poet

Rite of Lockdown / Week #7 / Midlands / United Kingdom

 

Rite

 

Sunday lingers on scent of paint,

tobacco and spring. Our kitchen-war

sprouts from a conversation on books

about people we both know. I say

 

I’d met doctor Zhivago queuing

at Nero’s, heard him asking a barista

about the fate of taiga-trees

at the height of a mining season.

 

You think they are cut short then stop

growing. I lock my paperbacks

in a cupboard; they remind us

of all the ink twisted in verse, seeded

 

in layers of gravel. Our verbs reach

the pit of a quarry, and seal over.

Snow forests shoot up in tears,

we trip over extension cables in our flat.

 

© Maria Stadnicka, May 2020

Photography: © John Stadnicki 2020

Thought

Just before midnight, in the unpreventable moment

my mother woke up to give birth to me,

I jumped out and spilt her blood on the floor.

 

My first angry poem, scream at the top of my lungs,

in the pale room.

 

A dormant city blessed the muddy wreath above the cradle

and

asked me to keep the noise down.

 

Mother went back to bed.

 

The following day I learnt to

write on white walls with red letters.

 

White Shirt

You see, it can rain with blood drops.
The proof the white shirt I’ve been wearing for the past two days
on my walks through the city.
Now ruined.
I have been saying all along that
someone died there at the top floor
but you keep reading, ask me to
sit down and drink the cup of tea
before it gets cold.
Death is not a matter of your concern, you say,
we have to hope like everyone else
for a better world and
let the justice be done.
Of course, but I
always like the tea very cold,
my hopes interrupt your thought process
as they remind you every day that
growing old means nothing.
I am the same unnecessary love,
making a spectacle of myself,
making a revolution out of silvery-grey ribbons.
In the big void, I keep standing up
with my stained shirt still on
and say no.

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Photo: Maria Butunoi

Conversation with a Stone

(‘Perhaps this is not a poem…’ C. Milosz)

And because I was made a poet
a lot of blood is spilt
on the neat grass, when I walk.

For fear that I will have
nothing to give back
I collect old books.

My word confesses to its imperfection
with the honesty of a fractured second.
Not that I mind,
not that I have high hopes,
only tall steps.

Because of this self deluded truth,
it happens that waking up in a desert
is not a surprising coincidence,
but a certainty, like a niggling pain in a missing limb.

I am not grateful to sleep facing the wall
but hey! someone needs to show a bit of courage
and say nothing
when nothing is to be said.

And though no one will remember
the poem once written but me,
after all, forgotten things are
the only possessions worth keeping.

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Photo: John Stadnicki
http://www.johnstadnicki.co.uk/Site/Welcome.html

Cubes and Other Lessons (V)

For a while you kept feeding me
ink pots instead of water.
My mouth locked in a bud
could only touch black fruit
and blue.
The language came afterwards
to check my vital signs;
my weak pulse made the world see
I existed at last
in words:
unspoilt spring, not creature, not flower, not cloud.
Stone.
But when you stopped,
I vanished.

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Photo: Maria Butunoi

Thought

I will say it again,
with the risk of repeating myself:
the poet does not exist really,
do not wait for him, do not.

The words themselves, not the tears, will choose to
get out in the world and
find you.

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Photo: Maria Butunoi

For Thou Art With Me

I was just talking to you when
The sudden breath I heard from the other side
Made me think
I too had
The same great fear of living forever
But said nothing.

Perhaps nothing was meant to settle
In front on this wall
And no! the metaphor you look at now
In this precise moment is nothing
But a distraction in my need for time.

Born to sit very still and observe
The details of your small victories
I am therefore only a brief graceful trap
Which you should never directly face.

I exist
On both sides of the fence
Exactly because you quietly follow my voice
In this imperfect landscape
A drop of ink, revealed by the greatness of your half empty glass.

The Words

You say it is snowing and though
It is bright summer
The flakes melt on my skin;
The inky marks show where
The poem entered my body.

You also say that
Black looks like me when I stand up
So all of you, guided by my bright eyes,
Find the way out to light.

I do believe everything
I do see everything
As it really is
But prefer to keep out in the open
Amongst all the other invisible colours.

I am the only earthly possession
You wish you had
But always afraid to shelter for too long.

Early Memory

Just before midnight, in the unpreventable moment
When my mother woke up to give birth to me
I jumped out and
Spilt all her blood on the floor.
That was my first angry poem
Which I screamed at the top of my voice
In the pale room.
I had good lungs. The doctor’s verdict.
But the still asleep city shhhed me and
Asked to turn the noise down.
Mother went back to bed.
The following day I learnt to
Write on white walls with red letters.

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Photo: Georgiana Calinescu-Barber

Random Act of Kindness

You weep tonight like the hunter weeps
Alone in the forest with his own rifle and
Listen to my whispered, faraway story.
You refuse to sleep.

While we share the same meal,
The shooting goes on in the city,
A revolution happens without us.
But too much heavy rain makes the music impossible,
Therefore we keep by the fire.
The flames project your shadow on the opposite wall.
From where I sit you look like a black continent
With borders engraved on the silent bricks.

We will be at sea in the morning
Embarked on the wooden boat.
None of us cruised before
You suggest we could learn to sail by dawn
Before we depart.

So I draw the armchair closer.
The heat is burning my feathery back
But in the absence of pain
I agree with everything you say.

In a random act of kindness
I do not stop but continue to write my final dispositions
With furious fits of laughter.
The ink dries out on the stone which I place in your hand.
The token we need for the big passage.

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Drawing: Manuell Manastireanu