Tag Archives: Poetry

December 13, 2020 · 7:00 am

Ali Eymen’ime

Ali Eymen’ime, Doğum Günü’nde

İlk Dansımız

Anneciğinin ve babacığının odasında
Yerleştirdik seni önce.
Senle ben daha sonra
Geçtik yedek odanıza.
Yapışık uyudum ben senin sepetine.
Biraz huzursuzlanmıştın sen bir gece.
Çok hafif bir ışık açtım sana.
Kurdum bir de sepet-üstü
“Mobile” oyuncağını.
Onun müziği eşliğinde
Başladık ikimiz ilk dansımıza.
Adeta uçuyordum ben bulutlar üstünde.
Mis kokun, sıcacık masum bebek nefesin
Mest etmişti beni.
Sakinledin sen hemen.
Gene de bırakamadım yerine seni.
Kucağım etti ısrar ve de isyan,
Ayırırsam ben seni benden diye, olur ya.
Kucakladım defalarca o mucize güzelliğini,
Ama dikkat ederek seni uyandırmamaya.
Kokladım her bir yerini belki de yüzlerce kere.
Seni yatırdığımda sepetine,
Bomboş kalmıştı içim.
Pek bir mutluydum ama.
Dalmıştın sen bir kez daha
O huzurlu, melek uykuna.

Our First Dance

Your crib was set up
In the room of your
Mommy and Daddy.
Their spare room
Was serving you and me.
I had glued myself ecstatically
To your you-scented bassinet in there.
One night, sleep escaped you again.
I started your mobile toy
And dimmed the lights.
Then began our first dance.
I was flying atop the clouds.
Your gift of a heavenly scent,
Your sweet, innocent baby-breaths
Had enchanted my aging soul.
You calmed down. Fast.
Still, I could not lay you down.
My arms insisted with a frown . . .
I could not part myself from you.
I hugged your miracle-beauty.
Who knows how many times?
But I did so as softly as I could be.
I inhaled your scent repeatedly.
The moment I lowered you
Into your slumber-bay,
A sense of void came to me to stay.
I felt so empty but was very happy.
For you had fallen peacefully
Into your usual angelic sleep. 

From Canlarım, My Lifeblood, my book of Turkish and English poetry (Private Edition, published in December 2019 by Inner Child Press International)

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November 29, 2020 · 7:00 am

“A Pained Yearning”

A Pained Yearning

The Sun and I talk to each other every day about you and how I stayed away. I never had much to offer in terms of worldly gifts. My love for you, however, is forever there. Unlike my words, it never hesitates. It is thunderous. It is wondrous. It is here to stay.

Fast and furious, the urge to be around you roars over me once more. One more evening has arrived after another day without you. 24 more hours have come and gone. Yet, my old frame is still the same one.

Though I loved and will love you infinitely, my outer Self is known for its negligent expressions. Of this flaw, even my One-and-Only had her share. My thoughtless ways of the past undress my soul today, leaving it totally bare.

Forgive me for my phone calls’ rarity! Forgive me for all those times when I was absent from your lives! Forgive me for who I am not and have not been able to be.

You have loved me unconditionally. I know, I have missed my chance to be with you as often as I could. I wish wholeheartedly once again that I would be understood. 

From my Letter-Poems from a Beloved (published on June 21, 2020 by Inner Child Press, Ltd.)

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October 25, 2020 · 7:00 am

“Survival”

Survival

I imagine a garden, a gated community, surviving on its own . . . never opening its padlock to those who under their clothes tag along determined drones, ready to elicit an army of loners with clapping hands of “rahs” and “hurrahs”, reproducing at wharp speed to outsource peace . . . in their dire hope for love to be forgotten soon.

*I am aware that “Survival” is about one run-on sentence. Please, do not call the grammar police on me, as this structure was and is intended.

~ ~ ~

*From my book of prose poetry, Letter-Poems from a Beloved (published on May 5, 2020 by Inner Child Press International)

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April 17, 2016 · 7:00 am

Ageism

excessive now?

