May 2020 – Bye, bye
June 15, 2020 § Leave a comment
25th May
The air is so light,
no wonder night falls softly
like a purple net.
I wish I could sleep
on a field, or at least not
to be anywhere
near to whatever
could provoke winter’s return,
ever again. Like
a child’s biggest wish.
27th May
Nothing can blow up
wishes faster than north winds.
Self confident like
a Scot in a kilt,
move sun and light farther south.
The trees now resist,
bent and return fast
into line. No one tells them
what to do in May.
They’re full with birds’ nests.
May 2020, so far
May 21, 2020 § Leave a comment
1st May
May Day sabotaged
by rain. But it’s nice to see
two rival blackbirds
in the wet garden,
sharing shelter under the
same rhododendron.
Nature’s common sense
protects them from themselves. Yet,
will this peace be kept,
under the sunrays?
6th May
I‘ve just discovered
an 18th century ace:
late evening port wine.
Sweet and strong pleasure,
comfort for the swollen legs
of great-grandmothers,
bold midwives and lords,
but slave traders sometimes too.
History is full
with two-side stories.
11th May
While a wild wind blows
and changes the weather like
a light switch: on, off,
on, off, we listen
to mixed tapes dedicated
to teenagers’ dreams.
We remember those
days in our rooms, in ourselves
well now, as we try
to figure out this.
13th May
Everything is blue
especially the while walls
of the house next door
as they touch the sky
dressed in its slippy colours.
The birds are looking
for islands of green
to spend the night. Windstill
quietness. Softly
I let down the blinds.
17th May
Let us not go back
to normal that never was,
times without thinking.
We moved and went on,
kept forgetting about death,
of others, of ours.
Yes, we miss freedom,
but freedom has expanded
in our minds, it might
has become vision.
18th May
These notes often start
with the singing birds at dusk.
Dutiful blackbirds
remind me that there‘s
this short time to talk before
silence reigns at night.
I wish I could put
every word in a blackbird’s
song. They’d tell me then
what to say in time.
17th May
What’s behind our masks?
Nostalgia and longing
for the life we had?
Anticipation
for the future, not the past?
Is the best or worst
of us now hidden?
What are these eyes looking at?
Outwards or inwards?
Our mouths are still shut.
April 2020 – Part 2
April 30, 2020 § Leave a comment
8th April
Our reign of objects,
tables, chairs, books and paintings,
how well can they tell
the stories we’ve planned
a lifelong? Imagine those
feet walking around:
This is where mum used
to read. When on the phone she
moved around the house,
cleaning, saving time.
11th April
This wonderful sky,
how accurately it counts
time, space and borders.
Zero. None to see,
none to feel. Our mind is free
and flies where it needs
to be. Take that flight,
with the wings of memory
and the strength of hope
for we are born free.
13th April
Fears. In the morning.
First, everything feels usual,
the light from outside,
the smell of the room,
that ageing body. And then
the mind awakes too.
You can’t fool your mind
when your hands are not moving.
It counts time in months,
in years or just days.
15th April
The impossible
as everyday recipe.
We’ve lost appetite.
Now feed me with touch,
with laughter, bitter or sweet,
like friends at dinner,
before they part for
a long time. The host raises
a glass, sets the date
when to meet again.
18th April
Mum has sent braid bread
per mail, but it’s not here yet.
A fragrant parcel
in a lorry’s guts,
driving through silent countries.
They told her it’ll take
time. But she’s sent it
anyway. It’s Good Friday
in my old country,
all is still and waits.
20th April
One metre fifty
from each other. In the queue
of lost needless things.
Behind a mask, eyes
that do not try hard language,
they’re soft and get it
that you’re vulnerable
too. Then the distance moves on,
fast to someone else,
before one must speak.
20th April
My tired limbs sliding
on cool cotton sheets; must be
a summer prelude.
On the news, again,
everything important comes
second. Exit strategy.
The economy
needs the simple people soon
enough. The simple
people can’t escape.
30th April
This April will leave
ingloriously, bad thief
of springs that were one,
an endless waiting
of sudden good news, of friends
and festivities.
A one season year,
this seems to become, one that
all months are marching
in dark uniform.
