Thursday, April 1, 2021

JETON KELMENDI

 

JETON KELMENDI


You Can’t Leave To A Different Time

 

I travel through time

following trails of imagination full of wishes

round and round my thoughts

can’t find an open door

to a different time,

a door that takes me to where I want

to love a bit better,

to stay longer

 

If I was a Northern Wind

I’d blow over valleys and peaks, tonight

I’d bend oak trees and plis hats alike,

I’d change this time:

into a different one.

I’d open the doors to hope

and I’d be full of hope

for a better time

 

If I was a Ray of Sunlight

over the prettiest necks in the city I’d lie

Wow! What warmth

winking with love’s eye,

distracted

fingers running through disheveled hair

this would be the talk

but one can’t just leave to a different time

 

If I were the one I’m not

to a different time I’d leave,

but, damn, I am who I am

oblivion’s last letter

left for a different time,

the way valuables are kept,

unlike food at a gleeful feast

for today

one can’t leave to a different time. 

 

 

I Sat At The Beginning Of My Self

 

I sat

on my memory

and waited and waited

until all conclusions

I began anew.

 

The truth faded the dreams, until

the meaning lost its meaning,

time said it belonged to the devil’s time.

belief turned into disbelief,

a wicked time strengthening the evils

hope and desire turned to illusion,

it must’ve been their time, the untrue truth,

the silent word.

and it is I who woke up

from my memory

asleep in your remembrance

reawakened.

 

I saw

crumbs after time’s footsteps, crumbling

the future

leaning on patience

in the peel of time, lustfully

I can’t run after myself

I have to end it.

 

I rested

until the unthinkable seasons

were tired of running

until the rest is rested

that’s when I woke up. 

Woken from its bed

a late night’s autumn and the moon.

Flooded tomorrow’s thoughts

love became a sea of love,

together we swam until ecstasy.

 

Now, I wait and see

and it looks like that time I sat

at the beginning of myself

but the words struggle to stay awake

like they did that one night.

 

 

 

I’ll Tell You Something

 

From my mouth

From my soul, strange

thoughts emerge

sometimes they appear leaving

other times arriving

from a different world

than our own

 

I know that many of them

are slightly less than few

and that their language is unspoken

unwritten,

but I say it is somewhere.

somewhere between me and you, my life

lived oh so fast

 

And while all languages have alphabets

of their own, so begins

this language of ours

with our failure to understand

new beginnings

 

And time, an island inhabited by timelessness

giving time to those without time

followed by a group of wordless words

at the border crossing of

spirit-mind

 

I hide from myself

so my hearing doesn’t see me

so my sight doesn’t hear me

as it happens with other things.

 

It’s better to know

languages unspoken, timeless

like what we talk

up the hill of

meaningless meanings.

 

Complying with my strangeness

and nothing else,

let this game have

rules

 

So that afterwards

whoever hears the results

someone will win and someone will lose.

 

 

I Brought Myself With Me

 

I.

Firstly

a narrow street

barely to keep me, to bring it with me

then to walk on until where I was fist off,

where the meaning begins

 

in chaos

my dreams appeared

as one day I began to see

waking dreamscapes

I brought myself to school

and teacher Ukë’s guidance,

I’ll carry until the beyond

 

where meanings are abound

 

life has its own desires

and so does love

albeit endless

 

we will come after the awakening

of the light,

you can never tell

human fate

there is destiny in this journey.

 

II.

And after you crossed somewhere

just the first steps

of your life’s journey

my own fate begins to attain

gratitude expressed in courage

for the upcoming days,

for the farseeing eye, expressive faith

if there is truth

you need courage to believe

I brought myself

to the occupied homeland

to the end of my suffering

 

this whole waking reverie

with sunsets almost extinguished

one day it just broke out, the war in Kosovo began

and they said: from now on innocence is guilty

they baptized Death with their names

and Freedom with their surnames.

 

III.

I did what I did

and brought myself here

now I’ve got all the time

to deal with

myself

hauled through time

 

Do whatever you like,

but don’t forget the long roads

on history’s wrinkled forehead.

 

 

 

Dare To Be A Hero

 

Over my shoulders I carried fear and courage

until now

to this day, folded

upon no one’s time, untimed

with difficult journeys, bravery

face to face with fear,

how far can you carry the faith

which can’t be further trusted

neither in wild humans, nor

journeys, and upcoming new days,

uncertain loves

well, then, love,

this juicy ripened apple

forgotten within human soul

describing to the passerby

the taste of spirit’s pain.

 

II.

Carrying within my heart

life’s joys and sorrows

possibilities and impossibilities

thoughts and intentions

all reasonable

expected and exact arrivals

oh what chaotic events

coming and going

and yet again

can’t hide the predictions

about a different time

one needs courage to dare

to believe in love.

times on the walls of folded time

determine directions, of a road longer

than the change of a season

to another

twilight of times

into the years of my life.

 

III.

My love for you, I carried in my mind

the end is endless for

whomever confuses the steps of departure

the getaway will be after them

to split the directions in two

to understand that life moves

just as the wind blows

 

Somewhere there’s a ruse that can trick dreams

but those realities are not good

like in my pretty stories

the game goes on through

disregard for the regard

of events that link us

with the world

of faith with courage

beyond fear

and the most fearsome valor.

 

 

 

Before I Write

 

I don’t need no humaly beauties,

women adorned by eyes, mind and spirit

poetry is no art

if not written deeper

than the vigor’s end.

