What,
what shall I do with you?
My gipsy, my fix, my oyster, sea —
only a few spiritual members
gather in front of you, speechless:
my eyes, lips, *****, hands…
— And the heart, my love, where is the heart?
Here and here, and there, my love,
in every place
that your lips touch.

Amir Or from *Let's speak you

the clockwork reversed
time is joking
some plastic smiles
some scattered dreams
and the growing pains
bending us beneath the horizon
here it is
written in my yesterdays
i wouldn't have loved you
differently
next day

with my childlike defenses
holding together
the shape of the world
inside a bubble
a phantasmatic place
or just a drama
(for mama)
here i am anyway

and the world without us
here it is

any two people  coming together can be a game/life changer
but without intimacy they are only like
a fish without water a bird without air
leaves without roots dreams without a dreamer
this dazzling carousel of constant stimuli
this attack of never-ending newness
that spins the world is the ******* of  void
I dissapear from thought I dissapear from heart
I am just a message an unresponded voice
a poor sign without the depth of symbol
an avoided truth an impossible commitment
there is no time there is no space for giving and receiving
the most precious substance, our deeply lonely selves
the tears are helpless, here it is, have some void
it evacuates itself in language, oh, language games
played with much innocence,  and eagerness
I contemplate the void in mesmerizing eyes voices words
taking responsibility for  illusions the hardest bit
the body knows first about the danger left behind
by a theoretical love
only by entering the void I can feel it, oh yes
the ******* of emptiness is inside me, too

"Welcome to this place"

"In our secret world, we were colliding
All the places we were hiding love"*

a beautiful warrior spirit rests in her
the clarity of numbers
the will of mountains
the ignorance of dew

sometimes she feels herself
with uncertain fingers
saying let it slide
to all the tears
not turned into poetry

there is such force in her smile
despite decades of loneliness
despite the heavy burden of an empty sky
she has an electrical heart
dreaming of the acceleration of life
in the first and only home
she knew

her heart is dreaming to be born again in every smile
in every fiery pulsation,
to rest in the dream of the womb
she owned

that time in the sea of womb
doesn't need to be remembered
cause it's in the most intense of breathing in,
the most vulnerable cry,
the most beautiful self-abandonment
when life just trusts life
with the heart power

We are the terraced women
piled row on row on the sagging, slipping hillsides of our
                                                                                               lives.
We tug reluctant children up slanting streets
the push chair wheels wedging in the ruts
breathless and bad tempered we shift the Tesco carrier bags
                                                                          from hand to hand
and stop to watch the town

The hill tops creep away like children playing games

our other children shriek against the school yard rails
‘there’s Mandy’s mum, John’s mum, Dave’s mum,
Kate’s mum, Ceri’s mother, Tracey’s mummy’
we wave with hands scarred by groceries and too much
                                                                                   washing up
catching echoes as we pass of old wild games

after lunch, more bread and butter, tea
we dress in blue and white and pink and white checked
                                                                                          overalls
and do the house and scrub the porch and sweep the street
and clean all the little terraces
up and down and up and down and up and down the hill

later, before the end-of-school bell rings
all the babies are asleep
Mandy’s mum joins Ceri’s mum across the street
running to avoid the rain
and Dave’s mum and John’s mum – the others too – stop
                                                                                                for tea
and briefly we are wild women
girls with secrets, travellers, engineers, courtesans, and stars
                                                                                 of fiction, films
plotting our escape like jail birds
terraced, tescoed prisoners rising from the household dust
like heroines.

Pennyanne Windsor, from *Poetry 1900-2000 One hundred poets from Wales

When I was a child,
other children thought
me strange. When they drew
mountains or rivers,
I drew shapes they'd never seen.
I drew whales.

No one from our village
had ever been to the sea.
So when my mother saw
the monsters I drew
she took me on pilgrimage
to Namche.

I was filled with the journey,
until a Lama - a man who knew
the world - told my mother:
"She draws whales because
the sailor reborn in her
still thinks about the sea.

