Портрет в желтых квадратах

Слишком много желтых квадратов
Мельтешат на её лице.
И смещаясь от ритмичных набатов,
Она мечтает побыть в тишине.

Ярко красным жгучим светом,
Отвлекая от серых глаз,
Переливами от рассвета
На губах её растеклась

И блуждала по прядям едким,
Что пробором разделены,
Непослушными и заметными,
И висящими как сады,

Как запутанные лианы
лимфатической / нервной системы,
Они вместе рождали драмы,
Насаждая то, что хотели.

И бесцельно блуждали руки,
И костяшками пальцев стучали
По столу из черных дощечек,
Своим ритмом её раздражали.

Белым заревам пыль по стенам
Собиралась и суетилась,
Застревала в её расщелинах,
И забытая, там тихорилась,

Забирая воспоминания
И остатки её безразличия,
Умирая в таком состоянии
Ярко-жёлтом до неприличия.

24.12.2025

Adulthood Sect (a birthday toast)

First of all, I would ask you a question:
why does a birthday matter at all?
A birthday carries quiet sadness
if you truly know.

In my childhood, I was wise,
as if already grown.
Time whispered, “Grow up,”
and I did so.
My soul kept shrinking,
like a shirt that never fit,
until it hung
as nothing but a memory.

Adulthood is a quiet sect,

almost monastic in its rules.
You simply wake one morning
already taken hostage,
expected to know the rules,
to bear a weight
you never chose.

I thought growing meant clarity,
a mind swept clean.
But every order hides its trick,
especially the ritual
of the Adulthood sect.

In my childhood, I should have slept,
small, safe, warm.
But Time leaned close
and commanded:
“Grow up, my little doll.”

To grown-ups, anyway.

12.12.2025

Pacific Petrichor

When the raging flood is rising,
he and I beside the sea,
stones are falling in the silence,
sand is taking him from me.

When the wind begins its turning,
spins the seagulls in their cries,
and the sun (or son) turns older,
rising, drifting past my eyes.

Morning’s petrichor was healing,
soft and fleeting, wasn’t it?
Like a scent of hidden feelings
we could never name or keep.

It feels like spring, or early summer,
or autumn’s quiet amber tone,
like walking through at five together,
lost in the rays of the city glow.

In the park there wandered others:
strangers drifting through the day,
strange to feel so close to lovers,
yet alone among them.

Winter comes without a warning,
turns the restless sand to white,
and the sea, by early morning,
shifts to pacific-ocean night.

And I grow in its motion,
holding breath against its roar,
while the son fades in the ocean,
drifting further from the shore.

11.12.2025

Pacific

A Perfect Day for Bananafish —
that soft, endangered calm,
before the water swallows down
what life cannot embalm.

ONLY THE OCEAN
cares the eye
when faces fail
and voices die.
Darkness rejoices,
minds conflict —
to stay?
or slip away?

He stands there, calm 
or simply tired,
his back to where
the gun conspired.

The room is hollow,
thin with air —
a ruler lies
on the table there.
Peace is a place
without instructions.
Only he breathes,
his pulse fluxions.

Some say
he waits
for someone near —
a woman only
holds her fear.

Some say
he washed
the blood away,
fed sharks the truth
he could not say,
and now he listens
to the bay.

Some say
he only stepped outside
for smoke, or thought,
or wounded pride.

Some say
he’s simply
standing still,
a pacifist painting,
to refuse to kill.

And so the world
fades from his sight.

ONLY THE OCEAN

stands by his side.

06.12.2025

The poem was inspired by Alex Colville, Pacific, 1967

The Dog I Am

I liked to lie upon her belly
And wondered what was within that bag.
Then he was born, so soft, so tiny,
A little life I could not snag.

She said, “He’s part of our pack,
You’ll guard him, love him, never stray.”
We played together, ran the track,
And laughed, and sprinted our way.

One day, while walking, he went still.
Helpless, I barked with all my might.
Sometimes I hate the dog I am,
I howled and barked that dreadful night.

They took him to the hospital room,
Two weeks went by. He returned so weak.
I stayed beside him, filled with gloom,
I never left him, day by day, and week by week.

I knew the demon would come to claim,
But first he’d have to pass through me.
I braced myself for fight and pain,
And waited tense for what would be.

On his last day he whispered low,
“I’m not afraid.” His courage showed.
He stroked my head, so soft, so slow,
Then drifted gently down life’s road.

The next day, I lay by the open door,
Watching him carried out of sight.
I clutched his hat, his smell I wore,
His shallow breath still in my mind.

I felt the brush of his small hand,
The quiet stir of fingers near,
A whispered word I thought I heard
And all at once he seemed still here.

The room lay still, like held-in breath.
A dog stares toward the open door,
The afternoon, so calm as death.
Nothing moves —
And because of that,
Everything is gone.

02.12.2025

The Word-Fish Stream

Far, far away, where little word-hills rise,
In lands of vowels and consonants, under the skies,
The fish-texts drift. No lips can make them speak.
They bloom from water, clear, cold and meek.

They weave through gills. They circle, swoop, and sway,
With tiny bubbles dancing on their way.
At times they shine with soft, emerald-green light,
With smoky sparks that glimmer through the night.

They catch the shades their misty kin once knew
And flash them back in trembling silver-blue.
But no one hears the tales they softly tell,
Nor what they whisper in their secret vale.

01.12.2025