April 2020 – Part 1
April 12, 2020 § Leave a comment
1st April
April 1st too soon,
we haven’t got the spring mood,
winter fits better.
I dreamed of water
but not of summer beaches,
they’re too far away.
It would be nice though
to become light again, swim,
hear the world laughing,
careless and naked.
2nd April
Like fish in a glass
everything still fine inside
our protected world.
We wonder if it’s
a dream. Is it true that this
is the last water?
We try to forget,
to become a fish for true,
turn one round, one more,
everything is here.
3rd April
Time might make us all
become quieter, careful
not to miss a tone
of others speaking.
Our own voice, once so precious,
less important then.
Our wealth and beauty
for wisdom and kindness. Won’t
that be courageous
as a new start after?
3rd April
Today feeling short
of breath, that hill in front of
us seeming too high.
A grey day, quite still,
the birds are thinking, planing
their next step to spring.
I try to listen
and expect less, less from me,
less on a day when
flowers hesitate.
5th April
Sunday bursting with
sun and skies. How innocent
the day felt as we
cycled through the fields.
The trees were turning green like
nature’s traffic lights.
Back to the city.
A helicopter landing
on the roof of the
nearby hospital.
6th April
One by one windows
open. Someone should welcome
the upcoming moon.
Backstage the open
wardrobes, bodies uncertain,
set tables untouched.
An alphabet of
sighs, low voices, question marks.
We are all foreign
in untraveled nights.
7th April
We don’t see her dead,
ut we hear Antigone’s
mourning. For once more
she’s not allowed to
bury her kin or lament
their death as deserved.
But this time the state
are we, we hold her back from
their graves and ours too,
we beg her to wait.
March 2020 – Part 2
April 12, 2020 § Leave a comment
24th March
It’s a sunny cold
outside, a frozen beauty
waiting for the prince
with the warm kisses.
I’ll fill the house with the smell
of hot fresh coffee,
open the windows,
wave “hi” to occasional
pedestrians, call
my mum on the phone.
26th March
Mum looks very old
on the screen. A video
call. We laugh a lot.
She thinks what I think
though.This might take much longer
than our words pretend.
The quietness of
the nights unites us, our fears,
trembling stars afar
from each other’s sun.
27th March
This fear in a box
we do not want to open,
but we have no choice.
We’re taken by it, it
comes out of our TVs,
it walks down the street,
it takes faces of
beloveds, of ourselves too,
it changes, it spreads.
Pandora, what now?
28th March
I woke up early
in the morning, watched the plants
growing in the light.
A reassurance,
this new day would be as real
as the one before.
A well-know story
would surely start with well-know words,
a solace amid
an unknown new world.
29th March
We’ve turned our clocks to
summer time, but we’re still not
in control. New snow,
falling and melting
on the young dandelions,
whispering secrets
in their yellow ears:
Summer and winter exists
simultaneously
like life, pain and death.
30th March
Voices in surplus
behind walls, in front of screens,
there’s so much to say.
Comfort, distraction,
love, thoughts, fears and promises,
broken vows, chances.
When the quiet night falls
everybody works hard on
their inventories.
We share our failures.
March 2020 -Part 1
March 25, 2020 § Leave a comment
15th March 2020
The world is turning,
we reluctantly spin with
it, dizzy and weak.
We hold on the next day,
the next curve on our way,
the blackbirds in spring.
Not what we know is
now. Now is not what we know.
Yet spring, yet flowers,
yet night, yet dreaming.
16th March 2020
Early night poem:
My dear, I can’t wait
for the night to fall to listen
to that blackbird.
You know, the one that
flies around the neighbourhood
boasting with good songs.
A yellow beak in blue
hours, a little light before
darkness. We gather
the things that matter.
18th March 2020
4am again,
out of sleep, out of absence,
back to the now time.
A quiet river
is this night outside. Only
one far away hum,
a busy machine
programmed not to need others
And so ignores fears
and early birds’ sighs.
19th March 2020
We feed each other
the news; it’s hard to swallow
and it burns our tongues
not to know if this
is already our future,
if nights will stay long,
if summers will come,
if sun and sons will kiss us,
if that memory
still has got a chance.
20th March 2020
You’d think the night would
have some soothing black liquid
to slow down sickness,
just as it does with
movement, sight, noise or choices.