I have seen children come
from high in the mountains,
who draw only pyramids.
And once, when I was a young
disciple in the monastery,
I met a child who drew only
the turtle and the lizard;
he even played a yak's horn
as if it were a didgeridoo. And though
this child was no more than four,
I felt his soul was ancient as dust;
from him I learnt to use
the short time we're given.
But a child like yours,
a child with the sea in her,
she knows the breath of a wave
is the mantra of the land,
and takes the shape life gives her."

"Ah yes", my mother sighed,
"though she holds great life,
she herself needs to be held
like water in my hands."
With that, the holy man
blessed me with sand,
juniper and incense,
to find the earth in me.

And now I'm Lobsang's wife.
Standing at the window,
watching him chop wood,
I carry his child within me.
When I am old
I will tell this child my story:
how I went to Namche;
how, even though a Lama
found the earth in me,
there were times
when oars dipped through the clouds,
when I was the sea
and the moon was my mother watching
through her great whale's eye.

Tony Curtis, Three Songs of Home, The Dedalus Press, Dublin, 1998

* the poem was posted with the kind permission of the author

When I am with you
I wanna lose my center
he would say to you gently
without words

he would translate you into his own language
of groove, longing, shouting, fluid desires
for the sake of  finding his own tracks
his eager mutable depths

he is looking for harbours
for his solitude turned into offerings
for devotion
for the secret wisdom that fills the cracks of night
he doesn't deny the intensity
of the sweet conversations between the hearing
and the touch
he hides his violence in sealed wells,
in clear visions, in the decimals of knowledge

he was a lonely boy
full of wonder

'Traum ist des Besuchers Schaum'

love,
imposition,
matryoshka dolls
sore cage-ribs
stories are replayed,
everywhere crossroads with no signs

we cross each other
heads are heavy like pumpkins in the sun
hearts weary of keeping hope alive
I recompose myself within the confinement of sunrise
falling falling further further down
to the anarchy of living
the seduced seducer, the ripped ripper
the air collapses on collars, lapels

we all visit the fountain of thirst
secretly

they still want to learn what love is
the visitors with hurricane hearts and hungry hands
the trainers of dyeing darkness

dog days are over
healing hands are genuine and humble
he finally feels the lightness of the heartbeat

(I no longer look like a fool to you...
yes, you!)

much to be learned from the edge of dreaming
from the threshold of time about
inaudible histories, leftovers of
the real or imagined
they gave me the demand for truth
the truth they kept hiding inside the lesions of light
and now I have this excess of subjectivity
to confront, to join the dance
one cannot speak about
history remains trapped inside nails
like a circus of hungry ghosts risking
Descartes' error

we stopped believing the agora of the mind
our souls empty rooms colliding
full of amnesia on incessant roads
walls of flesh we were on the edge of terror,
steel confused with clarity
souls plucked like nails inside ruins
suffocated tales & archives of illusion

the shadow is closer to the center only
in the diaries of the blind
no hole of god is dead, we ***** fresh prophets
with inviolable gaze
for the sublime and holy in our sweat
believing is seeing the most lethal duel

the one and only the fake divine
who thinks alone on a road with no views
he planted spotlights in their eyes
for everybody to see only the world in his arms
hate kept in empty milk bottles

life is this schweitzer, passers-by were saying,
it has taste but only  in foreign countries,
with their fists in pain caressing concrete asphalt turbines
as in quick sands no muscle was moving

carboard smiles unprotected against the evacuation of desire
wooden language didn't invent choice
no decomposition of the edges the totalitarian thought inside
the narcosis of time merciless

the clouds lost their sound we still don't look at each other
no hypothesis of sight no discharge for humiliation
wither souls made history grappling bending
twisting nonconsensual reality

no destiny for the allegory of truth  
there are no angles of sight
facts become beasts
holy cannot be anybody's name
repelling of the heart beat

