Was it you who sparked great fires While playing with matches in a confined space? There were times you laughed, times you wrote poetry When a bird slipped past the stones of a slingshot And beat its wing against the sky, I sought you out before the swan or the gazelle, Before the reflecting pool
THE HEADACHE OF ABSENCE Read More »
The sky is blue here too, the leaves are green Birds have two wings, fire burns Human faces, multifaceted and mysterious Snow falls here in winter as well Purple flowers bloom in early spring Roof tiles are red Workers rise early here too Factory smoke curls crookedly upward So much labor, so many wounded hearts
I said “Leylâ,” and the road dust replied On the collar of the traveler testing the lands afar The innkeeper rolled tobacco and warmed the soup I said “Leylâ,” and stone turned into a pillow I said “Leylâ,” and fire turned into a rose The guests took me for a sorcerer Far away, a fish
FIRST, WITH LEYLÂ’S NAME Read More »
The tree inside me had borne unexpected fruit – I was supposed to leave that very morning like a spark, it was only my parents, the only roots, and quite weak at that that were flashing through my mind like the tide. Don’t go away, don’t go away, my mother was praying, worshipping the
IN THE WATERS OF THE ACHERON Read More »
To the poet Enver Ercan[1] The star in which you live is a sun of the nights when the white poppies bloom. The white poppies, the white poppies in the petals of which the fragments of the time crushed by the wheels of a cursed morning have nested. Time, the time which
THE MAP IN MY HEART Read More »
Bring me the first word bring the essence from the east of your inner self! You are one who “needs the existence of nothing other than oneself in order to exist”!* To be the god of yourself… you have the power! Enter the “father’s house” and leave only after setting every room ablaze in those
To be master of one’s own life Read More »
drawing on Murat Gök’s works titled “boundary, I can move, you have seen this spectacle time and again” they say that where truth evaporates incomprehensible repetitions salvation and disaster, a hierarchy of states borders are a space of simulacra and the web woven by memory grasps the construct by its fences for when reality and
you have seen this spectacle time and again Read More »
ever since I heard my name in poems, I have not belonged to this world it began that day we met on the mountain peaks with the eyes that first arrived, departed, and beheld with these birds fluttering within my veins as the mountain, sighing, breathed its love into our vessels and then, with the
Hope turns pale on the morning’s wan face My heart’s homeland shivers. I leave hollow dreams in the day’s palms, Slipping from my trembling hands. The days are under siege by separation From my reveries, I plant roses along the paths of reunion… Hollow thoughts flounder In the inner voice of my mind. My intoxicated
MY HEART IS A SHORELESS SEA Read More »
Anger on the tip of the tongue, Words cracking within the verses; Life is a mountain with a bowed head Upon the steep slopes of pain. Of days with furrowed brows, The smiles are swarthy… Mornings burdened by the weight of parting, Roofs on the streets huddled close, brow to brow; Grey-haired evenings laden
OF DAYS WITH FURROWED BROWS Read More »
