peace
was found
in the backseat
of a cop car
where no one
was held
outside
a closed
thrift store.

when faced
with being
left behind

passed over
wins out.

I’d go fishing
if I knew
where I’d gone.

would drive, dog walk, divine

would these
our mothers

were it not
for sudden
bouts
of lucidness.

again
an illegal
pair
of dogs
has diagnosed
dad
with doll’s
ankle.

the movers

take the table
leave the cloth.  please

love our baby
like the man
they didn’t
send.

Build me with frostbite covering my heart, build me with a snowflake constantly falling from the roof of my mouth, build her with an addiction for cold weather. Let every person I miss for the next 20 years smear a dab of daylight on my sternum, let me lick my canyon deep wounds with the honeycomb tucked in between your teeth.
I want to stick a panic room underneath the chalices in my palms so they aren't so timid once I hear you talk about wearing Sunday clothes when you had your first beer.
I want the next girl I kiss to have lips like daylight and her hands to be warm, her legs to be every Summer that lasted just the right amount of time, build me with gunslinger fingertips that touch and touch and touch and stay steady, build my footsteps with the sounds of a rainstorm knocking it's fingers on the ground of an empty parking lot, build her out of prayers for a flood.
If I didn't bruise so easily, if I wasn't looking for a way to be made of a river, if I needed the silence to mean something, then I would ask you to build me out of quiet revenge and goodbyes that stick in your sides like tree branches, I would need you to build me out of reasons to believe instead of reasons to be afraid, I would turn my kneecaps into strawberries in exchange for potter's hands so I could mold you a bulletproof spirit. I want to spend the rest of my life watching the clouds, I want to have a voice as steady an oak tree and I want to see the sun cry rays of light so hard that it has nothing left in it but happiness and tugs the sky so tightly it turns purple.
We are nothing but a list of demands.

In the silent mornings or in the silent nights
there is a hunch there is a thigh there is a panther
I try to catch your shoulders using a violin
as a butterfly net
but if your hair chimes it's because it's dreaming
if your eyelid blossoms it's because of the wind
if your hand howls it's because it's night
if your ears sleep it's because they're famished
if your shoes laugh it's because they're thinking
and if your shoulders take flight it's because it's very late

If your hand falls silent it's because it's a seashell
if your veins race it's because of the mandrake
if the thigh listens it's because there are still leaves
if the blood foams it's the fault of the umbrellas

If your frock screams it's because it's dying
if your shadow flickers it's because it's burning
if your fingernail sits on the curtains it's because they're violet
if your foot whinnies it's because of the clouds
if the lungs fall asleep it's because it's dark
and if your shoulders choke
it is assuredly because of the trees.

Gellu Naum, Vasco da Gama and other pohems, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 2007

I remember the little men
in big boots. The ones who sat
at the edge of roof tops in a city called
Loneliness, and cut their teeth while chewing jagged glass and angry truths.
They parachuted down to earth
and hit their heads on desperation.
Hollowed out hearts with tree trunks
serving as legs, they marched
across the stratosphere until their existences neared zero. Nothing
more to disappearing than popping
some pills, falling asleep, and dreaming
that the whole world had gone mad.
The interesting part is when you wake up
and you can still hear the echo of
unfilled boots.

for I need my night as much as day
and when it comes, it comes what may

no shy question, no subtlety
the tongue may tie, still it cries out from me

day holds the knife, and oh how bright
but where dreams tear free? the realm of night

so take this hand, step to the dark
when the blade’s pressed close
ever deeper beats the heart




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