words minds hearts rendered useless
is the silence of horror the deepest silence?
so frighteningt the force with which life destroys itself
is complexity unbearable unstable fragile?
one cannot yet hear the silence of death
in the loud noise of a world collapsing

a raw light today
undecided to retreat its hope
from the mystery of leaves
I'm watching the clouds dissolve
into something larger than themselves
I'm watching my hands, how
their screaming is giving myself to me

the light without name will go its way
so we become waves not deceiving
the sea

this light carries a secret desire
to bring the horizon nearer
to bear more hearts
more screams
the violence of breaking barriers
invisible forces of cohesion of dismantling
are playing in the innocence of an unborn language

their gestures interrupted by thoughts escaping tired bodies
their gestures flow into strange voices
to be is something
to be loved is everything
to love is still a mystery
how to hold on to your heart
as to wild horses

Hypnotic days
hypnotic nights
our bodies have burnt
all clothes
and several lives

we are
as hungry as the world
as old
as young

our bodies
two motionless stones
in a mountain river

Ioana Ieronim, from *The Lens of a Flame

A blossoming intensity
Invisibilium
One day I’ve felt: to be who you are

the urgency of feeling alive
the quietness of the waving at the end of the road
That’s how it is: I am who I am
An intense inexplicable tautology
or  a certain taste in my mouth,
a lazy hand on the morning pillow.
the salt of the earth in my tears, so many, uncountable
young staring in the mirror- to have someone to watch my scorching sorrow
the conundrum of why to keep dreaming

iridescence of silence in my gaze,  unpredictable tones

To be, to keep it simple.
the elements and their transmutation cannot explain it:
each and every antientropic pulsation
the eyes of fire see through me
I am unrecognizable inside out
Cause I am you and you and him.

Like this stone
of Monte San Michele
as cold as this
as hard as this
as dried as this
as stubborn as this
as utterly
dispirited as this

Like this stone
is my unseen
weeping

Death
we discount
by living

Giuseppe Ungaretti, 1916

"God is Alive, Magic is Afoot."*

Who are you? Who am I?
the light  in February can be self-sufficient,
sharp as deafness in the middle of the sentence
heavy as denial,
rapturous as a fusion
in the wind, in the air
forces of cohesion and destruction
play well together
in the arena of ribs, guts, lungs,
perhaps the silent liver
something is shivering inside
the light of a blade
an efortless wave of desire
a tired boundary left alone in the afternoon
the contours of my limits, your limits,
their limits so bright in this
constructivist fabric
Picasso was just foretelling us
forcing the doors
to expose the cover-up
dreaming his internal objects

then we start all over
with every breath
I want to give myself to me
as a new toy, as a gift
I want to love him with overt passion
I want you/him to break and store me
in between your thoughts
the body is full of eyes, of ears, of lips
I’ll survive in a whisper

They just want to flow into each other
clapping, holding on to the fluid of life
engulfing everything, defying all
censorship, authorship,
leadership

the light in February
is newly born with desire
to embrace itself, its darkness
in the vibrant body
I am, you are are sliding back with the air
finding rest in the vital void

the song remains the same
I am you, and you are me
the enchanted blade
is ready to cut
a new body for misunderstanding
we need to survive each other
something is tickling my feet
some wordless revolt
some rage of the living
to impersonate death
to posses their breath

I feel my boundaries
watched over by desire
but you are always invited here
to sing your sea of blood
turquoise or as you like

I am my desire
my desire is searching for myself
everywhere
in the incomprehensible light
in the lightness of his hair
in their hunger, courage and despair
for tomorrow

but I knew its walls ripe with the hate of an ancient dampness
and the ceilings leaking and the floor quaking with hatred
and the neighbours lurking at the windows, to see what happens in our house.

four generations have hated in here incessantly, no one escaped it.
at our house, hatred acts like a replacement for icons,
food and beverage. without hatred,
Sunday pours over as turbid as lye.

in the beginning it was, maybe, just the hatred of one
deprived of love, but later, for those that followed,
it became a natural hatred, a
homely feeling, our title of nobility
and for some time now none of us has taken any comrade
but the one that he or she could hate the most.

