UC DAVIS FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENT EXHIBITION
  • Home

Poetry Submissions

We would like to sincerely thank all of you who contributed to this project. If you would like to submit a poem to be included in the installation, please click here.

List of contributing artists:
Hafsa Akter
​Jacqueline Allen
Larisa Peñaloza Almazán
Jessica Alvarado

Nirmun Aulakh
Ana Bach
Mikayla Bailey
Jean Biegun
Lauren Broker
Marah Carney
Helen Chow
Kylie Crisostomo-Rickman
Sarah Days
Joshua Ekstrom
​
Ellie Feder
Alex Garber
​
Candela Graciarena
Cristina Gomez
Lila Janick
Grace Johnson
​Namrata Kasaraneni

Mostafa Khazaei
Angela Lee
Jayna Lizama
Helen Mark
Amaya Maulino
Eva Nemirovsky
​Ryan Nishikawa

​Melody Quevedo
Cami Rothmuller
Tara Saeed
Jesse Saldivar
Ann Savageau
Jamie Serrano
Binti Sohn
-
​Akshat Tiwari
Emma Tolliver
​Pachia Vang

Rova Yilmaz
Zita Wong

Hafsa Akter

Picture

Jacqueline Allen

disconnect-

there’s jello on the shelf across me 
the good kind, red
like the blood they took this morning 
devoured - desired - far from me 
far enough to lose all connection to 

what would we be if we bled blue?
who am i to say i do not 

but blood is red is normal to be such 
is known and i know
i bled red
stained across the blanket of stares 
lost amidst a constant sting of- having to breathe

but as it breeds tied to my veins  
i realize just how far from normal 
red blooded people see me as



tub tunes

red was her favorite color
for she wanted to know fire
burn instead of soak 
in pools of her own water 
drowning under layers of-
validate

her truth seeps from buried emotion 
overflowing  
silent- so no one will know 

screaming through forced smiles
whispers crawling against her breast
    burrowing beneath crevices of old wounds 

she tells me
burning would be better 
    pain hurts less than choking on nothingness



with what is left

it is not apple season. 
i am not a seed.
you are not my keeper. 

are we animals? 
raw 
alive

-alone together 

in my house of 
overgrown vines

Larisa Peñaloza Almazán

un abrazo tuyo

un abrazo tuyo
​es como tomar un baño tibio
tus brazos, el agua
la que fluye libremente
la que toca sin juzgar

me dan escalofríos al primer toque
dejó que la regadera caliente mi piel
un calor en el que encuentro mayor comodidad 
libre de sentir, libre de hacer

se me olvida que pasa el tiempo 
y no me quiero salir
pero recuerdo que todo pronto llegará a su fin

entonces,
báñame una y otra vez
para sentirme limpia y liberada
cumplida y amada
para salir y poder ver
el espejo, lleno de vapor
en el que escribiré nuestros sueños
y dibujaré dos triskeles 
para que sepas
que eres el dueño de mi corazón

Jessica Alvarado

To heal

Grief of a fulfilled life unlived

Freedom is costly
Risk and uncertainty
Evolved from nature

Fleeing feeds fear
Onward despite the spear
The war is over
Just be

A valued life
Demands discomfort
Better a valued life than
​Pain-free

Nirmun Aulakh

Lost in Hope

Hope.

People say when you die, you take nothing with you,
I say if you love someone you take them with you,
I know it’s a hope to keep living and loving them for eternity,
We hold onto it so we can keep going,
Going with the life we want,
Going with flow, the momentum of breathing.

Hope.

The emotion we carry to our grave.
If we loose it, we are lost and have no,
Urge to even love ourselves,
When you loose someone,
You hold on, hold on to the hope of them coming back,
A miracle that may never happen,
We hold on to it because we want to live,
A life without them,
And the moment this tiny space of hope is gone,
We go with it.

Hope.

Something to remember the loved ones by.
Something to be principled by.
Something to smile about.
Something to give, because if you have it then it’s easy to give as well,
As other need it too.
It’s a necessity.

Hope. An emotion, a need of daily living.