 

did one of them hit you in the heart again

do they already find you unnecessary

your shaky voice won’t let me be

 

with that beloved’s passing

last march had brought me my first regret

 

of having potted my roots here

 

my second followed today

 

when you almost apologized

for having lived this long

honoring your four siblings who died before you

adding how your youngest the only sister

still breathes together with her many grandchildren

whose longevity you then wished upon me

a faint hope for the women in our family

 

in all your ninety years

you grew up very little dad

loving but a self-centered man

high-maintenance

as the modern label goes

why did you have to catch up with it all

in one day

today

on the phone

 

i am not like them at all that you know

is that why you reassured me over and over

how well you are doing on your own all alone . . .

 

thirty years younger but i am unwell too many times

 

i also grew very little dad

loving but a self-centered one

perhaps not as high-maintenance

nonetheless a daughter of your essence

 

since the time our pillar collapsed

then much more recently

when you two fell apart

you have shifted to a deepness

 

he won’t come back he cannot

she however may return soon

it hasn’t been that long yet

 

why though are you in such hurry

with no fair warning in advance

but plenty of subtle goodbyes to me

 

are you telling yourself what i used to hear you say

“aloneness is reserved only for God”

please don’t you also rush while i’m so far away 

 

i agonize over your loneliness

how it befell upon you this late in life

did you really not hear me well when i asked . . .

 

they are merely a few blocks from you

yet choose not to be there

and you already stopped forgiving yourself

while you grant them forgiveness in abundance  

 

i just wish so very desperately

you wouldn’t have to hurt this much

that you could cease to grow up at once

 

and to forgive me for everything i couldn’t be for you

 

would you possibly throw in a sixty-year-long hug or two

© hülya n. yılmaz, 2.12.2016

≈ ≈ ≈

Like last week’s poem, also this one appeared as one of my three poetry contributions for the March 2016 issue of The Year of the Poet III, a monthly international anthology published by Inner Child Press, Ltd. and consists of poems by eighteen writers, with between two and three featured new poets each month.

 

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March 28, 2016 · 7:00 am

. . . an attempt at escapism . . .

on my half-hour sanity break
right before the daily grind dims my faint light
in desperate need for an outlet of ease
emotions run high
way too high

only that one Turkish TV series will do
as melodramatic as an audio-visual lift can be
the camera follows the tear-clad remorse-bathed 
magnetizing tragedy-filled episodes 
one after another

still among the living 
the loved and loving ones 
refresh the ground of the rashly poured soil 
a water bin waits by their side for its turn 
while they ask for forgiveness over and over
 
all hopes abandoned

yet again and again
wishing against all odds
a worldly sign to pay them a visit 
they will crowd each of the graveyards

to hear a 
forgive me 
resonate inside their own . . . 


hülya n. yılmaz, March 28.2016
A post-mortem dedication to 
Dr. Mahmut Oğuz Ergün (5.7.1931-3.28.2015),
my larger-than-life uncle - my last beloved 
on my mother's side of the family

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March 20, 2016 · 7:00 am

. . .eating food with no flavor

she had moved to the shallow waters

as she no longer dared to care for depth

a jet ski then appeared from nowhere   

not heeding her transparent fragility

it drove over her petite stature with speed

razored her surrounding waves one by one

her limbs were now violently taken apart . . .

piece by piece she began to fall into the sky

flew and flew on the wings of her freezing tears

higher and higher into the vast stagnant open sea

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

© hülya n. yılmaz, 3.13.2016

nature--sad-tree-munir-alawi[1]

 [Free Online Image]

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March 13, 2016 · 7:00 am

Loneliness – in the words of the Sufi poet HAFIZ

Don’t surrender your loneliness

So quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

HAFIZ

 

 

Divan_hafiz[1]

“An artistic depiction of Hafez” (Wikipedia)

Image Source

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March 6, 2016 · 7:00 am

. . . lack of dignity in crying?

In the words I quote below, Dejan Stojanovic – a contemporary poet, writer and essayist, conceptualizes a human quality I lack when one were to take into consideration only my reaction to tragic life events:

“To hide feelings when you are near crying is the secret of dignity.”

It would be a dramatic understatement for me to even claim that my case ever involved a mere “near crying” state. Tears run in abundance. Whenever the suffering and pain of others have my attention – regardless of my proximity to them. Then, there is also the matter of my own suffering. While I handle pain rather well, the emotional hurt I experience in the face of heart-wrenching occurrences is too stubborn to let me hold back the salty drops. But, I am not apologizing. For I hold the conviction that the release of one of our inborn emotions cannot serve as a basis to measure dignity. Would you agree? I would love to hear from you either way while I continue to hope that our psyches will grant us with a far less rigid definition of this human characteristic.