especially at night, when the ending is close,
hatred nestles in its bedtime garments, bleeds between the sheets,
all night we turn from one side to the other
with our eyes focused in the dark to the other's bed.

the children have already learned it, know that nobody sleeps,
listen with their eardrums swollen by strain how the hatred crawls,
with the noise of a heavy spider, from one bed to another.
now it packs one into another and quakes, and from them
here comes a fresh smell of frozen dampness.

this nonetheless only for a few months, two-three years at most,
after which their blood
gets darker and the hatred sends down into them a somber conceit
and then we recognize them as being of our kind.

when I was born, I was born for this:
to take the hatred further, to throw it into children -
I do not matter, none of us matters,
only the hatred we pass on from one to the other matters.
we marry out of hatred. we make children out of hatred.
they must hate in their turn, because otherwise,
our more than a century-long heritage will go to waste.

and if we were not to hate, those prepared for it since childhood,
it would spread among you and we must be very careful,
because our regular doses may **** you,
although nobody can be sure that life
is just life.

Ioan Es. Pop
Translated by Anca Romete

I don't believe that you will die
I believe that you will turn
into a night bird
an Athenian owl

a night bird
that chirps in my ear
who are you
where do you come from
where are you going

Dan Laurentiu, *Mountolive

Surfer Grandson Smoker
Manager Traveler Father
Daughter Cook Teacher
Mother Reader Lover
Trainer Son Painter
Volunteer Exhibitionist
Santa Claus
member of a fishermen club
tomorrow
or you name it
if you still have air

we left ourselves outside
alone with these explosive days
blind witnesses
have buried their faces
into the desert of time
the concentration of pain
remains a universal constant
the world is a helpless arena
of master plan illusions
what shall I become
or what shall be consumed of me?

and these rupture faults
body-dynamite against ego-dynamite
culture crushing nature versus
nature crushing culture
the soul famine
in the book
of unknown faces

we were all just enlivened cells once

while we feast in our blood
the discreet continuities
remain hidden
identity encapsulated
in the wave length
of supernovas egos

poetry is left with this
apparent nonsense
camomile turns into laughter
and the pride of butterflies
deserves better

this rhythm consumes us
faster than the speed of dreams
the speed of thought
the speed of forgetting
how our mothers
were never healed

to be or not to be simple
that’s a question

if I close my eyes and fall like forever
deeper and deeper, just deep enough
I can feel the speed of the earth
it spins me further away from the path of harm
if you want to know me just look at the clouds
they carry the rythm of my tears
far away into the roundness of a blue heart

he would have discovered him
trying to change the water formula in his tears
he tried to exist/insist/resist
where no body was thinking
the man without moon
suspended in a terrorizing labyrinth of faces
His own
he was a method man
growing salt in his eyes like minefields
teaching it the taste of the earth
anxiety like mountains of fog eradicating crossroads
he wants to exist inside the body of the world
with the decency of negotiated desires
and the hands get lost in translation
truth is a black truffle
sweating and swearing
sensuous craters perhaps
he killed many singing birds
searching for imagination, his body
muted, renegotiated soon after birth
staying alive, denying the soul of zebras
He lacks verbs, some nouns
learning from the theory of absence
how the effortless U(n-conscious)
is a Poet that
rhymes the body with the mind
of the world

He summoned the shaman, the artists, the tango teacher
to the wake of his body
while learning how summer waves contribute to a theory of mind
his self white
white while forgetting Magritte,
a taxi for Chopin
or the whiteness of the cotton pickers
perhaps

If only, if only a small red fish would come
  show his golden eyes above the apathetic ocean and ask me
to make three wishes, to have three dreams I can’t come up with one

If only, if only the tides would come, burning
  to wash us off the shore, to take us, wrap us
and bury us like amnesiac seeds in its warm *****, its vast womb

If it came as an enormous face, a shining face
  to look us in the eye, to draw us into its blinding mirror,
to make us press our mouths to its vast lips, and into its huge blue eye
  retreat and rest...

