ONEIROPEIA
The beginning
This world was created
by Kronos, vomiting
stones and gods into being,
rivers, fields, and clouds,
the rainbow,
finally,
himself.
Inside out.
The insides of Kronos
became the blue womb.
The blue skies
around us
*
Stranger
Awkwardness, blunt space
the oh so familiar sense
of not fitting in
hello strangeness
here I come, enchanted
dissonant
*
How can it be?
How can it spring
from this nest of givens
The accidental foot, bone,
worldview, the call of duty,
a swift twitch in the bloodstream
Don't be the name
Become the naming
the aiming
the ing
come on, spit it out
*
Ode my Muse
Sing for me, Muse
I will follow you
I am following you
like love, like sleep
like a sudden gasp of nausea
I want to sit near you
up on a hill
In the plentiful garden
The wind shall pass trough
but you are not in it
a fire shall burst through
but you are not in it
You are
shadow and ash
Speak to me;
not
with the breath,
the word,
not with avowal,
but with the waves,
the tightened embrace
just as we fall
- We are falling -
The spirit is sucked into
the lung
You, Muse,
right at the centre
*
Time
The mind lies
at the intersection
of worlds.
Some are on the outside
and some within;
they all have rules
that define them,
that allow us to move
in them. Of so many
we know
nothing these days,
yet we leave our imprints
in them, waves upon waves.
We - swimmers,
we - travelers,
erratic and blind,
who choke on the depths,
seek cures for infinity,
while things
stir
in endless
peripheral
vision.
What comes up
to the surface
is froth:
the thing we call time.
*
The trees
What shall I do? Both my parents gone.
My mother, the smooth walnut tree,
cut down in her prime.
She who cradled me,
consoled me,
told me stories
that no one can match.
Where shall I go now?
Where shall I go when I hurt,
when I have done something wrong,
when no tears can wash
my eyes clear? I am
alone.
My father, the oak tree
up on the hill,
who taught me that courage is a power of mind
to reach beyond structures,
to think the unthought,
he who taught me to grow.
One day he was struck by lightning,
his roots died slowly.
Now I am alone,
no mother, no father
in this world,
no one to tread before me,
no one to call me child.
So take this my song, my adoptive mother,
black swallow,
take it to weave with it
a nest
in the shadow
of each fallen tree.
*
Angels
(for JK)
This is how it began:
I learned to fly,
I wrote about dreams;
then the angels arrived.
They bustled, stirred,
their feathers rustled,
they whispered words to breathe in,
but not
to repeat;
then, dropping the ladder,
they fled, laughing, laughing,
laughing
(from an excess of love
- but what is there to say?
not even angels can cope).
*
Decade of the Fish
(for JK)
The decade if the fish: the man giving voice
to the managed, against the voice of the managers;
I find a home: to build and to be (but it’s not the same place);
hope is cherished as a sister of faith;
a whole hour of poetry on mainstream TV.
How to survive so much life?
My brain is overwhelmed.
I must ask the birds.
*
Watcher of the skies
Skies roaring with autumn,
the evening rises
slowly, like dust
strewn in my eyes.
Somewhere else, hurricanes
tear at the Moon.
In my solitude
I can clearly hear her
hoarse, muffled voice.
What song is she singing,
what tune so electric
is calling on us: wolves,
lunatics, watchers
of the skies?
*
Celebration
The point where I celebrate
This is where I celebrate:
both here and there,
yesterday and
tomorrow,
the blue skies of August and the crouching November,
the raptures,
all the tears I have shed,
as the snake sheds its skin,
the misery, the poisons that flowed
from black grisly hearts,
and the love, oh the love!
I am taking it with me
- traveling light I shall take nothing more,
only love -
Every breath, every step
that has brought me here,
to this point,
the point
where I celebrate.
*
Moon
Blood on the stone steps
full moon floating by
The tyranny of strangeness
washing down the night
Have we ever been this close,
this city and I?
Bone of my bone
stone of my stone
piercing, caustic
love.
*
Skywalker
Stronger than gravity
stronger than fear
is the runaway dream
of forgiveness
of leaving
it all
behind
starting again
reborn and untied
at once young and old
Oh blessed is the one
who sits on the plane
watching the ground
swirl like a river
Toes travel faster
than trains and tornadoes
Skywalker
I truly am
a legend
(Over Britain, 2014)
*
Jesus and the beanstalk
My brother Jesus
climbed up the beanstalk
up to the sky.
