Walking around the rim

There is a volcano in the room with the red stripes on the wall.
I will meet you there but you won’t remember the details of our meeting
You are a man thinking aloud for a woman that loves your voices
If you were a fire you would have chosen to die in that volcano
Having dragged me there to applaud the performance of your death
And if I were a leaf I would have chosen to crack between your teeth
As you are spitting the heap of your truths in my gaping mouth

R.B

image: Picasso

Prose poem with bikes

The old women were coming down, in flocks, from the sky, riding old rusty bikes. It was an awesome sight. It had just started getting dark and their massive descent was impressive as the joints of the their fingers were rattling and their white long hair was waving in the deep violet sky. They sneaked in every corner of the city and began to chaw its foundations. Chomp chomp , the city was shrinking and shrinking and losing its original size. My pavement could suddenly fit in my palm and their bikes were blooming like giant copper flowers. They had become a huge wave foam inside my chest till the morning came.

image: Tim Walker

The night pillow

My big secret has always been that

I have two tongues in my mouth

Two breasts on my chest

two snakes under my bed

Two is not a number

It’s rolling over my orange pillow

it cries it yells, it laughs like a hyena 

    Gods and devils  made these two worlds 

just for me

I found out that there are more.

veils upon veils, upon veils

I will spend my life here in this room

holding an apple, narrating my multiple lives

leaping in the abyss again and again

r.b

image: Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, photographed by Philippe Halsman

Few seconds

There is a sea out of my window, just a sea, can’t you look at it?
The breeze must have taken your mind

The king empties the sand every morning
Carrying his bucket across the ocean
Frowning like a child with cheap rings

And I am sitting here, alone. 
Listening to all the giant birds over my head.
Brave I said and their beaks won’t scare you

Should I crawl to your legs and hug your thighs?

The water is teeming with weird orange fishes
Like the ones I have been dreaming of for many nights now

Regina Bou

image: 

Andrej Glusgold

The kettle

 The kettle’s lid stayed unmoved to my voice 

More silent than an early morning

immortal gods and Chinese hares

fighting under it, drowning in keylan tea 

I have to bury the kettle deep into the soil

And dream about it only at nights

image: Helen Vacalo

The song

The Augustean nights will come, bright and sad
like the blue of your eyes, like the lost tunes,
like all the past words of love that ran to hide.
After all, a thousand years, following the fight
nobody remembers the agony of closed lips.
Only the buttons of my shirt will be dripping wet 
and the copper clouds of your smooth voice

Princess Yvonne and Prince Alexander, by Princess Marianne Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn

*(written for Northography)

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Sleep

Sleep, sleep, sleep, because there is no waking up. Sleep to the end of death land and let the cats squirm on your shoulders. With the picture of your grandfathers hanging above your head. Like a sword in a tale. Like a cloud in your dream.

image: Roger Ballen

Seeking

Nora was looking at the mirror,

Her two daughters sewing in the porch.

When the wind shook the house

and the roots of the apricot trees,

Bringing wild smells of the black silence

that used to exist under that roof,

Long before any man set his foot in,

Nora saw her animal eyes in the glass.

                                        

The sound of the dry leaves rushed her breath

like the lost god  of her deep darkness

in the room of  solid memories

“Lock the windows’’ she shouted

And her daughters ran, ran like jumping little spiders.

image: From the film La Petite (Louis Malle)

The crazy Ivan

A cold morning I saw the tree of life  hanging from my ceiling

With all the holes of  its black darkness

 ‘’I am Ivan, the Dancing Monk of the Pearl rooms’’ I thought.

My wise blood  sails  the seven seas  and  carries  the seven worlds.

Maybe I am a cat with seven souls’’

I must not reveal that I left the tree where I found it

But that’s what I did. Because I am Ivan the Dancing Monk.

image: Anthony Goicolea

The haunted Irish

Bow your head

and  let me tie your wrists.

Close your eyes,

Pretend you are a wounded angel

So that I can take you to the earth

beneath earth.

To  Baltimore beneath Baltimore

where  weeds sprout in people’s shoes.

Let’s  live on a dime’s reflection

let's play with the gloomy gloom of skeletons.


image: Fred Einaudi

Haunted by the piano marteaux

Male skin that smells like green tea

makes Ava explode into simmering dust

she takes her lover's fingers into her mouth

and licks them slowly giving him pleasure

The piano marteau* appears in the dark

flying around ; a weird bone of a dead dog

Ava starts howling  

her arms shiver and her teeth cold

''L'hiver, l'hiver''** her lover shouts

as the blizzard breaks out in the room

*marteau(x)=the small white hammers inside the piano 

**l'hiver=the winter (a french word)

image: Donald Farnsworth

The lullaby of a scared soul

We felt lonely.

We felt thirsty like an arid lake.

Things started travelling into the universe without us,

shadows of a graveyard flying around,

pirate ships sailing on our stomachs

The loud noise of the tree trunks was coming.

The little unicycle fell off the table.

The little unicycle fell off the stairs.

image: Chris-Steele Perkins

It's all about ugliness

Grey and khaki colors appeared one day

Floating above my sink

A strange creature is living in the gutters

You say it is my lost reflection

Yes, the one that disappeared

Years ago

I don’t like living under mats

I prefer being silent at nights

Listening to animals' echoes

do you know 

That a wild black animal is hiding behind my round navel?

Pawing around wit...

image: Sarah Moon