If only, if only something, someone, anything, anyone would come,
    a ray of dark apocalyptic light, an effervescent narcotic toxin,
a new shiver, a new anxiety, a leap into a different world,
    if only there could be another man, another wisdom, a new thought
to think us all          to deliver us from ourselves, to abolish us

and we cease, universe, souls, if only we could endure the birthing pain

to sleep... die... sleep... to rise again into Imagination...

Magda Carneci from *My Cup of Light

a soul history is like the caligraphy of dunes
the psyche toiling its dark materials
sketching shadows from imagination
the cabaret of desire contemplating all the wonderful trivial terrible beings you can be. a wave in my mind you are
between the visible and invisible man the wisdom of the shamans

I walk on streets, I see things, I touch hands suffering from imagination deficit disorder. sometimes I have thoughts in reverse
but I cage my heart in this shrine of memory while
I am looking for you dawn by dawn, bird by bird

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.

"That's something poetry can do for you, it can entrance you for a moment above the pool of your own consciousness and your own possibilities."*
Seamus Heaney

it is not enough
the eyes, the ears,
the ebb and flow
of calcium in bones
of iron in stars
sometimes silence pours down
like a blessing
some left their offices
and they're now deciphering
the eyes of thunder
some inner power turns me around:
the tribes of air
the shapes of a child's wonder
the involuntary rehearsal of words
this passivity of language
like jazz phrases
the wrinkles of that woman
imprinted in my heart
(by her murderous fingers)
spring gives me rose-like mornings
(because of my bedroom curtains)

and there is something else
this feeling of oneness
the cedar and the flowering river
motherly care, exhaustion, or not knowing
and the hues of morning skies
countless fleeting little gestures
and the cries of birds
tearing solitudes
my complete abandonment to him
in the sea of time

I let the window open
every day is a declaration of love
even when I hate
the dance with the unknown
the inextricable
the polyphony of laughter
and darkness

you live in me during the day
and I **** your name each night
anew

I'm in the here&now;
or on a ***** street busy with indifference
daylight falls over
like an iron curtain
and my caged dreams
suddenly claim
their seed innocence

I thought I met you
on unpredictable roads under my skin,
in the splitting of one second into another,
in the empty spaces of the atoms,
in the breath of the night
into the unthought known
or some promise, untaught

I’m holding here
my exhausted smile
me and a flower lady
holding  unwittingly
a water lily
redeemed

In my native land where some have bread
but others hold the knife, and a rustless
chain of interest links the one to the other,
in my resplendent and sad country,
I'm an aged raven, wingless,
an inconsequential pariah with a white star of distinction on his
                                                                                                                       forehead,
a bottomless vessel into which all would ***** -
all - their bile and powerlessness, their hatred.
And since in my land
I fear nothing,
and since in my land nothing
can happen to me except my hopeless
love of Mary,
I suddenly feel overwhelmed with unfamiliar joy,
by unbounded happiness in my heart's
thought, by limitless ecstasy
like death in gold and blood. Like radiance of flesh.
So, in my native country of murdered thoughts,
of guilty silence, humble elation within,
I admit responsibility and affix my signature hereunto -
Liviu Antonesei.

Liviu Antonesei, from City of Dreams and Whispers
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Ioana Ieronim

closer to the edge
you've never found nakedness
the taste of mirrors
-some turn on the radio-
we need a place full of
not the wrong side of hell
it's years now, it's in vain
to measure the route of light
to the other side of truth

innocent apples have ripened
and you keep excavating time
(love is not enough)

have a taste
there was honesty
in bloom

Innocent mother,
Like a tree you brought me forth,
When you were praying for pardon
                                                   on your knees,
When unquenched fires were burning you
And the strands of life bound you
                                                    more tightly.

I was neither for you
                                         peace,
Nor the olive bough,
Nor against pain --
Sweet unbinding.
I did not understand how to bring wise answers,
Nails I nailed
                           into your palms, on the cross.

