no dead birds in the oven
no innards in the stuffing
nor fatty drippings to be scraped and poured

the smell of roasted veggies
wafts through  the wintry air
pumpkin and sweet potatoes
marshmallows  green beans  lentils
turnips  & collard greens
hashed browns & black-eyed peas
quinoa  sorghum cuscus hummus
carrots  leak  broccoli Romanescu
gumbo in southern regions
wild rice dishes in the north
tastily spiced with turmeric
cumin and baked paprika
Indian curry  soy sauce  chipotle
as well as with the usual suspects
of garlic  salt  and pepper
and whatever fits the taste of hosts

in short
a venerable feast to demonstrate
how nature feeds us a large cornucopia
of plants for our delight and sustenance

in short
no need to **** a bird

                * *

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

A time will come
when everything will be in its place

happy the man who on his inside
is bringing this about

Ioanid Romanescu, from **Magic

Silence as of one million closed doors
bestow powerful illusions upon loneliness,
it lights up the memory of its sons
even before they are born,
it carefully razes
the trees in which hamadryades slumber,
shut me up inside
the being that I am - so I do not know what I am -
and throw a light for all time
upon the moment of my death

Ioanid Romanescu, from **Magic

Right here - one small step away -
right now - the moment that this has added
itself to and became the past -
I heard myself calling me from all that follows

stretch my hand out as I may
the horizon comes no nearer to making sense -
but if I answer it is likely someone else
will answer back beside an echo

my eyes are tired of dreaming -
it's like a bird thirst when it flies over the sea -
they crash into reality
if I could only put myself out
in the man I ought to be

Ioanid Romanescu, from Orpheus
translated by Stavros Deligiorgis

no dead birds in the oven
no innards in the stuffing
nor fatty drippings to be scraped and poured

the smell of roasted veggies
wafts through  the wintry air
pumpkin and sweet potatoes
marshmallows  green beans  lentils
turnips  & collard greens
hashed browns & black-eyed peas
quinoa  sorghum cuscus hummus
carrots  leak  broccoli Romanescu
gumbo in southern regions
wild rice dishes in the north
tastily spiced with turmeric
cumin and baked paprika
Indian curry  soy sauce  chipotle
as well as with the usual suspects
of garlic  salt  and pepper
and whatever fits the taste of hosts

in short
a venerable feast to demonstrate
how nature feeds us a large cornucopia
of plants for our delight and sustenance

in short
no need to **** a bird

                * * *

The Purity Of My  Tears
          by Mioara  Romanescu
You are everything my candid heart has got,
You are warm and pure in my  eyes, in my thought,
You follow me from my cradle to my death
Giving me  so many times the strength.

You are the child of my  memories,
You can blossom my glee
Like the beauty of the flowers of the apple trees,
If  my life in sorrow did begin
You can purify my  sickness and my  sins.

Don’t stop it please ,
The tear  wants to give my eyes a gleam.
Release its trickles please
Without any fears
As they are my  own pure tears .

*(poem dedicated to all my sadness moments)