Biting the biting frost

looking into the sun

warm and golden-coated they become

The outstretched hand suspended in the air

as if...

Feeling with his gaze

the crusty old cheek, wrinkled, soft, yet red

At the same time, as hard as rock, healthy

under the power of tenderness of a wide, innocent smile.

The earthy cracks around the eyes,

under the same bloom of thousands of skins - firm, glowing but also lined,

those cracks of dawn when the day meets the night

have called for a dream:

Lift up your foot, shake off the earthy part of it

And run and run

As you'll be going round the earth and back in thousands of suns' time while upon coming back to the the starting line

this will have turned into a whole world for you.

But as you run or come back, don't let it touch that patch, that forever-untouched patch which people call the sky beyond the silver lining,

beyond the clouds, the same sky unaccepting of the earth's capacity to turn around in its wings

While all the while, the same old glowing but lined skin will understand that every wing has turned around the concept of crawling.

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Love but You Love

trees with their trunks moving too deep into the ground,

or way up reaching further and further into a sky,

never quite understanding the sense of direction 

when they choose to exist as they lend themselves for people to reach

the sky they're made themselves of while digging into their earth.

Black, on white paper, on which the same people glue death to life.

the unfilled space of your love is the promise of

the future, that black hole of everything and every things,

the backup of what is to come, what was denied, 

what was, what is, what has always been,

never quite understanding why people struggle to get,

when they've already been on both the giving and receiving end when what is true is true

or else, they have never been.

Bigger limbs reach out of the sky-sized palms

succumbing to the lost reality of us humans

asking ourselves why being splendid does not

translate into a chosen kind of beauty, but into

beauty itself as nature never asks itself questions.

in the natural order of things,

You should have known better that

fighting for love can be less forgiving than fighting love

And then you take the experience, make something extraordinary out of it

in its pressed paperless taste of death mixed with life

On the other hand, all this fight has made you nothing less than love-worthy

A love that on the revolutionary ladder of the giving end calling for the receiving end 

has taught everyone and everything

That love exists.

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Weightless, as if the sun has burnt

ties, unburnt loving raw connections

giving people the nudge to move stairless climbs into what others might call the impossible resistance to power.

Imponderable, he climbs the insides of the wrong stomach, rounded by taken [almost never given] pleasures.

Ceased to be more than more. Never the same.

Never before, always in the after.

The sun would weigh the lines on human faces. Of those that looked straight in, bowed under its power while slaving the land.

'The sun is only a reminder of what the night might do to the day,' he uttered in the liberating given [not taken] token of the pledge that we're on temporary grounds with every single earthen lock on the very life of his, theirs, hers, mine and yours.

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She got on the local train, settled for one seat, no one seated right next to her. Within seconds, she discovered the next seat was utterly splashed with dry mud stains. Next, on the other row of seats, an old man, a fisherman, an angler, with a handmade walking stick, eating some bread or pastry that got him into a sea of crumbs. No swordfish.

She wondered: could all these people be savage? Who could have left all the dirt behind on the seat next to her, had they been sitting with their boots on the seats, had they thrown their filthy bags on the seats, were they dressed in mud, had they carried all of it with the only intention to dump it on us?

She then remembered about another train journey when she admonished a no-more-than 16-year-old girl eating sunflower seeds and spitting the hulls onto the floor. The girl almost silenced returned an angry gesture of collecting them. She thought then and now she should have gone about it more smoothly and have educated her with more kindness. If only she had met the old man before the girl: she would have gently and easily struck up a conversation about art since the girl seemed to be an art student, reckless, rebellious, though, as one could see, and would have given him as a subtle but bad case example. The girl would have eventually caught on to it, would have been awakened to common sense, and so she would have collected them in no time and no anger. Perhaps. That's how things played out in her imagination. However, reality was rather hurtful. As hurtful as the sound of music coming undisturbed from a loudspeaker someone carried out in the back, the loud ring tones of either the phone calls or notifications, games, and then the voices of people answering their phones and revealing half of their lives in the space of five minutes.

With the book, which could have been a hook, on her lap, she kept on wondering. Could she be the savage, the one that didn't fit in? She felt people's common sense must have fallen victim to the lack of it. Just another sophism, she thought.

Two more anglers, a man and a woman, in their sixties, got on at the next stop, also fishing for likes on social media after they'd been on a fishing spree. The man was too kind to her. The woman insecure. She wondered if those two could be lovers, old as they were. Well, people seek love all their lives. If only it were true love, not the kind that fills empty spaces, but the one that fits in.

The gorge, the train was passing through while picking up passengers, was a place packed with all the stories anglers could tell, including the one of the same hobo taking the train as part of his distraction, as part of warming up in the cold weather by going on regular journeys. Some of the passengers knew him. Regulars. The man and the woman too. Maybe all the fishers on this route.

She fished for something in her bag. A piece of paper: 'Today I'm going to eat some fish. Boned, deboned. Won't matter.'

