воскресенье, 27 октября 2013 г.

Jourdan Simmang_Poetic Asides

The following is a collaboration between a wonderful poet with a keen sence of beauty Jourdan Simmang and me. The somonkas were written as a challenge for Poetic Asides.

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The Winds Love More Gently

(by Jourdan Simmang and Lucretia Amstell)

Coy, you are, gliding
swiftly along my side. Warm,
you are, caressing
my transparent flesh. Shame me
into wanting more of you.

Tenacious, you are, rushing
across the ocean, past Gothic cathedrals 
towards me where I whisper 
through the Siberian forests, where 
you push me away with gusts of passion.

Lovers in the Sky

(by Jourdan Simmang and Lucretia Amstell)


With every passing
day, I in vain pursue your
heart. Despite my speed,
I have yet to harness your
chill. Douse my flame. Breathe my smoke.

Stroke my face 
with your ember touch before you leave. 
Wear your gold 
I will in silver until I see you 
again as I fade in your rising glory.

вторник, 22 октября 2013 г.

The Perks of Cheating

An attempt to create a 'yin yang' or reversed somonka.

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THE PERKS OF CHEATING

 

Don't lie.
                                          (Please, hear the reason)
I'm tired to listen,
                                          (I'm sorry. I need us)
to wait.
                                          (to try.)
If love's so facetous,  
                                          (For me there's no other.)    

Don't love me, don't bother.
                                           (Too late)

вторник, 15 октября 2013 г.

Don't

Something that everybody might have felt at some point in their lives.

***

DON'T.

If you could walk my way to school and then back home;
If you could feel my mother's arms around my shoulders;
If you could sit alone on slippery boulders
And think my thoughts, and watch the water turn to foam
at my bare feet;

If you could bleed
my blood on scorching pavements from my scratched knees
and shed my tears into my sheets and cuddled pillows;
If you could rhyme unbridled words under my willows
and lose the slips of paper to the time (And please,
don't get me wrong -

I still was strong.);
If you woke up in that same bed for ten long years
and touched my floor with my bare feet and shuffled
into my bathroom, washed my fading face and ruffled
my tousled hair into a form, avoiding stares
of my green eyes

aging and wise;
If you could feel my pounding heart and know why
it skips a beat, or drops, or weeps, or stops, or races;
If you had known my friends, my pains, my chases,
If you could hear my voice, my silent cry -

then you could say,

"If I,

      if I were you..."

пятница, 11 октября 2013 г.

To Lilichka (translated from Mayakovsky)

 Vladimir Mayakovsky is my favorite Russian poet. I'm in awe from his poems and I admire him so much because I can never dream of writing even a tiny bit as well as he could. Nevertheless, I was once swept by an irresistible urge to translate one of his poems into English. I hope I could capture the meaning, because the rhythm turned out to be more melodical and not so edgy as his rhythm usually is.

***
TO LILICHKA

V.V. Mayakovsky

(translation)

Tobacco smoke devoured the air.
The room –
Inferno of Dante Alighieri.
Behind this window,
remember,
I dared
first time ecstatically your hands in mine to bury.


You sit here now,
iron of a heart.
One more day –
you might curse me
to leave.
In the dark my trembling arm will start
trying and failing to find a sleeve.
Running,
I’ll throw myself out into the city.
Wild,
despair-slain,
I’ll get demented.
Please, don’t,
my love,
have pity,
let’s say goodbye now, let’s end it.


Whatever happens,
my love –
a heavy load –
is around your neck,
nowhere to flee.
Let me with my last cry goad
away the bitterness of my aching plea.


Should a mule work to exhaustion –
he’ll retire,
lie down in a cold creek.
But to me
your love
is the only ocean,
no rest it gives me, no tears make it weak.


Should an elephant want some peace –
Kinglike he’ll lie down in arsoned sand.
I never know where you are or who with,
but your love
is the only
sun to my land.


A poet so tortured by his beloved
would think
and trade her for money and fame.
While I am
comforted by no clink
but the clink of your lovely name.
I won’t take poison,
nor jump off a roof,
a gun at my temple would come to no aid.
Unless it’s your look
that cuts me through,
I am immortal to any blade.


My worshiping
you will forget overnight,
as you will my soul, love-scorched and stray,
meaningless days will whirl
in a fight
the pages of my books to blow away.


Whatever can halt you, make you stop?
Dry leaves of my words
gasping for air? Well,
let me at least
with my last tender drops
drown your footsteps in farewell.


пятница, 4 октября 2013 г.

GENESIS


Every time a story gives its first cry of life in my mind, I take my notebook and gently put the newborn on a blank page. It fits right in, because it's still so small, a mere idea. I take a step back, stare at it, my head throbbing with one and only question: "Who the hell are you, people?"

Then the story starts to talk, and I start writing.

среда, 2 октября 2013 г.

Last moments (On the road)

Last Moments Last


Edges of stones cut through my fear;
I press my fingers harder down;
I hear
them shaking...no, I hear it coming.

Wind is kissing and stroking my hair;
Iron feels cold against my nape;
I dare
look, and - there, I see it coming.

Up in the cavern of heaven my bell
Tolls louder than the screaming horn.
I smell
grass and petrol; I smell it coming.

Crumble to pieces my nerves of steel,
as its wheels screech against metal,
I feel
it coming through me, cutting.

Farewell Words (normal people)



Normal People


No, you are not the knight in shining armor.
Where is your horse? You raced it to its death;
you raced my heart. There is a lifeless lump
inside my chest, just where your scorching breath
my skin remembers still. There are more
years for me to trudge, to crawl, to slump.
 

No, I am not the princess in the tower.
Nor is a dragon there to be slain.
Though far more pleasing sound in my cries
you want to hear, instead of pain,
and bitterness, and bile; your eyes devour
‘All hope abandon’, written in my eyes.
 

A ruthless jouster, you stabbed me in the back,
your lance still bearing my token of affection
and protection.

So, slam the door shut. Leave me on the rack,
and on the hands of time – a kiss of recollection.