He spent fifty years
all alone, in a rapture,
it was very cold.
Now he looks down
now he sees
the city
under his feet.
So he spreads his broken arms
and he flies
down, down, down
Here is
where we meet.
(Sheffield, 2014)
*
The dream about a mountain
I dreamed about climbing
the top of a while
and blue mountain
A voice told me to
lie down, enjoy
despite the biting cold
before everyone else
gets here
The moment that
is a sculptor
cutting deep
cutting away
(Warszawa, 2014)
*
Airport dreaming
Awake in an airport
shards float in and out
of the line of vision
Godot never promised
he would come
Hundreds of wheeled suitcases
crashing in
The incessant vomit of attractions
Postcards from anywhere
Swallow anything
then fall down on your knees
in the faithless chapel
These are your own
fingers of ice
like Brutus and Cassius
your repellent reflections
in procession of mirrors
Crowd belching forth
Nothing matters
all is long lost
The cleaner will sing for you
a sad lullaby, leaning
against his big chummy machine
You must look up to the tables
blinking, glittering
waves
of times and places
If you miss the one
then it
all
gets real
(Sheffield, 2014)
*
The prefect passage
Black veins bursting
Waves of darkness pulsing, washing the shores of me
In a space shutting down
I dreamed of a room full of old books
Oh the smell of dust of home
Wherever I go, you follow guardian devil
erasing my footsteps
I'm a phoenix
I can summon hope
- erasing, erasing -
Hearts burst in my guts
small pointless bangs
nothing registers
You are always near me,
so composed sincerely erasing,
not stopping even for yourself
everything goes
so selflessly
Only the chill
reveals your perfect passage
(Sheffield, 2014)
*
Brother
Lightning from above
you, struck
falling
like a ripe apple
right into my hand
poisonous and wild
My ally, my brother
never born to this world
You are he to whom
I owe the air that I breathe
the earth I walk on
(it is I who am your shadow
it is you who are real)
You are the gasp of ice in my innards
the echo of silence
just before every word
Brother, cast
in nothingness
I meet you in of my dreams
You wait for me
hidden
as faithful as death
(Warszawa, 2014)
*
July 2014
(for Jadwiga Dziekan-Michalik)
One glorious summer day
my mother turned into a swift.
She then had long ceased to eat,
now she stopped drinking,
she grew light as a bird.
One day, as she looked
up at the sky
the air turned soft as honey -
and she flew.
Right out of the cocoon,
her light, tiny body,
her beautiful face,
her hands.
It all fell away like silk,
like stars.
She never looked back.
(Fier, 2014)
*
Antidote
The antidote to love
is forgiveness.
The last, the final
resort,
when, like a sea cucumber,
one has vomited up oneself.
In vain trying to contain
the body
bursting out of itself.
The mind is at last stilled.
The void
- a polished diamond -
from deep within,
thrown up last.
Like hope.
When there is nothing left,
not even this,
I see you, so human,
waving on the other side.
You cannot see me.
Such things happen.
It is time to go,
my mother, my child.
(Sheffield, 2014)
*
Ora pro nobis
Ora pro nobis
lupus mundi
The world is murmuring
biding its time
the world is dark
Dreams forming shades
over sweet sister Earth
Run, wolf, run for us
howl for us
pray no dream is spilled
when it's time to wake up
Wolf of the world
wolf of good counsel
ora pro nobis
pray for us
pray with us
(Paris, 2015)
*
Spirit of '68
I am a prophet
of Imagination,
I come in peace,
I have no ambitions,
only nine billion dreams.
This land is echoless
and the king in dying
in his palace of gold.
I have lost my way.
Please, come and find me,
walk with me.
Dream gravity pulls
everything lightwards.
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
Kassandra's song
Times of insomnia,
white noise in the bloodstream.
I am a stranger
in a normal world,
piercingly awake.
With no one to call me daughter,
mother, or father,
I'm nobody's sister and nobody's brother.
The day is adrift.
