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 Feb 2023
irinia
your eyes hot like a bullet
mine engulfed by the equinox &
the silences I walked away from
we are two or more
two people who shout at each other letters
that have never touched any alphabet
who throw beautiful ideas to be caught by twilight
the hour is always unknown
as if we watch each other's destiny
what comes next only the oracle of Delphi knows
or the roots of entropy maybe
I keep some thoughts in the straitjacket

we guard bridges, ancient castles in the sky
we guard the world not to turn into a casket without music
who invented this question mark
that we owe each other happiness
I wonder if the trees have unspoken meanings
do they turn overnight into telescopes to quest
the loneliness of stars, as we do

I might turn into a shadow
blinded by darkness
we draw uncanny shapes,
everything a circle can endure
with our mouths full of pebbles
 Feb 2023
irinia
by Theodore Roethke

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,   
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   
And in broad day the midnight come again!   
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
courtesy and gratitude to my English literature teacher,  G. V., the great Shakespear scholar and translator I have the honour to know
 Feb 2023
irinia
“when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.” Grace Paley

fall into me
on blackout days
for something beautiful
is here is everywhere
is nowhere
you knew it
Borges used it
beauty is a physical sensation
the axis mundi piercing
the palms of my hands

memory like a gipsy woman
who reads palms
beauty, yes, it draws the soul
ascetic
I figured it out in the smiling of your sleep
like babies smile to angels, they say
this game that keeps us alive is hers
golden beetles die for it
of for the love of dust

pastimes of gods its archives
everyday the light tastes differently
the body moves where the mind is
or the other way round
I'll read Cartarescu to you half naked
one page a day

beauty is the quest,
this spiral of wonder
filling up the rest &
my nails
 Feb 2023
Heather
someday I will live on a water,
it will love me
I will spend my days discovering it’s mysteries
spinning them into fantastic tales,
cinematic grays of storm,
kaleidoscope colors of dragonfly spring

I will live in the cocoon of its beauty,
in the folding space of beings from every world
I will story the breath of pirouettes,
the creation waves of slumber
finding uncommon lives
woven through fertile riparian fabrics  

the water will know me as no human could
it will absorb me into it’s rhythm
I will disappear from causation
cherished and protected the remainder of my days
I, devoted witness and biographer to a landscape
 Jan 2023
Maria Mitea
i close my eyes
to see you i close my eyes,
the world suddenly is leaving
entirely
is leaving, of its  own accord, is leaving,
    is falling like an eyelid, tired
on the keys of a piano, the stillness of the morning covers us,  white
white,
bleached by the winter, waiting for the pious sound,
waiting
for the snowdrops to bloom
 Jan 2023
irinia
words already written somewhere
in the syntax of time
some waiting to be revealed
expelled through themselves
you
waiting to be caught falling back
into the great wide narrow
open
life gets unbearable
if you feel it en detail
the naked devil in the details
yeah yeah yeah
you are
on the quest for a nymph of the lungs
a never envisioned bride with a maybe smile
moaning melissas not monalisas
softnes curves textures and forgetting
like a work of art
blank canvas for your might in delight
you are also looking for that pain
again and again
more view in between your shoulders
she did it and maybe they subtly pay
the paradox of a black hole
our hearts
fancy yourself
you invent the feminine itself
on the edge of self-combustion
the feast of an unknown body
till you turn into yourself again
and into wildflowers
they taste the magnetic field
its scorch its bustling to give and receive
who gives who receives
the earth wonders

there is earth  in our bones

everyhing has its nemesis
dont't worry
I'll bathe you in my tears
still
I'm writing this poem
with/for a smile
in all fairness

the woodpacker came today
its flight filled with bliss
it flies like a deer
******* in
its desire
 Jan 2023
irinia
each morning bird watching
is a silent meditation
I have pigeons sparrows seagulls
megpies in my gaze
their delight of falling
makes me smile
I watch them teaching their wings
for each day
picking up the debris of sleep
spinning around each other
they start cheerful conversations
about the taste of the air
steal crumbs of wonder
from each other
a woodpacker comes
from time to time
its red stain is fun
none of them travel to you
they get round and round
wayching out
their own flight
 Jan 2023
wes parham
Condescending to humor my intimate muse,
You sought out her words in my writing.
I couldn't have guessed that you'd actually choose,
To tell her what you think is the source that I'm citing.

Get over yourselves, the drama and strife,
I can tell you’ve found something you wanted to see.
And, of course, held it up to the shape of your life,
And think you see secrets you once shared with me.

