for Stefana, Aurora, Alexandrina, Elisabeta, Lina and all the women in whose tired hands the sun used to set

I can only write this in my own language
maybe people don’t have a name of their own
or a time comes
this apparent abyss, incommensurable
in the **** of time
they didn’t live with duty free promises
I wonder how they dealt with the blood
with their naked arms
furious at stones
            woman-pillow
the earth knew how to be quiet between eyelids
the wind was superstitious
no rush into a smile
they couldn’t predict the lipstick
and the tantric love
curses cross bridges
and their hair would hide
                woman-wheel
back then the sunset was still happening
and maybe an eyebrow would raise
the duty to yourself was not yet invented
only beautiful hats, some scarfs
swallowed pains, unrecognized feelings
                woman-pillar
                 woman-child
their smoked skirts and rebellious step
they used to descend into their hands and into sweating
they never went out of the sun
not to disturb the wise colours or the needle work
when the bones of their men screeched
morning would come
and they wouldn’t have woken them up
not even the ignorant god of enduring
                woman-silence
I’m sitting in the mirage of dresses, perfumes, high heels
and their names are searching for me:
the night of the hunter is not over
I would kiss their hands
for a portion of wonder
of patience
love looks for the oneself
in the other

they were much more
much less than
a name
fading

the weight of tears leaves no traces. apparently. pain has no axis of symmetry, but petrifying meanings. everybody must be afraid. there is no point. there is no point in the scream of windows, in the continuity of doors.
in a turbulent ray of light. this destructive force, the orphan desire of a child. its autistic strife. pain, the silent witness of unlived lives. streets keep their rhythm and pretend all is forgiven. rarely is. there are more pains than people. hear the steps in the geometry of desire.  reinvented desire to love. to let live.

every full stop is an abyss of breath.

she has always been much closer
than my palms, my fingerprints.
my prints leave a dam, a stony wail of my being outside in the matter,
but she leaves this dam inside me,
this stony wail, like a secret killing,
she has left her fingerprints everywhere in me.
she is inside of me and I am outside of her, all around her,
the walls, the garden,
the unmistakable halo of the town, the photon crowns
of houses. I am all around her,
outside, one of her fingerprints,
the fingerprint of this dam, this stony wail in the matter.

Ion Mircea, from My Cup of Light
translated by Lidia Vianu and Anne Stewart

shh, let me tell you how this story goes in this silence as powerful as the one after the first atomic bomb, in this space of crushed illusions. you are alone, I know you are. that was counter therapeutic, that lack of hope when grandma struggled with the shovel against the frozen earth so early in the morning. it was besides the point that grandpa from the other chapter was playing violin outside, on the porch of this house of tears while a childlike woman swallowed the sunset in her frightened eyes. like the opposite of a hermit.
shh, there can be so little love, you know, only broken petty gestures, meaningless in any direction the wind would blow. yes, it’s no good to make love in the quietness of lavender fields. too many mothers have turned on the other side in their slumber sheets.
you know it’s been years since words are tempting to surface the horizon of events, it’s pure physics. something will remain  forever hidden behind the horizon, they say, who count the miracles of day. shh let’s not disturb now the other chambers of thought, I'll write to you each day like a child forgotten outside to play.
they are coming inside, I’ll put you somewhere in the preformed space, I’ll cram you somewhere into the smallest place. see you in the morning with the first breath.  you have to do this alone, redefining these tears, no one will do it for you.
our bodies link us together, do they know? I’ll just keep writing to you. mothers and daughters are bonded by scarfs when fathers just look aside. you are a wall breaker, this is what you are. the world cannot bear metaphors when dawn gets stifled by false pretence. I’ll feed you with words as long as necessary, till the air becomes more clear in the morning. some things can be born only by whispers.

