The air dances around you and silence looks
different now. The Dead Sea is alive again, stillness acquires a
name, the world quivers on a beach
covered with blind seashells. A giant who has come down
from the mountains is posing for a naive painter. Only
eagles feel
planetary alignment, they are the only ones who can
understand man's amazed look when the woman
comes riding a thirsty gryphon. Whatever is left of life
takes refuge in your dreams. The shade of the harbour is
only generous with the spleeping statues. Every day arises
from the blazing calendar, close to the scream of the siren
out at large. The past blooms out of the rock in the sea and
weighs on your heart. The sand hesitates: I am the
beginning.
In the red cells I see only you. Even the blind see the world
again
through the eyes of their own memories. Doing survey
missions
on the maps of the world, the dolphins ask
the purple red colour of the next eon whether night comes
from beyond words

by Ionel Bota, translated by Lidia Vianu

in the laboratory of life unseen words are sprouting
they decenter time or they hit themselves against
the windows like birds do
they circle the emotional memory of our aorta
they smell of dust mixed with blood
they search for that place in your gaze where
is never too hot

Grey clouds crack open, weeping angels,
rain cascades, a liquid broom
washing earth's filth and sin.
The smell? Enigmatic—spring's embodiment,
summer evening's bold scent.
Drops like strings, smacking,
a hundred clapping hands under a faucet.
The wind keeps pace, whooshing,
shaking excess from leaves.
Tires glide on wet slick,
cars pass like crashing waves.

Peaceful, serene, innocent, refreshing.
Cold strings, exploding like macro water grenades,
rejuvenate skin.
A wonder to stare at, always.
Whether three, experiencing first cognizance,
or thirty-one, marveling.
Rain, a majestic measure of universal peace
in a world of chaos and noise.
Chaotic itself, like a jazz band drumming,
wind wailing past windows—
yet so serene.

Still, rain brings annoyance.
Bones ache, joints lock and creak,
and a youthful strut turns rusty tin-man waltz.
But its mysticism deafens pain
and frees the mind to fly.
Clarity, a rare enigma,
tickles skin raises arm hairs,
kisses lips with reality,
appearing ****, flirting with prismatic curves—
often ignored, and unnoticed.
Euphoria is splendidly remiss.

So easy to catalog memories,
reflect in life's mirror,
and determine what needs changing.
Everything changes with time.

Life, a garden.
We inherit seeds of knowledge,
plant interesting parts.
Love and sadness water, shine on plants
bearing flowers we call friends:
tulips, lilacs, dangerous roses.
Unique: blue, orange, red, white, pink.
Some sweet, some foul.
Each one is unique.
Flowers grow wild and wilt on vines.
Some aren't flowers, but weeds,
diseasing what they touch, like death.
Covered in insects, eroding beauty.
As a gardener, you decide:
anarchic disarray?
Or grab shears, and prune ugliness.
Friends who matter won't let your soul wilt.
Yes, rainfall brings such clarity.

But clarity's bubbles are superficial.
Easily burst, window closing, smog reconfiguring.
A bowling ball rolls across the sky and strikes pins—
a lucky strike.
Tree branches of light shoots extend,
lasts a second, and seems slower.
Adrenaline rushes, heart pounds like a drum.
Seconds pass, another strike, another flash.
A storm had come...
and it would pass.

There was once a child
born beneath the sign
of unburial.

She carried too much—
not in arms
but in tethered memory.
Things with no names,
only weights.

A cracked watch
that ticked in reverse.
A button from a coat
that no one had worn
in three generations.

A feather
from a bird
dreamt once
by her grandmother,
never seen again.

She believed—
as those marked by absence do—
that keeping meant remembering,
and remembering meant
nothing would vanish.

Others crossed her path,
offered to help unfasten the straps.
She refused.
They did not know
which talismans bled
and which only looked like wounds.

So she walked.
Through salt seasons,
through bone-rattling frost,
through forests with no floor
and skies that never asked her name.

The bag grew heavier.
She grew cleverer.
Silent.

And then—
on a day that wasn’t special,
under a sun that wasn’t kind—
she set it down.
Not as surrender.
As an experiment.

The earth did not crack.
The ghosts did not scatter.
Her shadow did not abandon her.

