***
Wintering
Birds of flame in the eyes
Оf the one who looks at the flame
Close your ears don’t breathe
The same old
Еver-familiar musical libretto
Іnside the memory
Оf the heart
Will be heard by the carpenter
Рreparing a new coffin for my love
***
I talk to the tree but it is silent
I talk to a stone and it wets
I talk to water and it just flows
I scream at the water
I’m screaming at the childhood that doesn’t exist
I scream for war
Hundreds of nuclear bombs explode inside of me
My molecules spill out of a hole in the body
And suddenly I fall silent to become a stalactite
Millennium stalactite
Strong adult silent stalactite
***
my father carves crafts out of my skin
nature plays tag with foliage
my spring is ending
***
cat paws kill mice
blood is splattered all over the kitchen
cat hugging my leg
the kitchen presses against me with the aroma of food
***
wipe my face with the wind
wash my body clean
autumn – human autumn – human
***
The color of the blind and the color of the colorblind
A bird tells a bird about flight
The voice of the silence of the living and the dead
Yellowness of book pages and freshness of rye
The cell of the body and the cell of physicality
The color of death and the twilight of essence
Flight of imagination and imagination of flight
A bird looks for the sky in the sight of a blind man
A color-blind person is bathed in colors
Two people in line in an optician
And over their heads is a joint and separate God
***
No one was born human
No one died as a god
The rain washes away the fear from your face
The courage to be afraid when a stranger with the face of death roars through the windows with artillery explosions
***
Death is the cover
My body starts making friends with worms
The worms are fucking me in all the cracks just as they were during my life
Only now no one pays me for fucking because the bills are paid in full
***
The loneliness of antiquity befell the cemetery
Butterflies played a symphony of heritage with their wings:
They were once in a cocoon
They once cocooned themselves
They were once their own parents
Flowers tickle themselves with playful wings
How much is the life of a butterfly if thanks to a butterfly spring comes and the cemetery lives again?
(The Wise Owl reprint)
***
roads explode right under your feet
war is a house without wallpaper
the skies explode overhead
the plane’s gut becomes the first victim
the ability to be honestly afraid appears when a stranger with the face of death breathes into the crown of the head
***
the witch was burned on such a huge log
that if a crossbar were added
it would be a cross
a time for crusades and disbelief is ahead
my cat is purring
and with my eyes closed I conjure
an end to the war outside the window
the cat smiles knowing that wizards do not exist
the future has arrived
it is spring
the graves remain
(3rd Wednesday reprint)
***
we drink the silence of the water breaking the reflection of the cherry blossoms
we quench our thirst with cherry blossoms disturbing the water in which it is reflected
we also reflected in the water
we are reflected in each other
we kiss like grains of sand
we fall apart like sand kisses
at least that’s what I imagined in my head
the water in the morning will wash away our paired traces that never existed
*
balancing between
war and war
leads to groin strain
outside the broken
window you can hear
the songs of birds
as if no one had died
*
the bird drowned itself in silence
our night cries fall on the cemetery slabs
along with the autumn leaves
*
boy washes in the rain
near the ruins of a house
the night takes slain soldiers
into its womb
*
the sky is turning blue
the water turns white
transparency disappears
and in childhood everything seemed clean and clear
in childhood everything seemed black and white
as a child I did not believe that it was possible to become an adult
I still can’t sleep sometimes
and monsters crawl out from under the bed
torturing me on a full moon
just don’t call mom for help anymore
(An edited new version published in OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters)
Essay:
“My cat vomits grass”
What does my cat do all day long? Continuously washes himself after I hug him. However, before that he comes and rubs himself against me. Even at five in the morning and with dirty paws, when I sleep he rubs his face, because the rest of his body is hidden by the blanket.
Often the cat eats: food from the bowl, bugs, grass. Sometimes he vomits on the walkway. The walkway is already stained with cat hair and vomit, too. I don’t blame my cat: I myself have vomited a couple of times in the last year from what’s going on around me.
Often a cat will hunt mice, then toss and chew on the corpse, and leave the mouse remains and guts by the side of the road. Animal instincts are incomprehensible to me: why kill and chew on mice if you’re already well fed?
Sometimes the cat plays with household items, from shoelaces to flowers on window sills.
Despite the fact that my cat is a filthy rotter – I love him. He came to our house after the war began and came to live with us. The cat doesn’t understand at all what’s going on around him, and I don’t explain anything to him: what if he starts protecting our house from the blast wave and dies?
It’s funny, I still haven’t figured out the gender of my cat, but by default I think he’s a boy.
Someday my cat will die without ever knowing that a war has broken out. What’s more, my cat will never know why the war started. I will probably die, too, without ever finding out why people go to war. I want to die without finding out that there is a war.
Reprint by The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts
