my room.

You stand on an ice-covered road,
Feeling the cold beneath your feet—
Your black, grotesque car is warm
But you don’t get in,
You simply don’t want to go anywhere, not to any house.
The driver who was taking you watches,
He can’t find the right words, he’s confused.
You’re like the hero from Camus’ The Stranger, but it’s cold with you,
Pain torments you because you’ve seen so much,
What hurt you, how much more will hurt you, senseless hatred, too much love, pain, pain, even more pain.
Wrong people, out of place.
You kick the ice,
You feel nothing!
A wrong feeling.
"Wrong" by Depeche Mode is the right song
For this moment.
Wrong from the start,
The wrong people by your side, misplaced.
Where do you stop?
You dissolve into the road, the driver continues in your place.
You’re sleepy, you simply fall asleep.

When do we come alive? When love, true and everlasting, comes to us. It's like rain arriving in the desert. If you feel the sickness of love, it means you're alive...

I have buried my love again,
I dug it out from the earth,
I said, "God, I still love you!"
I hugged the cold wall,
I wanted to feel something.
Often, I betray myself,
Our problems vary in their weight.
You turned into a sharp spasmodic pain.
Maybe Aphrodite would have understood me!
Love is beauty, most people say,
But it doesn’t concern me, nor my love,
For I live in darkness,
I glorify the feelings of affection.

Google Assistant is reminding me that my birthday is coming up, I'm turning 34, and this age doesn't make me happy anymore. It especially annoys me when people call once a year just for this and don't think of me the rest of the time.

In the poem, I spoke of:
I wanted to go to Japan,
But I lost my wallet.

In the homeland of  "Thousand Cranes,"
My first touch
With that remarkable
Book, I felt.

I wanted to go to Japan,
To see the rustling of kimonos.

But I lost my wallet.

I was going in the spring, to
Feel the scent of sakura.

I want to live in a house where silence reigns,
to hear the echo of sounds drifting in from the yard.
To live like the beautiful tales written on the pages of a book,
to love like Juliet,
and to be able to die with her.
He will come in the evening, open the door,
we'll talk simply.
Our desires are the same,
don’t we all long for peace.

You talk to everyone, everyone in your heart,
But you’re not a god,
You’re just a woman sitting in a subway car, talking to herself.
You talk to Dionysus, asking him for a drink.
You go to the tobacco field, smoking a hookah there,
Because you like the smell of tobacco leaves.

You walk down the street, feeling the scent of lilacs,
Though it’s not spring.
People look at you, and you think you know them all.
You feel somatic touches,
It seems like the one you love has come to you and touched you.

You listen to the music, The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony.”
You feel an extreme, your taste receptors sharpen.
You feel love, elevated.

We brought saplings of trees,
radiant peach, apple.
We nurtured them, they bore divine fruit.
I wanted to export them, but in vain,
says the farmer from Gori to the journalists.

I cut them all down, cut them down to save my time and nerves.
I cried,
and the trees shed tears as well.
I destroyed the fruit of Eden.

Do you love the coffee placed in the machine more, or the aroma that fills the room during the brewing process?

It is painful to be a perfectionist,
Mistakes hurt me.

It’s a cold day, sunless,
I took a walk outside,
The chill reaches down to the bones,
People move swiftly by.
Markets are bustling,
Prices on products
Are already high.

Spring seems to have died,
I’m inhaling the scent of rotten lilacs.
I taste the chocolate you brought me...
Drunk, I smoke a cigarette,
but I can’t feel it.
I drag my feet lightly on the road, slamming the rough soles of cowboy boots.
I cry,
I want something that doesn’t exist in nature,
something immaterial.
I can still feel your cold hand on my shoulder.

If we offer kindness to others, as Viridiana did for the homeless in Buñuel's film, we would have to re-educate them from the beginning so they could adapt to this noble gesture?  You are not truly great and forgiving if you expect this in return.

We die when we are no longer respected; at that moment, we simply wither like a flower left without water.

Concrete trees,
buildings and houses.
A world covered by concrete,
it became a barren, empty place.

I place my slippers by the bed,
Hoping I’ll wake up to find them where I left them,
I do this over and over, feeling the same.

Habits, feelings are ours—
Our manners when we open a beer can or simply glance at something, someone.
No one can change our behaviors,
Though we might imitate another's manner for a while,
Like the weather, never repeated,
We can't become someone else.

An actor brought a book character to life,
But in my mind, they remained different.

As the years pass, we betray our habits,
Just as our altered bodies betray us,
Yet mannerism still dwells within us.

In a maddened world that has taken root within us, we are poisoned, poisoned by the selfishness of leaders for whom no dose of calming medicine can be found.

Living in the suburbs has a special charm, especially if you live in one of the quarters of Tbilisi's Varketili district, where the sea is also nearby: tall buildings, scorching heat, and mulberry trees in the yard, whose pungent smell reaches your nostrils.

The noise of the neighborhood, gatherings, conversations around the table, drinking, smoking, hoodies, jeans, sneakers, Adidas—these are what reflect fashion trends, taking their beginnings and energy from the suburbs and sticking around.

Here, you'll encounter Soviet-era kiosks covered in rust. Larger-scale parks and children whose voices color the world, reaching the silent concrete buildings.

The political atmosphere is more superficial; there's not much to capture in photos, but if you head to the sea, a camera will definitely come in handy.

I have an apartment for sale.

Uncontrolled dreams overwhelm me,
Last night, I dreamed of you, my friend.
Even in the dream, you kept insisting
That you like older women.
I told you, You’re a true gerontophile,
Just like me after all, I married a 48-year-old man years ago.
The amazing thing is,
If I could choose
I’d still make the same choice.
You said, “I love it when my women wear glasses
With clear lenses.”
Ah, what a jokester you are, my friend.
Our dreams bring us closer…

the sparrows to stay with us,
winter is coming
I want to be real
this winter,
Love me,
The snow is resting on the roof.
the fall of ice sheets.
Shine in me
like a lighthouse in the night.