She sifted the contents.
Some were dust.
Some were still singing.
Some curled away like dried petals
and begged to be left behind.

She took a key.
She took the bell.
She left the rest
for the moss.

She walked on.

Not lighter, exactly—
but less governed
by the shape
of her grief.

You and I—
we feel,
we love,
we regret.
Yet we remain
the binding particle
of a formless self.

They divide us,
pit us against each other.
We found safety
for thirteen days.

Before dawn,
we felt the breath
that seeps through cracks
into minds like a narrow thread of force,
and the fog spilled out.

Above our heads, false stars
created by warm bodies
to annihilate
what passed through the gate
of a birthing woman.

We write words to conjure
happy endings
at the ball of extermination
that tears apart
the pulsing light
of a thousand veins.

Please sit with me
before you go
Do you feel it—
the mourning procession
of human beings
transforming into a state of fission
and drifting away?

And a sigh is so sad
of trembling atoms
when the victim becomes the destroyer.

Feel the force of the fall,
and do not shatter hope
even if the world
trembles to its core
because there is still YOU,
still ME,
and still

OTHERS.

when the world gets unbearable I retreat into the purity of words
do I own this heart or she owns me
an excedent of beats today as if I was traversed by an invisible sigh
my thoughts are a nomadic population searching for a soil without fear
death presents itself as an indifferent character, a secondary thing, an involuntary business, the latest fashion
who cares about the pain of the air
the skin of hours can hardly hold minds under siege
nights melt time like wax while I need to look at helplessness from a different angle
an unpredictible trajectory decides for the mornings we wake up into
there is space in the centre of words while the sky is eroded by death's toys
the eyes stand in the way some say we must die on earth to be born in the sky,  the sky disagrees, the dust clots
there are patches of blue sky somewhere, there is enough silence to hear the explosions in one's head or the augmented beauty of sleep
power miscalculates its claims in the impermanence of bones

is it a daimon is it a bliss, a market sentiment,
this chase: fill your life with incredible experiences
how does it feel an ideology of sensation
when linden trees smell phenomenal,
the birds follow their heart of air
the sensuality of summer light simmers on the skin
I can simply watch the grass exulting, the involuntary smiles,
the pain of love's plight, the serenity of the morning tea
the poliphony of noise in an age of anxiety
the song of my shoulders attuned with sight
incredible when seeing is believing that there is innocence
even in the dark

where the eye understands the light &
the thought is not a forbidden zone
the sand is blue, the escape slow
into quietude

there we discover that
the tears have their own dying
dreams are not birds without sky
the prayers of the earth are heard by the trees

when I take you inside my temples
there the blood boils like a secret
from the depth of the moon

This heart makes room
for those without place
find a chair
a bed
some peace
some space
my heart’s your home
make it sweet
inside my heart
not at my feet

This heart makes room
come and hide
at the heart of my soul
not by my side
my heart is warm
a fireplace
come abide in me
beneath my gaze
it’s quiet here
within my chest
come now
come sleep
find your rest

The memory of leaves heals me, but first I had to detonate the emptiness in my mother's gaze. Today this me summons all dreams for a clinical examination. Life must move forward to the confrontation of  horizontal and vertical truths: the tenderness of growing wheat, the serenade of aging. The innocence of my hands denounces its longevity. I split my days in two: countable and uncountable or dreaming and nondreaming. I suffer this continuous birth:  words invent me like an age without history. It must be said though: a historical smoke comes out of them. On a day like this beauty is tough, I speak with a seemingly exiled tongue. No return for dreams disguised in blind storcks.
When I look around I see all the way to New York or Cape Town how this world is oppressed by an aboundand impatience to find the point of no return for the sea level. I see the future where I never existed. Our own shadows crush us but we blame it on the sun's karma. I blame everything on love's echo.

the wind reads me well
I'm a nomad of time
a pulse like a prophecy
whispers myself to me

the sky is wet like a mouth
the light extremely fragile
bellow people keep fighting, dancing, dying
a soothing sustance, this perfume fills my nails unassuming
the real & the imaginary fuse & diffuse each other

imagination keeps you real
by chance tears feed the earth
we need the continuity of gestures
the prelude of silence foretells the foxtrot of words
a dream clarifies the windows, solidifies the doors
like a tide of awe against the void