"odessa" poems
A Odessa je suis morte un matin d’octobre
Si je devais revivre je voudrais être psychopathe et brûler des maisons
Non, surtout pas ça
C’est effroyable de savoir écrire, même juste un peu.
…/…
Marcher
Errer
Déambuler
Fermer les yeux
Ne plus penser
Mourir demain
Il faudrait que je meure demain
Mais vraiment, je veux dire
Me pendre au cerisier
M'étouffer avec le noyau d'une cerise
N'importe quoi
Trouver un truc
Mais mourir demain
Pour justifier ma raison d’être
Simplement poser mon stylo
Sur cette jolie place ensoleillée je vous ai regardé
Vous lisiez les yeux fermés
ALORS CHUT !
Pour justifier ma raison d’écrire
Simplement m’envoler
Ne plus avoir à me justifier
Etre juste un peu plus simple
Partir
Continuer l’errance à Odessa
Devenir transparente
La peau sur les os
Rêver
Pourquoi elle
Pourquoi moi
Dans le fond
Je ne suis pas bien différente de vous
Je n'avais rien à écrire
Je n'ai rien à te dire
De ma vie tu ne sais rien
Et si je dois mourir demain
Tu découvriras alors peut-être
Je dis bien peut-être
Et si tu lis ces lignes demain
Tu comprendras alors peut-être
Je dis bien peut-être
A Odessa cet après-midi
Je n'ai fait que vous regarder
Peut-être aurais-je dû m'y poser
Je travaille pour survivre
Je vis pour écrire
J’écris comme je respire
Le souffle coupé
Je tombe.
Puisque je dois mourir demain
Juste fermer les yeux
M’éclater la tête contre le radiateur
A Odessa cet après-midi
Je n'ai fait que vous regarder
Un jeu dangereux qui se joue uniquement à la première personne.
A Odessa cet après-midi
Nous avions rendez-vous
Tu n'aurais jamais dû venir, maman.
Mar 25, 2012
Mar 25, 2012 at 9:54 AM UTC
In the beginning was the Word…
And only then was the world.
Out of chaos and the darkness,
Out of nowhere and the blackness…
Something more than a miracle happened
Filled with warmth and light that sparkled.
The world got name and became alive!
All around began to thrive.
Not in gratitude, not out of a sense of duty
It believed in truly saints and only beauty.
Eyes opened and stood in delight
It could invite, excite but not to affright.
In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was God.
Earth and sky, the stars and oceans,
Without emotions but with devotions.
Rains and snows, beauty forebodes
And even the dust of not traversed roads.
It would be ridiculous and naive
To dream about the dawns, be a sensitive.
To be the hands on the starry clock,
To make on the land a beautiful woodblock.
As all that had already been put wise.
And in time the Sun could arise.
In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was Peace
Everything could freely breathe.
If you remove it, the chaos will again start,
The universal fear and black exhaustion,
The indifference and world of combustion.
The worm of doubts shouldn’t gnaw the heart!
The rest is later and the second will be smart.
For some it is unusual and one can’t agree
But as to me in different way it could not be.
You have to hear Him to be reborn again.
His Word is saint and everything explain.
In the beginning was the Word…
And that word was Love.
The beginning of all beginnings and all the springs,
The beginning of all the most beautiful things.
The beginning of all the sources and a new start.
You have to hear it and know as it is Gods art.
In the beginning was the Word…
©Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
The 25th of January, 2013
Jan 31, 2013
Jan 31, 2013 at 4:35 PM UTC
I call her the shadow dancer,
punished with hope..
She twirls with reflections,
and shadows on her broken feet..
She struggles to remain beautiful,
to perpetuate the stereotype..
She leaps, weightless into the heavy air,
pointed broken feet, hiding the pain..
Odessa, the swan in her lake,
flying, oblivious....
Jan 3, 2015
Jan 3, 2015 at 1:26 PM UTC
Sketching surveys of desolate dreams,
purveyors of private property plots,
their impatient greed,
ignoring purple spray paint warnings.