Forgive my intrusion throughout that December,
If that friendship seemed somehow untrue,
I won't try to persuade you, but you ought to remember,
Sometimes, unbelievably, it's not about you.

My task is obsessive, compulsion, expression,
I write the universal, the aggregate whole.
Never to betray or teach some grand lesson,
I’d rather enrich than to harm a good soul.

Emotions exposed and stories delivered may wound or dignify,
My job is to make it have life and clarity;
Give it weight enough to signify.

And, as then, when we meet,
Sour or sweet, 
Speaking our truth,
Silent secrets,
and feel…
The words that can wound,
Flatter,
Heal or conceal...
All of them wind to what our actions reveal.
I have had a few occasions where people close to me were certain that I was writing about them.
I was certain, each time, that they were mistaken.
I was broken, each time, that they’d missed the whole plot.

This piece actually came about over decades and an uncharacteristic snarkiness was added at the urging of a friend to give it more “attitude”.  Ha.

https://soundcloud.com/warmphase/i-anathema
 Jan 2023
irinia
maybe the earth knows or
the body knows first
what he or she dares
immersed in sunsets
and adverbs
lions make themselves
prey in blue windows
outside the fle/ash  of words
the verbs of the world
inside a shepherd whistles
a love song
to the sweetness of grass
 Jan 2023
irinia
we are the stories between the armpit
and the hand
between the whisper and the sigh
forged by galaxies of wounds
in the fragility of light
of spaces crushed
by the acceleration of time
our irises boundless
sometimes

we are the stories that tell
our soles when to stop
our bones when to sing
that put sunflowers
in our haze
cranberries in our waitings
delight in our might
skyscrappers of thought in our deeds
promises in our hands full of mud
over caskets

we are the stories of love's failure
(aren't we asking too much from love?)
of decay of pretend of parasitic laughter
of the violence of bodies without minds
without singing in the hearts
stories of fists strife and toil,
the boredom of dawn
repetition of self-deception
circles not round
triangles full of hurt
of the rigidity of one plus one
equals two
the rest is wonder

so many stories exchanging nouns, verbs
attributes just to capture
what is forever escaping alluding flowing
naturally undisturbed in the exchange of
vowels
like dark matter that escapes iself
only in dreams

was it the awe of vowels that invented the world?

incessantly on the edge
of chaos of blindness of knowing
of loss of void of grief & joy
of floating to the unknown
or pausing into certainty
hard working minds and eager souls
errect citadels of meaning
in dialogue sometimes
or as oppressive as
the denial of slippery roads
of sad guitars or
maddening violins

our shadows sit closely next to us
precisely when
we're stepping into the light
 Jan 2023
irinia
I left my cigarettes today
the same way you leave the departed
I put them in their tombs of desire
their pain had infected me enough
like an invisible netwok of mold
decomposing dreams
my own

my secret garden  
already planted
my name chosen
my path clear
in their hidden mind
I had to love them all:
and I will, always
with quiet ardor,
adoration, gratitude

my secret garden a jungle
of emptiness
denied tenderness
never spoken words of love
terrors and longings,
unrequited pain

for so long I've been
my father's mother
in my hidden soul
what has survived
of me
was poetry

no language
complex
no methaphors
no more tears
for this raw truth
the only mother
for me
was poetry
when
there was beauty
in the sky
so crushing
 Jan 2023
David Hilburn
The next act, of adrenaline
Supposed forces, to win a kinder stare
Through the looking glass, as if shine
Is a wall to itself, patience and their horses, fare

A race to the more, ever and stone sore?
Of a friends cleverer smile...
Same to how, we found your quarrel
With me, a simpler distance to while...

Mean or main stay...
This moment, made for the devil and the blue sea
Meant, in time with sour notion, pain
Is the only force we see, for a man or woman in love, deem...

A hat of errors, that knew you for a wiser momentum
A whine of distant feelings, that shares the known, to be
A callous share in proof, that has the time to question a room
A singing candle? awake at the touch of a lover, is my kiss anarchy?

Hate a rhyme to begin, with a resolve in the rage of another?
Spite, carnal license, and hopeful sycophants of a rule of thumb
With your name on it, and my cares, the risks of loving a bother
With your needs and vice, as a charity we will know is succinctly won...

Heroines, with a table to eat from, timidly share a savior
******'s, with a resolute few, is here to skip the wisdom of done who
Hero's, with a tap to ply and explain, are a safety's warrior
He, with an excused hand has a reason to be, to the patience we do too...
A request from hell and back, that has no final kiss, but rages mind...? What if a silent kiss for purposes unknown, was yours?
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