Ana Bach

​Intimacy Chokehold

Today I choose to pause my fear of touch 
Hoping palms meet without resist to warmth 
I wish that they would get the pulsing hunch 
And most of all to keep our hands up north 

It is difficult to see others pleased
Why do I face a spar to feel the same?
Trusting that I will never be intrigued
But what if that leads me to being seized?

Struggling to find the words to explain 
No person to find comfort in this sea
The ones I hold close understand my pain
If only my mind would just let me be 


I still have yet to meet my fear of touch 
​Begging to break out from what is too much

Mikayla Bailey

Growing Pains

If it wasn't for the ache in my heart, making every breath feel heavy,
I would have never known the relief of inhaling with ease.

If it wasn't for the tears in my eyes, making my vision dull and blurry,
I would have never noticed how vibrant colors seem.

If it wasn’t for the absence of others, forcing me to face feeling lonely,
I would have never been able to thrive in self-sufficiency.

Healing isn’t easy, but should it really be?
​Because if we don’t try to heal, how can we set ourselves free?

Jean Biegun

Guardian of the Heart

My wrecked heart--
O turn, turn O soul in me
Try to find some light
Lift me from the ovum dark

Birth me into salvation
Or heaven
Or whatever samadhi
Exists past this hardening world

Give me new guts and bones
My own are rent
Sucked out by the drear
All juice gone

Fill again my being
Share with me some love

Lauren Broker

papillon

Why am I not allowed to grieve?
​For the past
Or mourn the future I did not let myself receive 
For all of the years I could have spent
Truthful in my own. 
I can miss her and how it felt to be loved as her
Without wanting or needing to go back
I do not lie when I say that sometimes
I still crave your validation
Some confirmation
That I haven’t made a mistake 
That I deserve or can earn your love 
In my new state.
That my mourning is not hurt but healing
Relearning to grow with hope for the future
You can yearn for the past but I will not cry 
You can miss her long hair and lipsticked smile
But they deserve your love too. 

Marah Carney

Daughter in Waiting

I am growing quiet 
I flirted with hibernation
I teased a taciturned lifestyle 

I leave luridness  
I desensationalize my sex

I left uncomfortably loud girlhood 
For a smaller thing called 
Womanhood 
And I will die a daughter in waiting 
And then I'll become worm food 
And I'll feel light 
Important 
Genderless 
Altogether 
Vermiformed.
​- mar



Tub Soup

before my mother left me at an airport curb 
with a red face and crinkled $20 bill
she told me to stop wasting the hot water
so i take a bath everyday

after i was raped i silently made my way back to my dorm room 
i shed all of my clothing to keep in a pile for 8 days 
then i showered and discovered 
my blood and bruises 
so i take a bath everyday 

when i read that it takes seven years to have 
entirely new skin 
i began to soak my shedding feet 
after another 9 mile day
peeling away the skin like it was a mandatory chore
my soles were carrots to be shredded for 
tub soup 
to be brand new 
so neither of them would have ever touched me

so i take a bath everyday 
​-mar

Helen Chow
死亡
​

死亡是另一種生存的開始。
死亡
只是將靈魂的服飾
脱下肉身的軀壳
去一個
平靜,寧靜, 安樂, 安祥的地方。

那裏
没有世俗的煩囂, 心靈的痛楚,
疾病的折磨,
對將來的憂慮,
對現狀的焦慮,
没有生活旳變化, 喜樂, 悲傷。
只有寧, 只有靜, 只有安, 沒有樂。
你要嗎? 你喜歡嗎? 太平淡嗎?
假以時日, 悶了,

神仙也披上肉身的衣裳....下凡
。
皇帝也想試做平民....下鄉
再作一次生命的循環,
你永遠不會亡, 不會滅。
好嗎? 累嗎? 可怕嗎?

宇宙是一道大大大的能量,
你是其中一粒星,
如沙漠的一粒沙,
大海的一滴水, 循環不息。

麥智賢二零一七年七月十七日寫於華盛頓洲愛民思市




Twenty, Twenty-six (Sandy Hook shooting Dec.2015)
​

Twenty first graders, six educators are in peace.

