i wrote to you again the other day
missing you like water after a fast
you were larger than life i find time and again
feeling lost in the mundane daily grind
unable to see humor in my inability to last
it is not a special day for you
no anniversary has thus been assigned
no prompts delivered my way
i am in no need for one
for you haven’t made it to my memory box
and you never can or will
as only the forgotten are housed in mine
~ Candayıma, to my late uncle (September 28, 2015)
Filed under Poetry
…there is always the potential for an excuse: poetry loves “clinging”…to the passion of it all…even (or especially) to being “vulnerable”…what is one then to do?
“The universe is made up of experiences that are designed to burn out your attachment, your clinging to pleasure, to pain, to fear, to all of it. And as long as there is a place where you’re vulnerable, the universe will find a way to confront you with it.” ~ Ram Dass
Filed under Reflections
on the open sea
on a self-made galley of rotting planks
one hole races after another
only quick-sand at my disposal…
as for the welded-in rod…
it’s desperate
to make a companion of me
on its rusty hook i dangle…
on and on
~ September 20, 2015
Filed under Poetry
when a ring is not a quest for the “I do”
but rather a childlike passionate plea
to be enabled a sense of belonging
fi-na-lly
since when are predictability responsibility reliability
in the mutual extension of hardcore tenderness
no longer the base elements of ultimate intimacy
~ September 30, 2015
Filed under Poetry
a violent wind has blown in through the careless door
willingly it trapped itself within my four walls
not at all concerned about wearing itself out with time
nor eager to repair the travel path of its turmoiled home
when it was done with me
nothing was left beyond the flesh
a mere frame twisted to a selfless self
having prostrated itself on the mat of primal love
~ September 30, 2015
[Image Credit: Michelangelo Buonarroti, “Study of a Mourning Woman“]
Filed under Poetry
[Click for Photo/Image Credit]
Perhaps, you know the feeling: a moment in which a sad memory is triggered yet once again but meets a bitter-sweet attempt at a relief in the heart no matter how faint its plea…without you having realized a change in you toward emotional survival. For you are just too tired of the agony that has been bleeding out of the core of your being, dragging your original self to the open seas, trying in desperation to no longer hope against the apparent outcome…
i had never learned
how to sail a paper boat
in nature’s moving water
when i was little
throughout my adult life then
i suffered despondent beyond despair
clinging to my passions fervent dreams visions
begging the river around me to flow at my tending will
i the desperate fool for love am yet to set sail
to dissolve into the current of the sea
for i have been told about the harmony within each ripple
how it promises to ease what pains me to feel…
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
8.23.2015
Filed under Poetry
unless you bring some of it with you.” ~ Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)
[Image Credits: Google – Free ]
Heeding the suggested transportation of a precious cargo today, I bring along a poem that is one of my most favorites by Nazım Hikmet, a poet whose entire literary work I have been admiring since my teenage years. The translation to English is my attempt at a rather intimately-felt justice to this exilic author’s native tongue:
Seni düşünmek güzel şey, ümitli şey,
Dünyanın en güzel sesinden
En güzel şarkıyı dinlemek gibi birşey…
Fakat artık ümit yetmiyor bana,
Ben artık şarkı dinlemek değil,
Şarkı söylemek istiyorum.
Thinking of you is beautiful, it gives hope,
It is like listening to the most beautiful song
Through the most beautiful voice in the world…
Hope to me, however, does no longer suffice,
I don’t want to listen to songs anymore,
I want to sing one.
Filed under Reflections
[Image Credit: “sad and simple”
Long ago, I read an article on “things” some of us find difficult to express when we communicate with others. Three of those simple words work as my post’s title today. At times, even an exceptionally loved one may withhold these few letters what to us mean comfort at moments of despair, like a reassuring whisper to re-pump the drying heart. Perhaps, articulating these love-filled sounds equates to that beloved a forced confession of feelings of guilt, fault, blame or acceptance of an unwanted judgment. If only it weren’t for one fact: when there is love, there is no need for defense. For, there can be no intended offense.
I have no further deliberations on the subject – at least nothing I find worthy enough as far as a personal thought in prose to share with you here. Instead, I have jotted down some reflective lines in the form of a hopeful poem:
the fragile soul had never been undressed this way
nor can it ever again
for it has decided to be a once-only lover
it should have known not to attempt a fatal risk
still it hasn’t regretted being so bare
before the one for whom it had stripped itself
of hopes expectations
guilt blame fault
judgments
the innermost turbulence yet trashed it apart
with as violent a tearing from its core as can be
into a blindness of the temporary kind
the ego blamed guilted the other
dared to hope and to expect
not even massive masses of tears sufficed
to revive it from its raging death
from the beloved then it borrowed a new breath
stillness of the soul thus was demanded to prevail…
on its torturous path of an onus yet
it now opts in vain to regain courage
toward an ajar if not an open gate
for peace and salvation per the latest request:
not expecting
nor blaming
not faulting
nor guilting
not hoping
nor judging
just being dead
as needed by all
but the dying soul itself
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
8.3.2015
Filed under Poetry
“Kırık Kanat” was the title of it
the first book i can remember our mom giving us
“Broken Wing”
about a family falling apart
a bird with a broken wing seeking to extend its life
on their one-room home’s only window’s ledge
at the ground level befitting their income’s edge
as if to enable the little beauty one more flight
i read it again and again
have you by any chance ever
mom’s copy is with me
i kept it all along
would she cry as hard now if she knew
how miserably apart you and i grew
her only two
i am different that is true
have walked the path of mess
hurting others though with no intent
honing learned flaws i’d rather live without
but no more than you
not even once have i aimed at loving you
under this or that condition
i just loved
respecting
admiring
trusting
not anymore
the wing intact also broke from its core
7.25.2015
Filed under Reflections
i yearn to a burn for the original self
ache once again to come to life there
this time not for myself to torch my self
but for the waves to sear to death my sphere
to lull my cleansed eternal birth
upending the end to its final girth
as if to lay down to sleep the infant self
~ This poem was one of my three contributions for the upcoming August 2015 issue of The Year of the Poet, a monthly book series published by Inner Child Press, Ltd.
Filed under Poetry
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