WORLD POETS MAGAZINE

                                  Crickets                  The deliverance of ancient times   Tonight I bury my legacies under mirages of the desert where the cricket, that eloquent speaker with vibrant songs in the sands and groves, piles up its winged eggs. I will soon see the truth in a silhouette of dust wave its fork of reminiscences. Anguished loves are taboo for me! The ideal is covered with a shroud of sorrows invisible to the profane! The seasons are delivered from time! The full moon in disarray over dunes is pale and bitter from being unable to influence the tides of sand. This is the great mystery that surprises us at an age when wings of dreams mingle with the roots of the soul devoid of memory. But while the strong winds are familiar to us, the sky in its fury ...

  Icarus   Sad, agitated, nearly illiterate, After high school a waiter luckily, He wears his obsessive, all-black hoody And throws himself into the cosmic mystery, In all this pandemonium of stars.   I can hear his confused steps. The deeper the night, the more they sound like The crawl of the baby I raised In so many demon-like flaps, In such a love panic, And then, a man already, he turned and saw What comets see on a blind flight Springing into chaos.   My loneliness, my rage, my stupidity, I don’t want the verses to pity them tonight But little by little light up one after the other The lights of the Saturday city. His friends to climb the rooftops Wave at him, whistle, Tell him “Fly, fly!” in an instance of betting, “There is a good god, the joyful Moon nests are sparkling. Who will not take you in their arms, Who will ever deny you a place…”   (Translation into English: Eleftheria Tsitsa)   For a Rare Name   It assured her she would not be al...

  Metaphysics of Cows   I love the tranquility of cows their concentration as they chew grass.   I love their philosophical stains,    their religious eyes, I love their tireless taste for grazing in the memory or the metaphysics of Buddha.   I love cows when they meditate on a chess board,     but even more when they walk to the dimension of my existence and say:               " Wake up,             milk is served ”.       Cook and Insect (ultimate dialogue)      An extractor, forks, a dirty kitchen and all the filth of a country in ten sugar tablespoons. I can still perceive my blindness collapsed at the frontier. We have been together for so long -from the fire of the stove to the corner of the waste-, that this culinary operation griddle goes crazy over too much of our gazes.     ...

  A Day not so Long Ago   I have forgotten where to place my fingers. They hover over strings wondering what to do.              A butterfly              cautious of danger lurking on petals of a flower it wants to                       sip on. The deep resonance of a note starts nervously then fills the room as the bow glides hesitantly over an open string.   Remembrances of a time long past rise from the shadows like lives lost in a battlefield no one wants to talk about anymore.                     You linger in the                                             background             like a lost note on the cello unab...

  How much love   Sometimes you ask me How much I love you I tell you honestly I love you as much As I love myself   This upsets you You want my love for you To be greater than my love for myself   You want to live your life in fiction I prefer to live in poetry That’s the only difference Between the way we love     I’m unable to leave this city   1.   A keen line of poetry troubles me like water She has travelled with me from the village to the city Here, sometimes she supports me, sometimes I support her.   Thanks to her I never got bogged down by the garbage of my ego She always looked after me as if I were A pure, clean, innocent child Expecting nothing in return   2.   In every city I was able to live like a human being I was able to comprehend that every city is one long poem   While a half-done line or a stray word Can be given to us by some unknown city   Which is why before you arrive in that unknown city, Kno...

     * They said it's raining heavily   they said hail is falling   I haven’t felt a thing   you’re in love they said   and closed the window of my heart     (Translated from the Bulgarian by Tom Phillips )          *   You’re not expecting this poem   you probably won’t read it   you’ll carry on undressing and dressing and your smile will remain like a Christmas decoration year-round   why then write it at all?   it’s like reaching out a hand to someone without arms and immediately pulling it back in horror   in case they grab it shake it and cheerily call out   hello     (Translated from the Bulgarian by Tom Phillips)           *   Why do you have to die so casually   just as if your parents are sending you to bed precisely when the night’s promises are taking shape   think of something   say that you’ll be good   that you...

  Summer in the Homeland   This Lucifer, this Cerberus, this tsar, this neighbor man – ten rows of steel teeth, a mask renewed each night and each day – this one who never sleeps, behind all masks his mouth in his eyeless skull, a Minotaur who consumes virgins, but has no comfort, whose heart festers – is he eternal?   I pat my pockets, my prescriptions all in a mess – where are agape and eros and where did I put philos ? All the expiration dates passed long ago, nothing is fresh!   No answer, but yesterday in the sky I saw swallows again, tiny splinters of summer from the south, and at night perhaps you, mother, led me upward to a higher place, in the mountains where the horizon offered my eyes light:   I breathe the smell of pine sap and fir needles, of snow, home, and an unnamed country.                                                 ...

  When everything is lost   The clock did not stop but hours no longer show on Time’s dial, which has come to a standstill, contemplating.   Perspective still works, but objects are no longer clear against the pure expanse of unnamed Space.   Life has not ended but death no longer looms at the horizon waiting for someone to rise up sometime, somewhere, in the land of oblivion...   Everything is as it used to be though nothing has meaning when lost in a timeless space, in a spaceless time…   (English version by Adrian G. Sahlean)     That instant   A few words, you told yourself, just a few—and created a story whose present is yesterday by now, just as tomorrow will be past for another story left behind, lost forever...   One word, you told yourself, just one— and you are on your way the unknown, that unexpected step, free to think of who you are and are not, of that instant in which you can become and be you.   (English version by A...