your trainers full of dirt
next to a Christmas decoration,
the woodpacker self-absorbed on a branch,
a pigeon floating on a current of mystery
I emptied of an I in the tenderness
of this fleeting moment

this blood
an unseen weeping
pour me into the palm
of your hands
I wanna
flow

you float like an enchanted nebula in my mind,
pass like the clouds inside my veins,
are the easiness of breathing in my dreams
you forget me for millions of seconds in the imaginary time
you are more real than reality itself in your spontaneous combustions
so that I destroy you each day inside my bones,
I ignite the narrative of dawn, the blueness of your ribs
I forget about you like I forget crying in the aliveness of lovers
I need to forget you like one forgets faraway explosions, storms and miracles because I love you with all the songs of the wind,
the wind that spreads the seeds further away from each other the same way the flow of mystery so precise is carring us further and further away towards ourselves

words are a breaking through
from non-linearity of colours
hard to endure the abyss of green
the mind produces the world in excess
extending thought to the point of boiling
a breath of fresh air comes from the other side
a struggling music in the streets
cracked with wanting
sometimes it rains with desire
and neuroticised eyes
the politics of need is coined
in the land of no answers

I am an orphan of desire
my rightful eye is busy
farming for myself
new territories
the master and the slave are linked
by nails
and watery hopes

forget your words
there is silk over waters
there is more space
for immersion

I am an orphan
without my desire
to love
all the siren calls
devouring thoughts
of you

So then, let's take the Foraminifera.
They lived, since they were, and were since they lived.
They did what they could since they were able.
In the plural since the plural,
although each one on its own
small limestone shell.
Time summarized them later
in layers, since layers,
without going into details,
since there's pity in the details.
And so I have before me
two views in one:
a mournful cemetery made
of tiny eternal rests
or,
rising from the sea,
the azure sea, dazzling white cliffs,
cliffs that are here because they are.

Wislawa Szymborska from Here New Poems
translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh

I meant to write another poem
but time's corkscrew drills
the ribcage
my dreams are acid
the thought - a decayed staircase
don't know what I want to say
Future seems a forgotten poem
gravitation is not a joke inside the bones
I should have learnt to respect you,
death

my lips feel ****
I a bit vile
I feel decisive
tonight
I'm burning down
the my oh my
Van Gogh's turquoise
inside
self portrait in the wild:
a woman loves to
toast to cloudburst

I think I might
recycle the devil
for poetry's sake,
tonight it smells
of cinnamon,
of flemish paintings

my love is an aborted child, I do not shed the same tears, only the same skin saddled with puzzles inside the intersection of presence and absence. the outcome of irrational congruence being yourself all day long is not enough you my pain don’t really matter to me silences fall between my fingers or was it too loud when I asked to be touched?  I am not able of speaking about love today with a mouth full of noises all hiding places are equal to themselves only you my pain defy definitions although they call me primitive.( theory says I am supposed to have grown up to live by the standards of a self-controlled open system)
but you my pain are well aware, I am still primitive, ultraviolent when I laugh, when I cry, when I refuse to let go of the ****** horizons, of foreign faiths, the end of all dying days, the mixture of their cravings and solitude
they are caring their bows in the honour of their truths my pain looks so pale among so many others. This is my pain in honour of your pain.  This is one way of loving the sellers of illusions yes, I have to own the arrest warrant for my heart someday

yes, this pain is a proud beggar

the song of birds measures the air
the buds of the future are fragile
what a fate - not a rhyme:
the eyelids are filled with light

pillars of darkness are full of debris
suspended in silence
as inside so outside
one day everything is transparent
the angel of apocalypse seized the window of opportunity
the meaning is locked in the semiotic circle
I and non-I mutually annihilating each other
terror breathed in normally
psychic ***** killing biology
the impossible unreachable pain
the mute rage
the lost connection between heart and heart

so powerful and meaningless from above
so small down there
all those little roads
men like ants, bugs, worms
all those petty little lives

to be above, to disconnect from this void
from the taste of earth in the mouth

frozen semiosis
things are sick of meaning
interchangeable
murderers can be heroes, devotees
dreamers

let us weep, let us pray
that we never forget
how the heart knows to play
the chords of day

I feel free for a while now
my shadow turned into a fountain
I am one with myself and
the darkest shade of blue
I carry no longer empty hands
his shadow her shadow
patience makes the shoes lighter
I imprison myself when I see only
halves of colour

I feel free to have fried chicken
and a salad now
I have only my own destiny
to carry around

what she said about
all her loves and
the fountain of sleep
the spring of thirst
have just showed me
this resonant truth
like an oracle
I am still trapped
in this echo: that
I am as mad as
I've always been
maybe even worse
cause now I can see
the stars and the voids
in plain daylight
and I want to say
with all my waters
with all my earths
with all my deaths
with all my fallings
into the sky

