IULIA GHERGHEI

 

Am I A Poet Or What The Hell I Am?

 

For days the words evade me

Not a single thought worth mentioning

Not even the weather, the last resort topic

Won't inspire me anymore

Nothing, blank...

Numb as a piece of wood

My dog sleeps a sweet slumber

I think she secretly ate the muses

Out of sheer jealousy, of course

So, I just pretend I am a poet

Just like before when I was pretending

I am not

It might be hormonal though

So, the dog could be innocent

She changed her place now

She has an entire routine

First, she takes a nap on the armchair next to mine

Then, she jumps out and coil herself in her basket

After a while, the carpet is her final destination

My menopause could have driven them away, the muses, I mean

It is sheer torture the way suddenly everything is silent now

Before it took a lot of effort to stop the on-going poem running in my head

Now the empty space is expanding

Some even call it universe, one layer void

Populated scarcely with thoughts,

big energy blasts overflying their death point

My mind is an empty house with flipping doors

Not even haunted

Words are more and more scarce

Empty blocks of darkness mirroring the infinite outer space

 

When The Sky Is Clear

 

And when is spring time

The sky is high

And it craves for you

Even if you are a bird

Or merely a bored poet

 

When the sky is clear

It will absorb you

Or you will sip it

Together with the morning coffee

Together with the first thrill

 

The sky will stick itself to your retina

Your thoughts will rot in that colour

The wings will vibrate on the same frequency

Even the flight will follow the trajectory of this hue

Obsessively

Especially if you are a poet or merely a bird

When the sky is clear and

When it's spring time

 

Help!

 

The world was heavily stuffed in my pockets

And I only wished to howl

To howl for help, like the drowning man

Around me

The people were hurrying to get to the escalator first

To reach the surface, to resurface

Not me

I didn't think I could make it out this time

Out to the morning shine

That why I can't stand the subway, I've just remembered

All that earth excavated sits leisurely in my pockets, on my chest

I only have to close my eyes and

Breathing becomes futile

Slowly, so very slowly I become imponderable

 

But the dead, even fair and wearing lipstick like me

Don't need any help

So all those hurrying people were right to completely ignore me

And circling like that the perspective

I stepped on the escalator

 

IULIA GHERGHEI

 

IULIA GHERGHEI: Romanian poet of English expression, graduated from University of Bucharest as information technology expert, has published her first poetry collection in 2012 at blurb.com. Prisoners of Cinema Paradiso was edited by Brian Wrixon. She mainly publishes her poems on Facebook. She was also published in many e-zines or poetry sites like Destiny Poets, where she received the honour to be chosen Poet of the year in 2012. In 2015 she won the poetry contest of the Blackwater Poetry group on Facebook. She was part of many anthologies, one of them being The Significant Anthology , anthology edited by Koshy A V and Reena Prasad. In 2020 some of her poems were translated in Turkish by Baki Yiğit in several Turkish literary magazines. Also starting this year she has her own author page on MadSwirl.com site.