Blameless mother,
Passing mother,
Pallid light,
The thought pains me badly
And time does not give me relief.

Flavia Cosma from *Wormwood Wine

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to brake into blossom

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious.

by Lisel Mueller

"Every teardrop is a waterfall"

there is something in sight
some layers inside
the pain of worthlessness
under hatred
corroding the scared ribs

there are acts of seduction
in every corner of a smile
to undress the dead
from theirs spirits

there is the specter of ******
screaming in between the shields
tempting to posses life itself

tenderness is a foreign language
in the cravings of the night
or this is just the long way of love
waking up the leaving

there is something in sight:
the day working against itself
while somebody is learning
how sweet
it is to hate

but life is not that complicated
when you love
what you hate

you intensify a subtle creature inside me
with sudden nuances of sonorous blueness, aurora greenness,
naughty yellowness
with the impatience of roots piercing the earth of my soul
this creature keeps stumbling onto the same truth that
metabolizes light tenderly for me to have a measure of my depth
suddenly the strangest of strangers is I

the sea is sighing like a woman
and I can hear its breath
of a hunted man
nearby yellow flowers
wild stones
salt drops stinging my arms
two seagulls dart out of my eyes
and fly side by side
speaking to each other over water
like human beings
in the absence of love

Carmen Firan
translated by Andrei Bantas

In the depths of the bloodied waters
stones were dissolving -
via an echo the wind was telling me,
the rain brought back to my hearing
rhythms of an ancestor song
with one ear stalking the other
I was beginning already to be divided

monologizing - dialogizing
let us go to sleep maybe the reality
we lost will come to us in a dream

the coldness which came from a misunderstanding
had a touch of nobility
then out of pride came scorn
then hate, then we came
to inhabit the same body
like two convicts in one cell
who are fighting underhand
but suddenly stop when they hear
the warden's step

I am myself scarred on the inside
and have no right to pronounce harmony
between you
but take out the ashes while there is time
give the spirit shape

Ioanid Romanescu, from *Time's Expansion

In the sea caves
there's a thirst there's a love
there's an ecstasy
all hard like shells
you can hold them in your palm.

In the sea caves
for whole days I gazed into your eyes
and I didn't know you nor did you know me.

*Giorgos Seferis

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

to kindness, to knowledge,
we make promises only; pain we obey.
Marcel Proust

I was born into this world
of people without
guardian angels but
loveless pockets
no body to see how
pain was incessantly
turned into tombstones
a carousel of masks and
defeated laughter
blinded by deceitful colours.
triumphant sidewalks not afraid
to be crushed by the weight of
humiliated bodies.
-he was secretly dreaming
how vanilla ice-cream would taste
on her lips-
people got used to bringing their thoughts
to the drug stores
as if walking their pets
weeping was incomprehensible
forbidden by law.
-she was secretly dreaming
of him smelling like tobacco,
white musk and cedarwood -


this world survived because of
all the hidden dimensions,
perhaps.
I was handed over a disembodied world
to dream of but
the metaphors were of
no use
to moonless people
their hands paralyzed.
oh, can anybody see?
the unspoken terror
that time stood still.
-I was secretly dreaming of destroying
this world with fresh words, with
the craziness of feeling alive-

I inherited the secret passion
of some unknown promises and
never-whispered desires
the only teacher I could find -
my manic heart
unbearable the pains of
growing a mind.

they wanted to keep it simple:
to cry, to speak, to fall in love.
muted seagulls
loveless alphabets
into this world
waiting for the sun to shed
its hidden self
of blindness

my shoulders were so tired
of carrying this meaning without meaning
I’ve done my negotiations with reality –
to handle the truth that I cannot exist in your eyes
but in your absence I invented the world

you’re the creator of this empty space, so central
of restless nights, of desperate sighs
making a secret pact with the Danaids, my days
my love for you only sealed the invisible dimension
against all odds
I’ve worked like a smith at this smitten dream of love
but you’ve erected walls inside, walls of silence outside
Yours was the impossible touch
I would know your belts better than your hand
no room for dreams at your table
only your fist in the arena of power
between the kitchen and the living room

you’ve stayed so loyal to her rejecting womb
that all women should have been born as men, soldiers
but there she was, this little girl, chasing you in my dreams
how clever should I have been to get your attention?
how sensitive could I have been to translate your silence?
you’ve turned me into a sleepless tigress weighing the danger
of every move in the corner of your eye

