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Zywa Jun 2022
Wind and rain at night,

and I wonder how many --


flowers have fallen.
"Spring morning" (740, Meng Haoran), translated by David Rafael **** and William Carlos Williams

Collection "After the festivities"
Zywa Oct 2021
The speed of the train pulls
the weight out of the world

before my eyes, shapeless stripes

draw unscientifically the formula
of Einstein on the windows

Sometimes there is a short view of
what it is, when you stand still

Then you can see
what it is, something temporary

in its puzzling flight
of apparent illusions

Everything exists
not knowing how
Collection "New Ago"
Zywa Aug 2021
The mountain stands imperturbable
in the sun, being, being

Receiving clouds, and hail, snow
their bubbling and whirling going away

at its feet, the children's rush
and the pubertal noise of water

playing itself hot
in an embedded adventure

And I am standing on top
of the mountain, being, being

Receiving the sun, experiences
and night thoughts, growing old

Everything melts, nothing in my hands
nothing in my open arms
Collection “Ifless”
Zywa May 2021
I have carved thousands of photos
of my life in stone
without my name
let alone gilded
in chiseled capitals

Photos for strangers
who don't live yet
I have counted and weighed them
their balance is nothing
flat

I ripened, I am softer
and sweeter now
not who I have been
not what remains hard
as if it still exists

With all my experiences
I swaddled myself
in the stone folds
to decay there
and be forgotten
Collection “I am”
Zywa Feb 2020
We fade, we slowly sneak
away, out of the anecdotes
and the photos that remain

for strangers, later
also stripped
of our memories

everything digested
into something else
you and we dissolved

in new lives
with their own stories
in which we whisper softly

we will whisper forever
in the ancestral choir
of the human species
Collection “Greeting from before”
Zywa Feb 2020
It itches in my head
the world turns and tumbles
on margins

of prestige and laws
and well-known artists
dance along

they want to make
something for thousands
of years, for everyone

an axis of eternal truth
and beauty, protected
from the own laws

of vandals, the army
of black beetles
on bomberdumberdays

the violence of time
in the margin of which people
potter for immortality
213 BC
Book burnings commissioned by Qin **** Huang (“Qin, First Emperor of China”)
AD 385
Christians destroy the Hellenistic idols in Palmyra (Syria)
AD 392
Christians destroy the most beautiful building in the world, the Serapeion in Alexandria (built 246-221 BC) and they burn all book rolls
AD 450
Christians remove the naked statues from the Parthenon in Athens (built 447-432 BC)

Collection "PumicePieces"
Zywa Feb 2020
The wind is calling me outside
it's exactly the right wind
to walk in the wonder

of the long avenues
that enchant the air
with swirling blossoms

and restrained, start singing
in me with joy
mixed with sorrow

for the falling, away
from life, away
from the leaf shoots

the swirling awareness
that it is almost over
however much I would have liked

to stay and respond
to the call of the wind
the calling wind
String Quartet (1936, Ulvi Cemal Erkin), performed on Wednesday, January 29th, 2020, by the Borusan Quartet, in the Music building on the IJ in Amsterdam

Collection “Blown sand"
Austin Campbell Dec 2019
i sank into you so easily,
did I think it would hurt
any less?

i fell
so **** hard
i hit the floor
and shattered -
messy broken pieces
cradled by
copious coping mechanisms
and
erudite discussions of self-love.

Kiss the Sun
and
feel the fire
consume flesh
that weeps,
decays
for love,
starved and starving

so

willing to risk it all
for a future
that
feels far and foreign
like some forgotten
(or perhaps, mad?)
dream

juggle life and death
only to spiral
deeper
into the past
into the present
into emotional volatility
like
the withdrawals my heart endures
away from you
and
the pain of longing,
having longed for nothing more
than your touch;
addictive personality prevailing,
sinking further
into lovesick madness,
I turn to the past for answers:
memories attack like zombies
rising from dew-laden graves,
bursting
through time’s barrier
between the now and then...

i see myself
grasping someone’s thumb
i feel love
for the first time;

i see a girl
smiling at me -
she kisses me
awkwardly
next to a green ladder
and
i can’t respond
because
i don’t know how;

i see an arm around a shoulder
in the back of a Dodge van
and
a sweaty highschooler
asking for a girl’s
cellphone number -
did he save her life
or did she save his?
time slips
through them like
knives
cutting ribbons
out of clear paper
and
centuries rust
like the forgotten bike
in that groundhog’s shed;

i see a sweater,
hear a voice,
and my heart colours
the sky
with every shade
of the love
i cannot yet admit
i am feeling -
she is better than me,
of this i am certain,
which is perhaps
why it hurts when
she is so far
and
i already make myself
feel so small.

i see myself,
alone,
young,
afraid
how powerful my love
feels
when i let it go -
while no one’s watching
and
it has nowhere to go
but inward;
a tree falls,
hidden in the dark -

lay in the snow
and
cease.

my heart beats red:
blood-pulse-rhythm
beat beat beating

beating beating
beat

doomed
to love
and
cursed
to care

a fate
only human.
Ylzm May 2019
There is a time to Reveal,
There is a time to Conceal.
There is a time to Stand in the Light,
There is a time to Search in the Darkness.

There is a time to Will as we know how,
and to Work with all the Might in our Arms.
There is a time to Yield to the Storms and Floodwaters,
and Surrender to the Thrills and Joys of the Fearsome Whirlwind.

There is a time to be Silent and Distanced,
and be Disciplined by Patience and Perseverance.

But there will be a time when Perfection is Restored,
Forgotten the Impossible Chasm
between the Glimpses and Glances
of the Desire for Oneness
in the Eyes of All Given Us,
And a Chorus of a Myriad upon Myriad of Angels shall Sing,
And Life shall be truly Life.
Josh Nov 2017
Neatly coating the floor in thin white trails, woven into floorboards like cotton twine, sunbeams snake their way across hardwood.

Books scream to be read & my yellowed pages ache to detail my experience as a widowed reader of time.

Magazines pile, while my simple hands grow a day older.

Heat on my neck.

The driver of time exhales grandiose,
tells me to travel while I'm young,
visit regions on this globe that grow green with age,
listen to honest trumpets before I gray,
wade in pools of clear urgency.

He said:

"Find a walking stick out beyond the ether
laugh with veracity, poking fun at Saturn & the Stars."
What will the future hold? Only Time will tell.

— The End —