In the meantime, I leave you with my emotion-laden words. They came to me at a time when I was in a most vulnerable state of being, facing a rash and harsh demand for a loss to life. As you will probably also conclude, the following lines evidence that my self-judgment as I have started my post with is not severe after all:

ripped off of its cage

hot iron presses upon the open heart

defeated not yet deceased

the body continues to beat

(hülya n. yılmaz, 5.20.2015)

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February 21, 2016 · 7:00 am

For all who become a burden to some at old age . . .

excessive now?

did one of them hit you in the heart again

do they already find you unnecessary

your shaky voice won’t let me be

 

with that beloved’s passing

last march had brought me my first regret

 

of having potted my roots here

 

my second followed today

 

when you almost apologized

for having lived this long

honoring your four siblings who died before you

adding how your youngest the only sister

still breathes together with her many grandchildren

whose longevity you then wished upon me

a faint hope for the women in our family

 

in all your ninety years

you grew up very little dad

loving but a self-centered man

high-maintenance

as the modern label goes

why did you have to catch up with it all

in one day

today

on the phone

 

i am not like them at all that you know

is that why you reassured me over and over

how well you are doing on your own all alone . . .

 

thirty years younger but i am unwell too many times

 

i also grew very little dad

loving but a self-centered one

perhaps not as high-maintenance

nonetheless a daughter of your essence

 

since the time our pillar collapsed

then much more recently

when you two fell apart

you have shifted to a deepness

 

he won’t come back he cannot

she however may return soon

it hasn’t been that long yet

 

why though are you in such hurry

with no fair warning in advance

but plenty of subtle goodbyes to me

 

are you telling yourself what i used to hear you say

“aloneness is reserved only for God”

please don’t you also rush while i’m so far away 

 

i agonize over your loneliness

how it befell upon you this late in life

did you really not hear me well when i asked . . .

 

they are merely a few blocks from you

yet choose not to be there

and you already stopped forgiving yourself

while you grant them forgiveness in abundance  

 

i just wish so very desperately

you wouldn’t have to hurt this much

that you could cease to grow up at once

 

and to forgive me for everything i couldn’t be for you

 

would you possibly throw in a sixty-year-long hug or two

hülya n. yılmaz, 2.14.2016

The poem above is one of the three I have submitted for the March 2016 issue of The Year of the Poet, a monthly anthology – now in its third year, published by Inner Child Press, Ltd. I am only one of the seventeen poetry contributors from the U.S. and other world countries committed to make this publication possible. Each month, also the works of three non-Poetry Posse authors are featured. All volumes are available for purchase at The Year of the Poet. 

IMG_0088

Photo Credit: Self

Geographic Location: Ankara, Turkey

Place: In front of the flat where I have lived from childhood to the age of 24

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February 14, 2016 · 7:00 am

An ode to art . . . in prose

Louise Glück, the 12th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry (2003-2004), enchants with her following words on the impact of the involvement with art:

It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment – the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims toward it, it backs away.

The seed of the desire of which Glück speaks has been in me for so long that the resulting anguish leaves me restive – always. I am then “haunted by some sound [and] some tone,” but the “already finished” poem withdraws itself from my embrace as I risk my soul by letting it draw near it.

It was the sound and the sight of a waltz this time that hurled me into the open sea with the teasing promise of a beacon after the reach of which that elusive object of ultimate fulfillment would await me.

While Andre Rieu‘s  mesmerizing illumination of The Second Waltz  by Dmitri Shostakovich has instantly refined that desired sensation in me of creating a poem, one never materialized before this week’s post. The following lines I have penned, however, suggest to me that I will not abandon the commitment I made to my yearning for it . . .

Zum Allermindesten einmal hätte mich das Leben mit dem Glück beehren sollen, den Zauber des Walzers in deinen Armen zu erleben. ~ hülya n. yılmaz, 2.14.2016
~ ~ ~
Life should have granted me at least once the fortunate stroke of experiencing the magic of the waltz in your arms. (Own translation from the German original)

 

 

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