I know there is still Joy and Light.
God gives everyone a free will.
A will to live and love, a will to hate and kill.
Shell of gun control is harder than the bullet.
My heart oozed with tears, yet not a drop dropped.
I feel for the parents for I am a parent.
I feel for the teachers for I am a teacher.
I feel for the grannies for I am a grandma.
For the children who watched their friends die
How shakened, frightened, desperate
It must have been for the pure little souls.
May they grow up with strength,
Through the power of Tolerance and Acceptance
To the adversities of Life.
Compassionate and forgiving to those who
Suffer physically and mentally
In the Ocean of Love and Peace of God.

​

How do I miss thee?

How do I miss thee?
How do i love you?
Why don't I miss you
When you can breathe, eat, eat, hear and talk?
You lingered on even when your heart stopped.
You didnt want to leave when I was by your side.
You saved your last breath for me.
Did you hear me?
Did you know I was there holding your hands,
Praying for you, with you,
Comforting you in your last ten hours?
Please tell me....

Yes, I hear, I know....My daughter.
I am going to Peace.
​(Dec 3, 2009 3:30am Cleveland, Ohio)




Inside Tears

I want to cry.
I don't want to cry.
I want to cry.
Tears won't come as the eyes bid.
Inside tears drip silently, secretly.
They lock the heart, the mind, the soul,
Dumb the open cry for help, for consolation,
Creating scars layer by layer
Like an onion...called Depression
Waiting to be peeled, to be healed.
They need to be sliced painfully
With Acceptance of the Presence,
Forgetfulness of the Past,
Detachment to someone....dead or alive.
Open tears will come, should come, can come
With efforts, determination and Love
Talking to friends, counsellors can help.
Talking to the Supreme Soul is the best.

Kylie Crisostomo-Rickman

the forest where we are okay 
The redwood forest is the best place 
to heal a broken heart
to look upon the scattered light
how it changes the scene
with every second 
of the sun rising and falling.
I am not okay in 
the concrete walls of what feels like 
is supposed to be our house- 
we are not okay there. 
But Here, 
Here
under the impressively tall reassuring redwoods
Here 
touching the cool shimmering creek 
Here 
discovering mushrooms with childlike excitement 
Here 
our silence is our awe instead of our brokenness 
Here, we are okay. 
The redwoods makes us okay,
​I only wish we never had to leave.

Sarah Days

MY HEART CRIES LOUD

silence does not describe my heartache
my heart cries loud

so often it is said 
​that there are no words
to describe the pain
yet i have found 
that i have too many words
that i want to say
or wish i’d said
there is a million things 
i want to scream
a million more
i want to cry.

silence does not describe my heartache
my heart cries loud

Joshua Ekstrom

Evening at the Theater

once upon a time
there was a great grand dance
sublime
you prayed it last forever
though despite your best endeavors
you couldn't stop the passage
of time
they exited stage left
for a moment you felt bereft
but found yourself holding your breath
awaiting what next you might
​find

Ellie Feder

Washing My Hands
​my hands aren’t as soft as they used to be
I still care for them the same, the way I was taught as a kid
except now they look a little different, they feel different too
they’re spotted and rougher
they’ve done more, so, I’ve had to wash them more, scrub them more
I’ve done more, so I’ve had to cleanse them more, rub them more
people come and go around me, and though I welcome it, it's messier
so I’ve had to wash my hands, douse, abrade, rinse. scrape, bathe, and soak.
purge the impurities and tally the seconds.
sterilize the field, then rush it again.
let the water run clear, and now an encore.
I am happy to be living more, my hands don’t show it though.
life is more complicated and I think I’m handling it well.
but my hands aren’t as soft as they used to be