But night’s eyes seem closed
to everything but
memories, fears and wishes,
wrapped in rosy dreams
or nightmares of real.
20th March 2020
Everything around,
too present to understand.
“Mum, said my son, when
I’ll be eighty years
old, people might invite me
to schools to tell them
about the year of
the great disease, I’ll be their
eyewitness and old.”
Yes, my dear, you’ll be.
22nd March 2020
Most of the people
are silent, their eyes strangling
to adjust themselves,
in the darkness of
this waiting room. They just stand
rigid on the shore,
feet deep in the sand,
ignoring the waves, looking
at the horizon
where the ships are still .
23rd March 2020
A Forgotten Love:
Our houses are now
clean, floors and furniture shine,
but the guests won’t come.
We’re in other times.
As the day breaks, the call of
an uncertain spring.
It’s hart to resist,
and yet it feels unwelcome,
out of place now like
a forgotten love.
“Alte Liebe”
January 26, 2020 § Leave a comment
Old Love, you’re still there
in the wee hours, in front,
of the shabby pub.
–
I remember you:
your shiny skin, your black eyes,
slow moves in music.
–
One always has to go,
as far their feet can bring them.
Sometimes there comes here.
Dead Relatives
January 22, 2020 § Leave a comment
Once you were unique,
now, in the mirror, her eyes.
Slow transformation.
–
The feet you walk on
are his, the back pain, your own.
Family photos.
–
Theirs some memories.
But when your lips speak, it’s you,
made of them, still here.
For those who can’t see the sky
January 10, 2020 § Leave a comment
The day got so short
behind closed doors we hear a tune,
someone learns singing.
Even in the dark
there is the feeling of space
for those with voices.
A train roars so far
away; no one can reach it.
The night feasts on dreams,
hours and tomorrows.
Apologists of waiting,
are insomniacs.
Decade after Decade
December 29, 2019 § 2 Comments
I hadn’t realised till I heard it too repeatedly from different people that the decade changes this year too. I guess being an Earthling who has already entered a new century, even worse, a new millennium, back in 2000, I have been offered proof enough that nothing spectacular will probably happen from that minute before 12 to that minute after. The changes that really have an impact on all of us are of course more subliminal, though much more significant at the same time, also much older too, they have started centuries ago with lots of steam, coal and capital.
And yet specific dates like that do something to people. For I would lie if I said that turning 30, 40 or 50, the later this very same year we’re now already leaving behind, didn’t do something to me.
Time is an issue in everybody’s life. The issue is mostly the lack of it. Absolutely conscious of the fact that anyone of us who hasn’t been given a deadline by a doctor yet, should be grateful, I still must complain of how time declines with age. Not just the time ahead of one, but the “daily“, insignificant to others, everyday time, the personal time. The hours. The hours of a day.
There are positive aspects too. Something does increase with age. I hope you can hear the small cliché alarm here, for as your grandma told you about age: One does know more. It is of course impossible to say if what a certain person knows about the world is what the world needs to know, but one, if lucky and introspective enough, knows a bit more about oneself.
For instance I know I’m a mixture between a very simple farmer girl and, grandma, again, would love that expression, a “woman of letters”. This is as enriching but also as dividing as the fact that I’m constantly moving between cultures and languages.
I’m also very sensitive to the fact that most men are so used to patronising women that the freedom and kind of respect I and many others seek won’t happen in my lifetime. Don’t think of yourselves dear male readers, think of the big majorities in many parts of this world, or think of the plumber talking to a housewife somewhere in your country, or the top-manager talking to his secretary, or even the professor to a young beautiful student. Men find it difficult to respect women. Respecting women means for many candid men just being polite and cordial to them. And of course for many others still means not a bloody thing.
The most profound experience for me as a human being so far has been parenthood. It’s testing one’s greatnesses and inner devils everyday. It trully means sacrifice and everyday self-restriction. Of course there is a chance that when children become adults everything will get easier and their lives will run fine and thus the work you’ve done will be rewarded with gratitude and obvious results. But the reward is much more immediate, though not obvious, and already there. For this kind of love you grow a prophet everyday, if lucky, if strong enough. You go to the desert every morning and come back to the well at night. Circle after circle your heart gets stronger.