The light has sunk into the earth:
Munin does not return
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
Storying
Strange times:
a gigantic theatrical vortex
like a beating heart
So many stories
drawing in
but then failing
to unravel
Roles suspended in mid-thrust
Such times like a dream of waking up
Like a ghost dam
Like Odin
himself
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
Habit
The world spinning
only out of habit
Reluctant Zephyrus, numb Boreas
sweeping London's streets
To sail is necessary
but no port in sight
just billions of beacons
The birds are singing louder
we can hear them
through the heavy traffic
Everything they say
is vital
Redemption is there
such a pity
none of us understand
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
God
One is still young
who cries
of loneliness
who forgets to eat
from sadness
One is still young
who fears it
may be too late -
I could have loved
each of you,
man, woman, city
There is promise
if one looks for light
into nighttime windows
Even when
no invitations
come forth day or night
For what is a bone
in the face of rock
What is a soul
when the mountains are shaking
with anger and grief
I could have loved you
devil, human,
God.
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
The T-shirt
Who are you?
asked the man's T-shirt
I don't know
I was someone
yesterday
I am someone
today
and tomorrow
is another thing
altogether
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
Aurora
Chasing aurora borealis
on the highway to Gdansk
I realize things are
on the brink
of bursting out in whisper
I must try to remember
their names
The journey knows itself
the traveller
is its recurring dream,
the snake without a tail
The night is hollow
in need of consolation
But neither she nor I
can hang on till the end
(Warszawa, 2015)
*
Hello, summer
Hello summer,
will you marry me?
Will you stay,
will you be glorious?
Honeylight, fragrant
shadows, sparrows' bacchanalia,
and rivers of asphalt
under my feet -
All this you give me
and yet
you keep your distance
as if you
don't know me at all?
Regardless
please
don't go just yet
Be glorious.
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
The revolution
The revolution
will not be televised
It will be sung and howled,
it will be danced,
on rooftops,
bled in the streets,
it will turn bombers
into butterflies.
It will be dreamed
and dreamed again,
until it bursts alive
(Epidauris, 2015)
*
To Boreas
Don’t love me, Boreas,
I don’t have wine
for you,
if I smiled
it was ever out of human kindness,
nothing more
There is nothing I want from you
I don’t want to wear
your broken heart
like a crown of thorns
I don’t love you, Boreas,
I don’t want to save you
Please give up on me
I have seen your dreams and I
do not like them
You are not of my kind
Yet you have such lightness
among brothers and sisters
so many lines
of untameable flight
Please go away, Boreas,
but if you choose to stay,
understand:
I’d rather freeze
than walk with you
When you are around
a cold vein
bursts right under my heart
and a black stream of void
is discharged
into my blood
Don’t love me, Boreas,
you mistook humanity
for boldness;
I wouldn’t walk with you on water,
I wouldn’t walk with you
on the bridge.
(Warszawa, 2015)
*
I was wrong
I thought I desired
fame
but I was so wrong!
Fame would have only
disappointed me.
What I wanted was love,
brave, unconditional,
blue skies
and the Tree of Life
right across my living room floor,
the sweet breath of Gaia
on my brow.
All I wanted was everything
bees, summer and honey,
to see Hugin and Munin
returning with rainbows.
I just wanted God's
pure undivided
attention, a guardian angel
proclaiming peace,
while preparing sandwiches for the road:
it's allright, this is home.
The great walnut of Love
landing, bursting
in everyone's heart.
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
Rrogozhine
We arrive by noon
red mud lending
us Golem’s legs
The host, slightly drunk
and his spindly wife
cleaning steps, Zen-like
over giant broom
The town centre
two hours’ walk behind us
with huge empty buildings
made of money and glass,
with some scabby donkeys,
roadside watermelons
an placated rails
This is the heart of the countryside
or, rather, its liver,
immobile,
certain to regenerate
Small tawny dogs
sniffing for news in the backyard
And then:
a roar cutting through the dust
the huge TV screen rocking with trumpets
announcing the glory
of one football team, somewhere,
and of kingdom come.
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
Bob D.
One night in late November
there was an angel
hanging around, smoking
outside my window.
City below,
full moon up on the hill.
It's alright,
he said,
I'm a Bob Dylan song.
(Sheffield, 2015)
*
Warsaw
Enblued, engreened,
I walk down the solar streets of Warsaw
Hit by a sudden smell of ether
I turn around:
It’s the statue of Mickiewicz
so lonely
standing there behind the fence
so much not his
(we used to sit on the steps,
imagining the poet loved us,
such as we were)
***
This city has a bulletproof heart
like an armadillo
or a vampire
Will it ever heal?