I’ve rarely put on lipstick
my eyes were all too busy protecting
your crushing absence,
too much life compensating inside
all those tears still dissolve my face
with every imaginary man
again and again
I’ve studied  pigeons’ flight
instead of the art of flirting in/with the night
I’ve searched for wounds to heal instead
of blissful laughter, not to disturb
the stillness of the forbidden one

I’ve carried your pride for so long
incongruent with my own sense of value
a nothing left outside, a sign without meaning
I was
counting the pathologies of day

but I’ve signed the declaration of independence
don’t want to take the art of losing to perfection
You were so right to hide, to yell and to pretend
dreams are the hardest thing to handle
I’ve stretched my soul on height and depth
that it’s become a fluid full,
emptied of myself

I will always love you
with a wiped smile
Father,
the future remains unwritten
inconnu

the light the heat
in your eyes*
Peter Gabriel

there is a thunder in your eyes
when wild horses graze in blue quiet sunsets
there is air in your fingertips

I hear
this dance with silence
and how I need to learn
to stay still
in that thunder
in your eyes

i am not stable
i am not wild
i am not simple
i am not mild
i'm only dreaming
about the mystery
i received
when i was born
a child

i am not yours
i am not mine
i'm only a letter
in the alphabet
of time

a protest against emptiness?
the failure of forgetting the beginning of touch?
an unanswered question?
the sky inside the roots of trees?
the desert inside the heart of rain?
the dreams of the heat of the earth inside cold stones?
an uninterrupted dance of absence and semantics?
the memory of photons from the moment of conception?
the steam of bodies in the quiet air?

what if love is this cosmic urgency,
emergence with myriad faces,
a protest against the liveliness of
nothingness?

Before me, nothing is what
it used to be; all seams getting ready to be;
a child with a hoop runs by, as in De Chirico's paintings
- in the distance the sky's still red, but in the poem it's gray.
I feel the words growing inside my fingers
and for the first time not for my benefit.
In the quiet of evening
the town seems a game with toy bricks
in which matches are struck and flare brightly - music cavorts at
                                                                                                       the windows -
in the distance the sky's gray, but in the poem is red.

Gellu Dorian, from City of Dreams and Whispers
translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Doina Iordachescu

It might take me years
To dislodge myself from
Life – this magma which has swallowed me,
And be out of the reach of neighbour gossip.
To emerge from a fight not mine.
You were there, privileged angel in the dark,
Amused at my faux ferocity,
Recalling the courage of my first days,
When I was unconcerned about
What place I’d fall asleep in.
Not yet understanding
The human need to cling to a past.
Always ready to give myself away.

You watched from above
The prose of my struggles,
In the web of our common suffocation.
You knew how to be the cruel one,
To leave everything behind, in a town to which
You would never return.
Today I fear the drizzle,
I fear the fog.
I never forget my umbrella at home.
I mind the hustle of the quay,
Unusual at this early hour.
I cherish the noises which accompany my coffee on the terrace.
I watch helplessly, in exasperation,
These faces of common poems
Which harbours always hold.

Constantin Abaluta, from *It Might Take Me Years

i told you to stay away from mornings,
their raw sun is not for us.
whereas the blurred and heavy sun of our world
hardly steams up the horizon. we are
at the beginning of another world and of others suns.

you've remained alone. it's good. you have the whole past at hand.
you've seen evil with eyes wide open and you will heal.
one day you'll understand that everything that shines
brings death closer to you.

evenings, on the other hand, will please you here:
you are in the age of livid worlds,
half shadow, half unknown.
be welcome. here the future
has almost passed.