Frida said
come what may
I wonder if she feared
the bloodflood

We are passing through a blue
period after
a grey period: 'Surely
a green age will follow.' You
stifle your remorse. We are on
our way to
yet
another chance
for tears
in our mother's eyes. Don't you agree? Mothers
enfolded
in the depths -the depths
of land dear
to our souls - where the gods
live
steeped in their
energy. That energy
is proof enough that never, not for
one single
moment, have their hearts
departed
from that magnetic place.
               Magnetic? Of course...
Alone in those lands,
they hang on to their sadness, their wisdom,
while their children
              reach out to catch
                         the golden ring of freedom,
and the risk:

the risk of wandering on an endless,
senseless pilgrimage. Flying
like model planes? Oh,
the thrill
until -
three thousand, twelve thousand
years - they're found, fossilised in sedimentary rocks,
mothers
separated from their children, layers
and layers apart, preserved,
with a bit of luck, in mint condition
(maybe) buried
with all the things that might
be needed in the afterlife...
A movement
from East to West, following
the progress
of the sun. What

was I saying? Oh yes, we are passing through
a blue period, after
a grey period...

Liviu Ioan Stoiciu, from Born in Romania, Contemporary Literature Press, Bucharest 2014

“I don’t like future, mama
“I don’t wanna go there
I like when past comes
cause I can fix things”
sometimes  words desire such
and time just follows desire anywhere
Where love is, there will time go
into a past without future
to set absence on a naive fire
to light the windows
to dive into the thick air of yesterday
without breathing out
or rushing into a dream
of a future without past
without shadow
without doubt

while past and future
simply exist  in the same time
undisturbed by paradoxes
in this fluid larger than us
of single moment within the moment
in the present tense
of love

We are not yet ready—intellectually, philosophically,
or morally—for the world we are creating. In the next few decades,
old ways of thinking that have served us well for hundreds, even
thousands, of years, will be called into question. New debates, controversies, movements, and ideologies will come to the fore. Some
of our most deeply held assumptions will be revised or abandoned
altogether. Together we will need to re-imagine what it means to
be free or equal, what it means to have power or property, and even
what it means for a political system to be democratic.

Jamie Susskind, from Future Politics Living together in a world transformed by tech

bold and assiduous like a young hip
our glowing silence tears the air
the unconceived truth of blood
you wander around my chest as if in a
procession towards the delirium of spring
my wrists have no dream to hide
the eyes confess: falling skies are crushing
stone by stone the world in which you didn't exist
my body buried in light
an orderless language, the rest is details

“The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.”*

to O. F.

Maybe your soul is a kite right now
as I am writing on the kitchen table and
winter orchids are  earnestly blooming,
May you be peaceful in the final womb
Dostoyevsky wrote about you, the humble one -

There is a hole now in the shape of morning
I can't find you smelling pears anymore.
Only my eyes filled with dust over your casket
You hid your dreams so deep,
devouring oblivious dreams
She poisoned her milk and
that's how you learned to deny
all the streets you never went.
spring sun used to find you listening
to the solitude of trees, while the seasons were recycling your shyness.
Somehow you didn't notice the light slowly descending
into the green chaos, or just the old mundane hatred,
the embrace of a disavowing (d)evil.

- this poem could be full of the noisy blindness of life
of crushed dignity and helplessness
I want to find the right letters to write
only two impossible words: pure heart-

Farewell delicate soul,
You have died enough
.

If we do not inhabit our verses,
what is the use of writing?

Eminescu, Rilke, Byron and Mandelstam
succeeded.

Grapes squeezed in a timepress.

If we are not alive in our images
what remains of poets?

Dew and ink,
Labour, symmetries?

Blood is the only colour
That can’t be erased from a book.

Adrian Popescu, from My Cup of Light
translated by Lidia Vianu and Anne Stewart

to be
or maybe just
trying to be

to be or not
or yes
or like you were without truly being

well
let it be...

to get in
or sometimes out
of your own mind
as if you would not even care about exuberance or sorrow

naught or infinity
nothingness
endless

to lay/to stand
faling into a slumber is like an upside-down waking
one sleep with many dreams inside

a single step more or one less
in open space or hidden path
not knowing everything
nor nothing knowing about
yourself

down here all seems to be
strength/weakness/happiness
falls or rebounds

to be almost at all
or only to-cease-a-little-bit-to-be

light/abyss

finally
all seems not to be anything than always the same shamelesss
swollen from so much foolish tension/internal/but eternal/rather
flat/mat/fat/and mostly incorrigible
                                                    ­       "This is the question"

by Gigi Caciuleanu, from "Miroirs"

You say: to be penetrated, to penetrate. Sea-sand, sand-sea
verging on the very centre. Words fall between us

like something broken. Listen, I love you.
But you, having it only your way, exist, exist, exist.