For months now
I haven't felt like writing
in my native tongue
***
As the sparrows sing
their song of Warsaw
the city
the cosmic string
sounding the music of the spheres
I
wrapped up
in the greens and the blues
that line the city
can almost
bring myself
to believe them
(Warsaw/Sheffield, 2015)
*
Ned Beg Hom Ruy, a poet from the Isle of Man
When he walked in the fields,
he didn’t stop
to pick up a stone,
like all the people
He was always looking
slightly up and away
They said: he has his head in the clouds
When the hard times hit
and forced him away
from the island,
he just kept spinning around
and around
He did not last long. The stones
would not match the clouds
the songs and the waves stayed separate
The horizon had shifted.
When in Cregneash, look at the sky
slightly up and away: there
you will see
why
(Sheffield, 2016)
Medusa
one day
the temple
dimmed:
the wise one she's been pursuing all those years
does neithr care nor listen; will not
notice her gone
such loneliness,
self-possessed and foolish,
the fig leaf from before the Big Bang
absence to absence,
make a perfect shield
a minute's silence for nothing -
that is all.
(Sheffield, 2016)
*
Cold
I dreamed of watching the moon
from my window in Warsaw.
I was amazed
when I saw:
it was a huge ice-cream in a cone.
I took a photo of it
with my mobile phone.
The one that takes long sideways pictures.
Then it grew ice cold.
Huge -
the ice-cream was.
(Sheffield, 2016)
*
Professor A.Z.
(1937-2015)
He said: until disproved
we are immortal;
one day, someone
will end up not dying.
He said: I don’t go to funerals,
but I promise
I shall go to my own.
He said he was a staunch believer
in changing his mind.
(Sheffield, 2016)
*
Fizz
I dreamed the music
of the peace of the world.
It held on to my memory
for a while, upon awakening,
then,
it dissolved
in my body
(Sheffield, 2016)
*
Midday train
Sister in grace,
when I see you on the platform,
halfway between, as I am
on the train,
you smile
right through me.
Your smile tickles
my throat.
Then I see a heron, half asleep
in the same
borderland.
(Sheffield, 2016)
*
Ides of March
There's a suggestion of a smell of spring.
Not quite of blossom, fresh
sprouting; rather, a premonition
enclosed in the response
of earth to the step,
the way the dust stirs
the breath,
the afterimages in the shape of white swirls
formed by the tang
of sunshine.
Yes, it can happen.
Redemption and revolution
(Kraków, 2016)
*
Return
The Earth is not our sister
and she is not dying.
But the chill we can feel is real: she has
ceased to love us.
The breath she is drawing is not
her last. When you wake up just before dawn
next time, hold yours and listen: how deep it is.
She inhales and her eyes
ale closing.
(Warszawa, 2016)
*
Grace
As night approaches, winter
comes. This time it comes
as an absence.
Jar open wide,
empty. The seeds
of frost
start rising
by the wayside.
Meanwhile, everything is spoken for.
The treadmill matches music
of the spheres to
your stride.
All has been said and done. Nothing
is left, silence long gone, the rest
is a cackle of cacophonies, not a single crack.
Nothing to offer. Nothing left but
Grace.
(Warszawa, 2016)
*
Songs of Betrayal
The moon wind is blowing on my balcony,
the sirens are rubbing their
fish tails on the floor that clings
to my ceiling, my concrete
ceiling. I still cannot
bring myself to write in any of my childhood tongues.
Sometimes I wake up from dreams
recited like revelation, in rose hip
language. There was this music filled passage in the
underground station, the old town, Gamla Stan,
on my way back from a concert,
where I was standing in a doorway, a crowd around me,
the jamb pressed against my cheek, oil-paint
off white,
a small step, a wind;
I could have spoken in the tongues of men and angels.
Rosa canina, Rosa dumalis, Rosa glauca,
pray for us, Rosa obtusifolia, Rosa tomentosa, have mercy
on us. May the music
never
stop.
(Warszawa, 2016)
*
Mourning is the most radical thing we can do these days
Daedalus lost his head, not his
wings. Master craftsman - I found
the headless body lying
in a street
of Warsaw. It’s spring
and the city
is filled with fragrance,
the sublime
lilac smell of weddings and funerals.
Someone has to bury all those dreams.
The roles we were playing with zeal,
the work, well intentioned, the
dependable guts, the ways
we were good against
the dark background, the hope and the hopefulness
against hope. The ghosts
imprisoned beneath the victor’s tale.
I must
- we need to -
Embrace
his tight, splintered body
fallen, in the kindness of dust.
(Warszawa, 2016)