Six feet under, resting next to Grandpa's coffin,
live valuable minerals, their rights forgotten,
a farmer of soy beans, wheat and corn,
oil & gas law to Grandpa was foreign,
but he knew why our creek's current flowed north,
upwards, defying gravity or reason, why these men had come.
One time executive cowboy hats descended on the farm,
in pickup trucks, just purchased from an oil lot in Odessa,
Grandpa took aim and raised his Beretta,
their unfit hats lost to the blast, the only harm.
I was only five, when I saw his lengths of protection,
he took me on hunts for deer, boar, quail, dove,
would always aim his rifle, fire and miss,
blamed it on his eye sight, yet hit bullseyes on paper targets.
It took me 20 years to understand why, with swallowed pride,
he purposely missed killing these animals,
cursing his eyesight instead, winning an Oscar for his humble acts,
was he blinding me from death?
There was no vision impairment, I found out in hindsight,
probably the trauma witnessed, as he died with 20/20 eyesight.
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 1:59 AM UTC
Coloured Putin
Shoot her full of rainbows
Scythes from heaven
Souls down in Hell
Hundred thousand dead
Mamushka I miss you
Our Leader sent us there
Not an Odessa holiday
Opposite of that mama
Forgive them all
It's Putin's orders
Hundred thou casualties
Bullet ridden rainbows
Her essence is black
Dec 24, 2022
Dec 24, 2022 at 10:55 PM UTC
You cast that vermillion border
and glance at me with unswept eyes
Your voice holds pain and the comfort
of solitude
I have journeyed you a hundred years.
The wind gets caught
in your waves. You throw us back to sea
I hunger for you,
the clamor of rocks that descend into darkness
and the clouds that hide your secret skies.
The ecstasy of you in the very
pit of me waits to come out
and engulf me once more.
Nov 19, 2018
Nov 19, 2018 at 8:19 AM UTC
If you are a poet it means so much
as others souls you often touch.
Your own soul you cruelly cut
petting the others with your blood.
To be a poet means to sing of beauty
and it’s the main poets' duty.
Rhyming words, to tell the truth
and it has to be quite smooth.
To be a poet means to burn with passion,
to treat the others grief with a compassion,
to love the others as yourself,
to hear the voice of kind elf.
To be a poet means to dream,
to tell the world a touching theme,
to speak sincerely and frankly
but not just rhyming poems blankly.
Rhyming words is not the main,
there’s no need to strain your brain.
If your heart has nothing to tell
rhymed words will look like hell.
To be a poet means to write
as if your blood gushes from vein,
to write the rhythm of living breath,
the rhythm of life that seethe.
Larisa Rzhepishevska (Odessa, Ukraine)
30/9 2010
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 12:49 AM UTC
*You smell of teardrops
And a little bit of rain
But it doesn't make me less lonely
Doesn't make the night less carefree
Incense me with your words
Trap me in your senses
Oh Odessa,
why must you be so lovely?
Odessa,
Come to me as you are
Turn on my fire
Linger in my desire
My heart is your home
Together we can be alone
Our love was so splendid
how swiftly it all ended
I see your deep eyes
But your heart is grave
Our lives are no longer touching
I can hear my glass dreams breaking
Wish me well in your delight
As I am torn by my plight
Oh Odessa,
won't you fix me?
Odessa,
Come to me as you are
Turn on my fire
Linger in my desire
My heart is your home
Together we can be alone
Our love was so splendid
how swiftly it all ended*
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 9:19 AM UTC
Death of a Saleslady
she was a seller of thoughts
the taker of time
she would crawl inside your mind
and lead you to the edge
she was the creator of dreams
the Odessa of voyages
her touch drew you closer
standing on the ledge
her kiss was a serpents bite
poison on your lips
it was only the beginning
now you were trapped
she could lead you anywhere
her wish your command
you would beg for just one more
until you were firmly slapped
you finally realize you awaken
the mind begins to clear
you begin to see the evil of her ways
her purposes rather shady
the spell has finally been broken
the end of wildest dreams
she has been cast out of your world
the death of a saleslady
Gomer LePoet....
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC
A hammer and sickle to tickle them
cries of, 'it's Stalin' to ******* them, then
silence on Red Square.
