separation swings through the air like a steel bar
it keeps smacking me in the face
I’m staggering
I run away it chases me
there’s no escaping it
my knees fail I’m falling
separation isn’t time or distance
it’s the bridge between us
finer than silk thread sharper than a sword
finer than silk thread sharper than a sword
separation is the bridge between us
even when we sit knee to knee
Was I going to have thoughts also?
Was I going to be an insomniac like this?
Was I going to be quiet like this?
To stop caring for the tossed salad I loved so much?
Was I going to turn into this?
I don’t look like much today;
When I pay my debts,
Possibly I’ll own a bunch of new suits;
Possibly you still won’t love me.
But, on Sunday evenings,
When I go by your neighborhood,
Dressed to kill,
Do you think I’ll cherish you
As much as I do today?
Because of you, each day is a melon slice
smelling sweetly of earth.
Because of you, all fruits reach out to me
as if I were the sun.
Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope.
You are the reason my heart beats.
Because of you, even my loneliest nights
smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall.
Should my journey end before I reach my city,
I’ve rested in a rose garden thanks to you.
Because of you I don’t let death enter,
clothed in the softest garments
and knocking on my door with songs
calling me to the greatest peace.
translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
Loving you is like eating bread dipped in salt,
like waking feverish at night
and putting my mouth to the water faucet,
like opening a heavy labeled parcel
eagerly, happily, cautiously.
Loving you is like flying over the sea
for the first time, like feeling dusk settle
softly over Istanbul.
Loving you is like saying “I’m alive.”
translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
i want a country
let the sky be blue, the bough green, the cornfield yellow
let it be a land of birds and flowers
i want a country
let there be no pain in the head, no yearning in the heart
let there be an end to brothers’ quarrels
i want a country
let there be no rich or poor, no you and me
on winter days let everyone have house and home
i want a country
let living be like loving from the heart
if there must be complaint, let it be of death
translated by Bernard Lewis
The air filled with a pungent charcoal smell
And the doors closed before sunset;
From that neighborhood as languid as a laudanum
You are the only surviving trace in my memory, you
Who smiled at the vast light in your own dreams.
With your eyes, your teeth, and your white neck
What a sweet neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Your house was as small as a neat box;
Its balcony thickly intertwined and the shades
Of ivies at the tiny hours of the sunset
Washed over in a nearby hidden brook.
A green flowerpot stood in your window all year round
And in spring acacias blossomed in your garden
What a charming neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Earlier you had long hair, then short and styled;
Light-complexioned, you were as tall as an ear of corn,
Your wrists laden with ample golden bracelets
Tickled the heart of all men
And occasionally your short skirt swayed in the wind.
You sang mostly obscene love songs
What a sexy neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Rumors had it that you were in love with that lad
And finally you were married to a man from Erzincan
I don’t know whether you still live with your first husband
Or whether you are in Erzincan of snowy mountaintops.
Let my heart recollect the long-forgotten days
Things that live in memory do not change by time
What a nice neighbor you were, Fahriye abla!
Is the sadness I feel
these sunny winter day
the longing to be somewhere else–
on the bridge in my Istanbul, say,
or with the workers in Adana
or in the Greek mountains or in China,
or beside her who no longer loves me?
Or is it a trick
of my liver,
has a dream put me in this state,
or is it loneliness again
or the fact
I’m pushing fifty?
The second chapter
of my sadness
will tiptoe out
and go the way it came–
if I can just finish this poem
or sleep a little better,
if I just get a letter
or some good news on the radio. . .
translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
This house had a dog,
Very shaggy;
Named Chinchon;
It died.
This house also had a cat: Mavish.
It got lost.
The daughter of the house got married.
So many other bittersweet things
Happened last year.
Yes, they did.
But it’s like this.
Life’s always like this!
Being Present for the Moment
Website storys
Illustration, Concept Art & Comics/Manga
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
Singer, Songwriter and Author from Kyoto, Japan.
An online activist from Bosnia and Herzegovina, based in Sarajevo, standing on the right side of the history - for free Palestine.
A place where I post unscripted, unedited, soulless rants of a insomniac madman
Dennis Mantin is a Toronto-based writer, artist, and filmmaker.
Finding Inspiration
Off the wall, under the freeway, over the rainbow, nothin' but net.
An 'erm, what I doing with my life?' cabaret.
Artist by choice, photographer by default, poet and author by accident.
At Least Trying Too
A Journey of Spiritual Significance
Life in islamic point of view
Through the view point of camera...
L'essenziale è invisibile e agli occhi e al cuore. Beccarlo è pura questione di culo
In Kate's World
Leonard Durso 