The possibilities of humans are limitless,
All the goodness that intelligent minds offer us is immeasurable.
I often call them gods—
I worship the book—
I worship the hacker who managed to cleanse my computer from a dark virus.
You would be a liar if you’ve never once worshipped someone or something.
Now I drink wine,
I recall Dionysus,
Or I simply thank the winemaker for the beautiful wine.

At work, I loved to read,
I had a small salary,
But I had the chance
To read books.
I found my inspiration
In William Blake and his painting of Death on a Pale Horse
Time has passed, but my heart has not grown cold toward them.
Now I’m reading J. M. Coetzee,
Smoking more cigarettes,
Enduring the summer heat.
Perhaps somewhere in the West,
There’s a woman who resembles me...

The wind stirs my black curtain.
I hear the sound of branches,
The wind sweeps the dry grass on the fields,
Like waves on the sea.
Cold hearts,
Like the black curtain.
If you go to heaven without me,
Or even to hell,
My heart will fall asleep.
Love is as dark
As a moonless night
In an impenetrable forest.
Bats must long for such nights.
The black curtain rustles—
The night is not so long for me.
I am like a fallen angel
Whose paradise is taken away,
Yet Cupid strikes me
With an arrow of love.
The black curtain rustles,
For me, the nights aren’t so long.

Not lying when eating in bed.

One day when I left the house,  
I wandered through the streets of Station Square.  
I was at the casino,  
Not to gamble, but for the spectacle.  
I was walking quickly back home when the only valuable thing I had,  
A Canon camera, fell onto the curb.  
But I returned home calmly,  
That day, I remembered you,  
I sensed you had a problem.  
I wished your wife would lose her child.  
A short while later, a horrible pain struck my abdomen,  
As if one of the vampires from a book  "Interview with the Vampire"had devoured my insides.  
More than that, I entered the bathroom,  
Started vomiting blood.  
I thought for a while, then realized,  
You have the power of pain.  
Now, when I feel the same,  
I curl up on the bed, soothing you.

You entered my kitchen,
a magnificent, radiant light.
I wanted to say magical words,
but I couldn’t dare.
I loved you,
You said nothing,
but made me feel
that you understood my pain.

We choose the dusty street  
Because we want to notice  
The specks of dust sparkling in the sun.  
We wish to rest  
Leaning against cold, Gothic walls,  
Yearning to enter closed houses.  
Often, beautiful words are not amazing—  
Especially when we witness tragedy.  
Who wrote our poems?  
With wondrous words, though they do not resemble us.  
We protect trees from pests with paint, yet no one protects us.  
The wooden planks of deceit are finely planed,  
Yet we hear the deafening drumbeat—  
While the quiet serenity of the lyre reaches us.  
When we burn dried grass on the bonfire,  
We find comfort in the smell of the charred grass.

Our graves were in kurgans,
Our shelter was in caves,
We painted on rocks,
We warmed ourselves with animal fur,
We hunted,
We perceived beauty less,
We sang with howls,
We slept together,
What we thought about, only God knows.

I used to write by hand, but I don't anymore because I kept losing my diaries. I lost my first diary back in school, my teacher told me, 'I'll read your poems,' and then the diary disappeared. I was too shy to say, 'Please give me my diary.' Now I have a tablet, and I always leave it at home.

It’s still warm in Texas, the tropical humid zones have hot weather, and it's cold where I am.
I wish it were even colder.
I think about those people who don’t like the heat
how do they endure in eternally scorching countries.
I’d probably emigrate if I didn’t have four beautiful seasons.

Today, I’m happy because everything is fine. Nothing can spoil my mood. These periods often scare me, though
I always feel like I'm waiting for something bad to happen.

I’m doing nothing, just listening to Christophe’s Les Paradis Perdus, and peace has settled in my heart.

Sometimes, we don’t know
if we’re happy or unhappy,
confusion follows us
like a three-year-old child.

We get lost in the discovery of talent.
Maybe we’re good at dancing or knitting,
we write let’s try.
We might have even been a good pilot.

Who knows, who knows.

Food is a pleasure if the flavor is like the ingredients.

There’s a kind of exhaustion like the one I have a void and at that moment, you might listen to a music track like Snow Surfin' Matador for a bit of energy.

Cows that get lost without a trace In dense forests, Among sprawling leaves, between green trees, Where there seems to be no end, and if it ends, another identical forest begins...
The fruitless search has its own result
An attempt.
I don't know these feelings, for I haven't lost anything I wonder if perhaps I've lost Something important
I try to remember But in vain,
Nothing like that has happened.
Farmers who lose cows, Talk to other farmers About how they lost, Simply put, money.
"I tried but couldn't find it," they say, While extinguishing tobacco in an oddly deformed shape.

I watch as the wind stirs my black curtain,
it’s 20:09.
I’m cooling my green tea.

Today, I’ll probably plan nothing,
sudden decisions unsettle me.

But as Kafka would say, perhaps once, by our actions, we should surprise ourselves and others, even if it’s just an impulsive stroll…

From the windows of the building across, silhouettes can be seen in the light,
it’s the loveliest stretch of summer.

When we lie, our hands sweat, and we can't dry them until we touch someone else.

I got cold.
This cold, as always, caused sleep paralysis,
Being in complete darkness.
Today I was thinking, as on other days,
About you.
Thinking of you causes white pain.
I would probably compare myself to Orpheus,
Who sings to Eurydice,
I would look back never to see you again.
sleep paralysis,
Evil that unfolds within us.