Dacha's popping up everywhere
communism like evangelism
gathers the money in
holiday plans.
There are true ***** drinkers
thinkers like
Solzhenitsyn
gulags
and the rags of
Moscow.
I won't go
to the palace where tells of a ****** or
on the long road that tells us of more.
The KGB
a resident family of the community
are looking for me via Odessa.
I've gone to Sweden to lead 'em astray, can't stay in the concrete connivance no way, but
I end up in Siberia wearier than the dogs who run with the pack.
Looking back at the back of it
there's a lack of it, but I'll manage it and a carriage would help a bit to carry me home .
Jun 15, 2016
Jun 15, 2016 at 2:03 PM UTC
Forget these
Rich American women
I see on the tv
I want to live in harmony
With the woman
Of my dreams
Sweet Lord
This I do pray
Take me to Odessa
On this day
There I will meet
A woman so fair
Into her Russian eyes
I will stare
Browsing through
The magazines
An endless supply
Of beauties
So it seems
Dear Lord
Take me to Odessa!
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 7:35 PM UTC
Lightly my fingers rest on the letters
hoping to coax out of them
a lyric or a prayer to end this day.
I love these letters
who open the universe,
who touch the cheek of God
and fall here like shooting stars
or small planets
for you to see.
I miss a stone and step into the shallow stream
like a child hoping for an adventure
from his misstep into the clear water
where he can fall into the sky
and ride a cloud to Odessa
Pikes Peak or north to the Cascades.
I remember when the soles of my feet
were calloused from running across lawns
sidewalks and streets to play
ball or adventure into the nearby field
where we fashioned a fort our of tall sticky ****
and made up rules for initiation into our club.
What a life I find in these letters
who surrender to my touch so easily
what a symphony to match the music of Mahler
coming across the net falling here into my ears
like undeserved grace.
Feb 25, 2024
Feb 25, 2024 at 12:47 AM UTC
What name can I give you?
Surely there are none
and it is pointless to try,
like giving names to
celestial bodies,
or quantum particles.
I thought I could capture it,
that the gaps would be filled in,
like space between
crocodile teeth
clasped on a zookeeper's hand.
I thought
If I could paint like Wyeth,
I'd have my Helga.
What name do I give you?
Maybe Odessa,
laughing on the crest of a wave,
dragged by purple currents,
among gulls on Earth,
and storms in the sea?
Perhaps Athena,
with gleaming eyes
and an owl in your hand?
Or Queen Maeve,
raw with beauty,
buried upright
facing your enemies?
Infeasible,
but it must be something,
for the shake of necessity,
So as to call out when
loitering on lake's edge,
or from across a room
when I see you there,
uncanny as my reflection
in a convex mirror.
I'll call it out.
It's not that I want to,
but that I do;
Just as frogs jump,
just as the tongue
pushes on the aching tooth,
I see Venice in
cheekbone crevices,
smell Vienna in a tangle of hair.
This tropism is
an elephant stomping
the marrow out of me,
and it's alright,
it feels good,
and Wisdom is her name.
Jul 26, 2020
Jul 26, 2020 at 3:03 PM UTC
My friend did die under
Lubango in the year
1990, as sailor.
I will never come there.
He wasn’t a hero but
He was just a soldier
As if the dead remained at
Duty among other
Living soldiers farther.
There were three Odessa chaps
Great is our power.
We served fully the mass
Angolian in dark hour.
We came back, the living
In those so hard years.
It means our being
Lucky despite foes.
{28.12.2015}
* * *
Друг погиб под Лубанго
В девяностом году.
Мы не вкусим с ним манго –
Я туда не приду.
Друг мой не был героем –
Он был просто солдат.
Было нас только двое
Там херсонских ребят.
Ещё трое – с Одессы,
Ведь большая страна.
Мы ангольскую мессу
Отслужили сполна.
Мы вернулись живые –
Значит, нам повезло
В те года роковые
Супостатам назло.
{28.12.2015}
Translator - I. Toporov
May 15, 2020
May 15, 2020 at 1:24 PM UTC