rain

with the tiniest glare, the lights form human figures wailing against the liquid mist. here, i sit, abbreviated, past midnight, with fingers counting long lonely days. between sighs i forage history, between numbers i create perfect memories in order to exist here, now. but, without  proper burial,  the secret of my darkness thrashes in silhouettes against my will. my perfect memories tipping over exposing open wounds that ooze empty gestures. here, i assimilate with the brutal silence in the corner.

the city

"I begin to think there's nothing i can do: like the city, i belong to the living dead, i am a corpse that still breathes, a wretch condemned to walk the streets and pavements that can only remind me of my filth and my defeat" (Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories of a City)

caution

the street lights walk past me. the pavement glows with a hint of red. you echoed my name softly, delicately, honestly, faithfully, insistently, obsessively,  hollowly, elongating the promise. this shallow thought hums suggestively. but it wasn't my name, but the sun descending, burning me, in the name of caution.

moving on

let's move beyond self-pittance and acknowledge the punctured ego
in the middle of seaweed, deep and shiny
i can hardly move

can't seem to sleep

memory distracts the pen and now the paper is cluttered with jagged edges

figs and lovers

old lovers will be old lovers
will be broken hearts on a pavement
expanding on a bed of dementia
silhouette's on a postcard
watering graves
a fig on a tree branch in the middle of winter

love

 gentle hands cross to stroke the sunlight cradling your eyes. sinking letters narrate secret sorrows at dusk.  feverish hope rises with the clinking of glasses against the nestled moon. the words, the letters, the sounds become a frail attempt to fill in the absence, your place. it's a jarring heatless silence and i'm sorry for my abruptness, but this absence always returns in blackness, insistently invading.