Ioan Es. Pop, **The Livid Worlds

Why hiding your fears in an unchewed No
Or sparkling your eyes just one liquid moment?
We are already tired before we begin.

En passant I have to tell you about the glue
That is cast upon our hips
scattered images in fugitive dreams
us at the same table
me waving good bye
perfume on your hands
but not enough laughter
to open some space in time

It’s noon and I miss you

my hand in your hand is jazz
the knot of our tender looks is poetry
and rage sometimes
all details germane,
this fluidity of desire passing through
the unexpected like sheets of rain
the kiss on my shoulder
the lightness of your soles
a love without name without shame is improvising
and you say come and I say round until I fall into your shadow
and when I fade away you open the door of a song
in my palms the forgotten synesthesia when
I listen to the intensity of cells, to the sacredness of dreams
I wear the boldness of the earth for you
I swear the freedom in the core of mirrors

there is so much night fallen under, in between, beside
the space is not enough to handle the burden of the living
the music refuse to surrender, grotesque
to givedeathsomethingtodo
each tiny thought fills the chamber of not-yet-thoughts
toomuchtobear
each idea splits into thousand others each minute
the mind is a rag, a broken doll watching this performance of power
l’elan vital
feelings ceaselessly running wild into each other,
crashing, colliding, stumbling blinded
calling their names
no redemption for light anywhere
crawling happens in all direction in the same time
until space it’s collapsing under its own weight
I slip through a dark visible hole attuned to the rhythm of hell
what an experience, the speed of blood refuses to freeze
terror is running to stand still
not enough connections
I practice some claws out of chaos
crammed with ******
the pain is unbearable all over
every inch is a battlefield
time has turned into the ghost of eternity
just a direction to flow, if only I could find
sing me a lullaby mama
so that I can make more space between my ears
lend me some grace
to ask death
to be gentle with me
only imagination breathes in
to steal some time alive
dreaming the touch of peacefulness
amid the stubbornness of heart

nospacenolight
this is how I became an expert
in pigeon’s flight
while insisting somehow
to keep my eyes inside
this is how I got some courage
to bear Yes & No in the dark
to keep writing when I die in myself
for love to find

the principle of uncertainty
when there were no corners
not yet
the energy of thought
preformed
the roots of leaves
preconditioned
the land of images without boundaries
I was the king of taste
this vessel took
changing forms
each minute
I was one with my hand
with my towels
with the red cube
of desire
I want was enough
to destroy
the names of dawn
this vessel knows the route to chaos
our guarding mother
take me in your sighs
hold me somewhere
in the sleeves
of thought
let's do it
let's feel one last bit
of the pulsing wreckage
we are full of promises we made
to ourselves
to take the route
to the next level
of ecstasy
we need a container
let's do it
let's chase the semantics
away
what remains is
the fruit of day

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.*
Leonard Cohen

the night birds
do want to be saved from light
in the land of whispers
the toll of complexity is
their unchanged lament
trapped between layers
insecure inside the semiotic square:
what is real?
true?
imaginary?
what is true and not true? – the call of destruction
this terror, the impossibility of meaning, shut inside the
drawer with plastic bags
we made my house there
somebody had to play the fool
these are reality games
recognition games
language games
with no key for the other’s syntax
who is the subject in this grave of flesh?
reality should be transactional
but the silence turned its face away instead
the clear bodies without voice rejoice
nobody asked the body how difficult it is to bear a mind
“we all know it’s not true & don’t you dare recognize it”
“you should be happy with your life & happiness doesn’t exist
(look at my poor body)”
“you are on your own & don’t you dare disobey”
“you must prove yourself & you are no good without us”

the right to reality was still not invented
since we are mostly busy deciphering our own language
words are self-fulfilling

I’m caring my annihilation safe
in the silence of nails
in the exhaustion of tools
of axes
and all the other love words