Credits for the photo and copyright belong to the podcast producer as part of her personal archive

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She'll find peace

in the greens and reds and nothing in-between

in the paper tissues for tears after tears that soak spilt water making it one with them

in the blood nebulae that float magically in body tissues, broken, exploded into pieces, magnetically,

kinaesthetically suppressed in zero gravity - stop

As she'll slowly elbow waves with legs stuck up to the knees

rotating pyramid mountains upside down

in turquoise water sprints in the shape of unknown flowers at the mercy of another water - playfully

She'll slowly move, embrace, feel the sandy rocks crystallised through the mouths of winds

She'll 'belly-button' the sounds the bowels of the earth make while resting on the rest of the world.

She's been telling herself all this

Walking again, learning how to walk

with her old legs, old knees whose age no one could tell, still stuck,

with hearts still there with a pain greater than imagined, still felt, and minds still faltering

walking as if she was learning to fly as baby birds do

She will find peace.

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Born. Childhood. Raised. His adulthood not up to the bar. They didn't build themselves up nor their houses by mixing clay with crumbs of bread. How then? Sold their hearts when they left their lands. Sold them. All. Not a single dime of their soul left. Or maybe one. One flicker. Nobody's home.

Intoxicated with untrusty behaviour. Possessed by all the people he had ever met.

The only memory he didn't burn was his mom's fine smile. His father? - She was so scared to be giving birth so young. Yet, there she was. - He cherished her courage, but then she blamed her for leaving the land and him when he needed her the most. Betrayal. He borrowed her then-cowardice and set off on the road to self-destruction.

Betrayed. Desire. Lust. Ego. Betraying. Himself. His true friend. And possibly love. He didn't do much. In fact, all he did was not try the impossible. Who would? Who could blame him? His lies, his concealment. Not even her. A force driven by love is indestructible. How many of you know that? She'd grappled with feelings of resentment, anger, hate long before she settled: she was no longer hurt, or damaged, or anything. Forgiveness doubled the force.

He was yet to learn that beyond despair, beyond self awaits the other. Their true beauty reflecting on you. He didn't have to grab [they're not opportunities, they're beings], or consume with hunger. He would have to learn to forgive and love himself beyond despair, beyond self. To aim out of the same fear. He will learn to give without getting anything in return. And give.

Love.

Photo attributed to https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/royal-watercolor-valentine-red-background_1541387.htm

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harassed down a lane. The setting sun

through the dusty midsummer landscape

slipping past weary, unnoticed beauty,

dissatisfied, cynical.

The hopes of youth - ulcers arguing, speaking,

self-absorbed, not even noticing how stubborn.

On the crest of a hillock, the little creature

hurtled off into the forest: didn't bust, ran into, eyes closed, revived.

-through the thinly treed forest, a patch of dark-green grass-

Nestled its head between its forepaws, a shout:

if you hang around in this wilderness, you'll have to find your own way back.

No sound from the forest. Listened for another moment, lost in thought.

The sun set: for a moment afraid it would try to escape. It showed no sign of fear at all.

Alone in the forest, on a summer evening. Abandoned.

What does one usually do in such a situation?

gazed at the sunset's last road tenderly.

refreshed, contemplated mulling over

what had happened.

unplugged, peacefully the night forest didn't return even an echo,

splitting not a squeak:

"got to get back home right away".

This episode's cover photo credited to: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/blue-oil-paint-strokes-textured-background_13462556.htm

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They dragged him.

They dragged him out of the woods

when no one saw

when no one was there to stare.

Bogged down by no remorse.

Drowned out in the noises logging machines make

and that could have drilled open even a heart of stone.

If no one but them knew, conscience was more likely to feel clean.

At least, this is what they thought.

Tied to no mercy

the six feet of him:

he didn't have one mark, the one missing or buried,

he was not like those stallions with a marking on their foreheads

he had marks all over his body, tattooed by the elements,

the animals rummaging through meaty, fleshy layers resisting the biting frost,

sniffing with innocence husk-like carcasses, empty, void, yet succulent

at the crossing line

between

wild and tamed

where nothing ever stops as the spinning goes on

taking everything down to the last possible beginning

when ghostly worms crawl back as before into

their crafted hidings

where hierarchical dissolution

is part of the evolutionary ladder - not for them-

Because nature knows best.

No time left.

Be it the tree, the horse, the man

They all end up, or down.

This episode's cover photo credited to: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/top-view-background-beautiful-white-grey-brown-cream-blue-background_13191135.htm

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They said that what was ‘us’ must die.

The confession twirled over half of the city:

half-asleep, half-naked.

Half-truth.

It spiralled into whispers

we hear every night before we go to bed

with someone else, or no one.

It sank in so that sometimes I think I feel the ache of the water running through my body.

70% - 60% - 50%:

less water than in other bodies.

Half-empty, half-full.

It let the candle flames blow themselves out into a wish,

just as the fire, to taste them,

latched onto their greasy-bright light, dipped in its salty waters,

burning in the dark till

ashes tamed the whisper, embodied it, mirrored it, flickered with light.

And there, in the stillness of the room

fluttering in the darkness, I stole the breath

from the air and the night, their own light.

It's what I will be then.

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/hannah-kent/burial-rites/9780316243902/#module-whats-inside

Photo credits:

https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/beautiful-shot-wind-turbines-cloudy-sky-eiffel-region-germany_9184578.htm

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