 

how can I call myself a poet

I can’t measure living reveries

with a couple of dreams

even if they’re the prettiest

like these words awaiting to be written

thusly ideas flow, like

life

 

with selected words, previously

unwritten,

thoughts as big as silence

give meaning to events, this writing

for you

for my verse

for your new attitude

 

Lake Como, oh what sights

and tall peaks beyond,

sun bestowing its rays, so

we can’t see each other through

the window at the balcony

and I didn’t see anything else

and I started writing

poetry

 

let go now of our conquering sight

let go of your writing too,

I wrote over my soul

an event

the envy of all

told me,

and we begun climbing uphill

with no end in sight

 

I didn’t close the door on the conversation

I let it get in

and my words grew into sentences and phrases

I got nowhere to go, it said,

therefore,

writing has roots this deep

and can’t be so easily unsaid.

time leads time,

I was its event

while this poem came to be.

 

 

I’m Waiting For You

 

I’m waiting for you

beyond my possibilities

in the nowhere’s somewhere

 

the wait continues

if the arrival and departure make sense

and are reasonable

 

I meet you

in the pages of closed books

and the titles of forgotten poems,

I seek you

through the many thoughts, when

the absence comes forth,

and thusly

you overcame all my waitings

 

We walk together

through unknown streets, that

only I see in my dreams

that’s how I wait for you

even when someone else waits for you

it is still me doing the waiting

 

I don’t talk about you anymore

my thoughts are spent,

it’s been enough

all those times I waited

at the beginning of myself

for you to pass by.

 

 

 

I Am Somewhere

And That’s Good Enough

 

I am somewhere, I live somehow

beyond the point of remembrance

in the unspoken sentence of patience

 

I dwell somewhere

at the end of self, down there

if the meaning recognizes me,

I am happy

 

I find myself

within my tired sorrow,

previously unseen

not even in a dream,

I saw time sliding from my

hands

and I was convinced

that my absence does not exist

so that I look everywhere

to find myself

 

I got no more qualms,

I know you took all its traces

with you

and that I don’t have any questions,

it suffices that

I remember your name.

 

 

The Origins of Love

 

The meaning of life is,

the reason to walk towards tomorrow,

a dream

that everyone has the right to see

 

such a creature

everyone wants if for themselves, for

their own people

even though it doesn’t know from whence

love came, and where it goes to

 

while you don’t know its origins,

it’s a secret,

hidden like the air that

time has brought through us

until here

 

every time they talk about

the origins of love,

the wise ones wrote

definitions and theories,

formulas, and poetry too,

but, one thing’s for sure,

no one knows for sure

 

One thing you gotta’ understand,

without claiming you’re inventing

some big thing,

love is born each day

each night,

in the afternoon, after midnight.

simply, seen anytime

anywhere

 

and if that’s the case,

where does love live then,

where does life love,

where, then, is its

origin, location, timespan!

 

A theory is overthrown by

another one,

as one season follows another

until a year turns a leaf.

origin is the meaning

both obvious

and obscure.

 

Love comes from God

only He

knows its origin.

 

 

A Revalation

 

I don’t need big words, praises,

colors of thought, chaotic ideas

about myself, this is not correct

until we reach the point of truthfulness

 

If truth had any power

it wouldn’t let the fraud talk

with such truthfulness

that’s how time did it with itself,

as it splashed in memory

pieces of my times

I think of something unknown

 

with an abundance of courage and

drowsy meanings

desires woven, with love,

the spring of events flowed

full of incidents,

for the unknowns, for the unexpected

a new discovery this one

 

That’s how today

a new variant of an old day

seasons come and go -- beyond they walk

for life has one direction -- death

and we journey that away

 

Now, I myself overcame so many

deaths

only because I trusted life

with my longest dream

 

I didn’t put glasses on my thought

to look truth in the eye

and I insanely believed that

the meaning will see me,

but it’s not correct

to not end

this beginning

 

the pasts and the presents

crucify tomorrow

except beauty, everything else follows

its own flow

like this revelation.

 

JETON KELMENDI

 

Prof. Dr. Jeton Kelmendi: Poet, player, publicist, translator, publisher and a professor of university and academic. Born in the city of Peja, Kosovo (1978), Jeton Kelmendi completed elementary school in his birth place. Later he continued his studies at the University of Pristina and received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Mass communication. He completed his graduate studies at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, specializing in International and Security Studies. He finished his second master degree in diplomacy. Kelmendi did a PhD in the “Influence of media in EU Political Security Issues”. He is professor at AAB University College. He is active member of the European Academy of Science and Arts in Salzburg Austria. For many years he has written poetry, prose, essays and short stories. He is a regular contributor to many newspapers, in Albania and abroad, writing on many cultural and political topics, especially concerning international affairs. Jeton Kelmendi became well known in Kosova, after the publication of his first book entitled: “The Century of Promises” (“Shekulli i Premtimeve”), published in 1999.  Later he published a number of other books. His poems are translated in more that twenty-seven languages and published in several international Literature Anthologies. He is the most translated Albanian Poet and well known in Europe. According to a number of literary critics, Kelmendi is the genuine representative of modern Albanian poetry. International critics and poets wrote for him a lot of article, considering him as great European poet. He is a member of many international poetry clubs and is a contributor to many literary and cultural magazines, especially in English, French and Romanian Languages. The wisdom of his work in the field of Literature is based in the attention that he pays to the poetic expression, modern exploration of the text and the depth of the message.  His Genre is focused more on love lyrics and elliptical verse intertwined with metaphors and artistic symbolism. Currently resides and works in Brussels, Belgium and in Pristina, Kosovo.


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