You are not being paid for this and still,
Mr. and Mrs. Other, you stroll along the street as if

you’re only a name and have no navel. I
act like you, repeat the movements

which you repeat. Tell me, reflection —
I throw another stone at you — is anyone more actual than me?

I say sand-sea, sea-sand. Like something
broken: a multiplication of faces, legs and hands                 like
something

that’s there. So: enough. Come back to me. I’ll let you go
as often as you like.

Now there’s no longer a difference between us, except this
poem
where some sort of a world lives. Another possibility,

not really different: here, you don’t leave at all.
You don’t stop coming for a moment. I open

a mirror and turn its pages in front of what’s already
written. It’s what you are: sadness in front of the blue evening sky,

anger, insult, longing ******* the blue from your chest
or happiness that suddenly spills in front of the blue of that evening sky;

it’s a voice which accompanies what, looking,
I see now or don’t see. And I see you:

world by world, now by now, one
and yet another one. In this poem that stumbles from page

to page you watch and flicker between letter and letter
and vanish — present in every one of these apparently silent centimeters —

and don’t stop coming, and not really coming. So enough, please,
don’t hide everywhere, talk to me, all of you at once.

Amir Or, from Let's Speak You
translated by Ioana Ieronim

I can hardly bear this
tension of my lips
as I fall for the silence
in your hands
I remain silent till
the coffe gets cold
the streets get slippery
because of a radical darkness
somewhere there is a first
breath, a first kiss,
a last breath

I want to forget all languages
except the language of whispers
a rumbling cascade this feeling
of my quiet fingers
such a wonderful paradox
within a broken world
innocent dreams can envision
you

At the border between garden and orchard,
an old door
with a rusted padlock. Rusted by rain or dew?

We walk through it barefoot blissful, cherubic.
My name: Volatile

Grandmother’s apron, a white cloud
scented with lavender
under which I’d bend my head
when the lamb gave birth,
sowing the air with as many photons
as star seeds
over hills, in summertime.

Then, the timeless joy –
children by the pond
gazing at the orange mill
brimming with moon.

Under the beam,
the braid of garlic cloves
– tiny lanterns
illuminating my height
on the spine of the door,
marked there by father,
his hands fragranced with walnuts,
and on the windowsill
the little sack of seeds waiting to defrost.

At the border between clay and star,
a narrow door
through which only we
could squeeze,
on a path of light.

by Liliana Ursu, translated by Mihaela Moscaliuc

hear listen to the sound
of the crisp snow spinning the air
say hello where are you
say farewell to the old moon
while rivers are carrying their quiet darkness
and all the poems untouched
by emptiness
remake or retake
get drunk with lucidity
get high as the wind passing through
untold stories

It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most
ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse
with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life
we have become so busy with our daily affairs and
thoughts that we have lost this essential art of taking
time to converse with our heart.
Jack Kornfield

let's believe winter
and the sledgehammer that
protects the flame of night
there are layers upon layers upon layers
mixing mingling confusing combining
colluding to obscure the dawn of mind
all is together and yet only fragments
roam around searching
for their other half in the poliphony of darkness

he is a spinning man
he spins himself into laughter into tears
powerful visions and sweet oblivion
while rushing outside of days
to find his spin
searching for a new vibration
an incantation of the living
while light is improvising in his shoulders

there are spaces in between the patterns
thare are hidden passages in between the thoughts
he is busy to explode
or maybe these are the leather hands of his father,
full of transactions
I see smiles killed before meaning
the magma of danger in the secret chambers
some white lies, blue lies
purple lies never
he is a hunter reading the signs of miracle
cunning as an uninvented night

I see him in a dark room
full of waves of moaning
and sometimes silence attacks him
with thousands blades
and he can't bear himself
by himself
with these heavy startles

