We are as moral
as we are able to be,
just never forget the principles.

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.

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.

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.

The wind flutters your black cloak,
You smoke a cigarette
With a hand frozen from the cold,
The red fragments of your heart
Are piled beneath your feet,
You’re going nowhere
Because of your love’s hold.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The one we feared
In our deep childhood,
That filthy one hurt us.
A child is never wrong.
Let us never forgive
Our tears.

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.

A black heart full of pain,
cold as white stone
in winter,
like a swan’s sorrowful song
at life’s end,
turns to ashes within its shell,
and perhaps, gripped by similar sorrow,
this part of the body forever seeks
another like itself.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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.

Life will destroy us if we surrender, if we let people deeply into our hearts, they will hurt us. Let us turn our backs on all the arrogant!

Do not turn on the light, for you will scare away
the evil forces that have entered your home,
forces that sing.
And perhaps Satan does not exist,
if evil itself does not exist.
Then there will be no God to protect us,
and perhaps God has abandoned us
because there is evil in this world.
We have angered them all together,
nourishing the soil with human flesh and blood.
I must drink wine
to forget my rotten life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes it feels like I live inside my own head
Until I step outside,
Look at people,
Listen to their conversations.

We often think that one person cannot change anything
But we’re mistaken,
One often decides,
In most cases.

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.

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.

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

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.

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…

Once, I used to gaze at the dark moon,
I wandered through the abyss,
I saw the snake’s skin,
My heart was not this dark,
I felt more love,
I read Beddoes,
Everything has grown colder.

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.

Black dreams

Never scared me.

Kubin's mystical dreams mean nothing.

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

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.

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.

Fly away black bird,
perhaps you’ll encounter a carcass
or someone kind
will offer it to you.
You’ll hide in the dry bushes with food,
Your black feathers will flutter in the wind,
satisfied and full,
your body
will heavily descend again to the ground.

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.

When you read a poem from another era,
where certain themes were forbidden,
it feels as though the author died in that moment,
unable to express the words exactly as they wanted.

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...

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.

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.