I see him in the dark room
camera obscura
developing the image
of his unknown heart
of silence
lightness
true laughter

he used to call me only when it rained
or the light was full of moaning
a smile was drying on his face
like a scammer's top hat
you could cut the mist with a knife in his eyes
he used to touch me like i was a chocolate wrapper
he spoke with chalk between his teeth

sometimes there is no progress between hello and hello

Hello, brother
God is nobody’s toy
saying hello, the hardest part
while rifles are getting cold
and army of tears are passing through
I know you see this too
there is only one blood
one pain
one thirst for revenge even
same wind
different chill
different bow
different the choreography of laughter
and a patient god dormant
in the gentleness
of hearts

sitting in my living room
white socks against red carpet
my sleeping toes testing
the cornerstone of morning
dawn’s hoot woke me to daydreaming
and voila

I’m sitting here
awaiting for a fresh poetic tide
to tease me from the home box:
would you like some poetry for breakfast?
how about lunch?
meet me at dinner
let’s have a poetic feast

before time roller coasters
start screeching the duties of the day
musing on new wonders
in the avalanche of gestures
or before pushing the night to its limit
I enter the maze of your words,
you strangers with poetic souls&bodies;&mind;;
longing to vibrate as one
starving never to conclude
floating restless, incomplete
in love’s amniotic dream

I go out on the door
in the colors of your thoughts
fierce chain reaction
giving is receiving
and all of a sudden, unexpected
my heart would open up to itself in a smile
through distance and time
some unknown kindred soul
has been smiling back at me

I wonder how this can be

it must be Poetry
let it labor upon me

I used to love his dark T-shirts
such that
words in my language turned into hieroglyphs
nor, cer, dor
there were some dreams about
myself as a she creature
who didn't know the difference
between body and soul
endings and beginnings
his blood was unstoppable
foretelling my future
oblivious of all the serious things
like deserted crossroads, eager pensions or
sand storms on Mars

he promised my death to me
like a haiku:
more core less sore
happy woman
poppies in the wind

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

when I closed my eyes I saw her,
the woman traversing his dreams
like the verticality of forests
the one breaking into many
she knits the storms in his fingers
keeps the poems of dawn composed
like the sea keeps the horizon folded into itself
she wears different densities of perfume or none at all
the intensity a mirror, the warmth tangible
and unsure like a velvet smile
her bodies a road map into the serenity of clouds
she is hot like the sand - it is always wild in the light
she fills his skin with her everything again
blackness collapses into wonder
she keeps piercing the name of pain
the semiotic self is rippling into the clarity
of clay

when I close my eyes I saw him
the man traversing her dreams
the one breaking into many
echoes fractals aches &
the vitality of blues

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

the hours bloom in the ebb of flowers
these bones are branches of a thought without signature
who thinks for my blood, my soles or hands
the hands feel to fill up the void of thoughts
who listens to the rhythms of life
who cares to know the decay of truth the reality of feelings
the ghetto of the mind breaks the world into unvindicated stories
we jump into the sky as if into a revolution
we traverse our nature from one end to the other

let's mix the unknown of our thoughts
let's  dequantify, step out of our center
a disputed sky is carrying its weight
who is going to...
fill the torture chambers with the echo of dreams
let poetry vindicate all tears
look brutality in the eye, thought's fermentation
we see the world through our wounds
the magnitude of being alive cancels sunsets
history recycles uncertainty, our necessary hands

we strive to redeem the hiatus of colours

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

spectacle society or a faceless society? who could tell. after historical laughter comes a historic dread. when the sky is the limit of power we are doomed to endure the mania of failing floors. nothing is trully free to harm reality, not even poetry, and whose reality is more real. words like disfigured worlds,  they hack the body time. what is beauty and what is truth, this complex breathing creature in an unknowable form, this  hidden vulnerability: we can't bear who we are, we want to sink in a history without memory.

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

when I hear the wind I wonder about the tales
in the chestnut flowers, they refute their ideal
yet even stones need hope to bloom
history recycles its magnitude,
confuses its layers, refurbishes illusions
with every breath we make history

on these streets I look people in the eye
their frozen smile land in my bones
we look at each other with surprise
this is who we are, for real
sealed wounds are spinning a pain in transition
who can admit the exploitation of dreams,
the violence of lies, the competition of shadows
sitting crossed-legs with eyes closed
what we know we are;  what we don't know we are too
we have such a hunger for the food of life hidden
in a lotus flower

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