Alex Garber

to greta

in jebenhausen in think forest
they put the cows in we search nearest
and greta ran away where the bones must lay

in baden-baden to be sick is to be cunning
she’s a naked handmaiden to forget is to be running
soaked like prey and today is feast day

in schwarzwald in green night
Brothers grimm recalled she sips on plight
to be turned child’s play drunk in your ashtray

a girl not far from her

Candela Graciarena

Tesoro
spongy, malleable material of a precious treasure
sturdy or weak depending on the wielder
correcting our shortcomings of biology with 
blinding truth, obsidian imagination 
creation and devastation

strings of limbs, vats of hot blood,
the crunching of fruit branches as they curve,
cradling, crackling, possessing a burning warmth
that you held me with, so delicately 
embedding 21 ounces into my nuclei

my blooming, not a tear away from your reckoning

Cristina Gomez

Tu muerte me duele

Tu muerte
Me duele mucho
En el centro de mi cuerpo y mi alma
Me agüita
Me deprime
Me pesa en los hombros
En los ojos

Me duele mucho
Que perdí a mi mami
A mi mamá
Quien me enseñó amar

Busco tu alma
Que vive libre
En el aire, pajaritos, árboles, sol, y mariposas
Allí vive tu alma
Tu abrazo
Tu amor.


​
New Grief

Grief
Has taken on a more expansive form
It has filled my world
A bit more.
Since the loss of my mother, and my friend
Grief has reached more
Of my life and world
Death is relentless.
Unyielding.
Someday it will reach all that my love holds
Someday it will reach me.

Lila Janick

I am a Scientist

I am a scientist. I trust; facts, data, numbers
I find comfort in my spreadsheets.

I see science, and people’s distrust
I see the death counts, Rising hate and pain
The numbers … don’t look good.

I see it's not getting better
I see no reason to think it will

But my Big Brother has hope
He believes in the future, in goodness... in me.
And so, like a bad scientist, I ignore the data
And hope anyway.

Grace Johnson

Body Aches

I reek of pain.

A
Moment of peace, please.

So I can focus
On my trajectory

To be a token health and prosperity
In ways only few can dream of.
Reviving myself from nearly dead,
Enters my lust for living, breathing,
Dying.

Namrata Kasaraneni

Prayer for the Guardians

Build my body up
out of what has already
lived & died. Give me
scissor eyes so I won’t
be afraid, anymore, of seeing
what has severed in me.
Call it healing. Fill
my hollow body
with an hourglass run dry, 
a bluebird filling every empty
wound with song. Listen:
there is something beyond
this death. There is something
beyond this death.

Mostafa Khazaei
​
مصطفی خزایی


1.

بچه که بودم

خانه ای کشیدم
با در های بسته
سالهاست
…به دنبال کلیدم



When I was a child
I built a house
With closed doors
It's been years
Looking for my key…

2.

عادت کرده ام
گوشه ای بایستم
و به آدم های زیادی فکر کنم.
به خستگی های ساده
و تشنگی های عمیقی
که بی نوبت می آیند
تا در من
زخم های بیشماری را
.حک کرده باشند


I'm used to it
I stand in a corner
And I think of a lot of people.
Of simple behaviors
And social thirst
That come in turn
Up on me
​To engrave countless wounds.

3.
​

به قبرستان می برم 

حرف هایم را
مرده ها

خود را به خواب نمی زنند.
​

I'm bringing my words
​To the cemetery
the dead
Do not fall asleep.​

Angela Lee

Inside Out

Numbers and control: they go hand in hand.
Exact digits were an assurance,
so I counted whenever I let them in.
But I let them eat me from the inside out;
that's how anorexia works, after all.

Whether I wanted it or not, I lost myself.
Physical, mental, and emotional,
every excess was shed off.
So after a year, that's who I had become:
cold, hard, and unfeeling—just like numbers.

But come one spring, a warmth began to seep in,
but a hot dizziness nearly swept me off my feet;
feverish relapses, in and out, came then went.
Yet here I am now, standing tall and proud--
instead of lying on my bed, empty and thin.

Jayna Lizama

A Dip in Inalåhan
From our mouths, bubbles float
A language that reaches the equatorial sun 
I look at you
We share our mother’s eyes 
Delicious sacred salt    filled with memories
that leave kisses on our brown skin 
With pedaling feet, we carry forward 
Each stroke, a wave hello
Håfa! we say in bubbles
Introduced to us, an array of fish
of traveling canoes guided by stars 
of women with sea foam in their hair        
For a moment, we forget                         
In the blue and green                
Rising seas and auntie’s screams                
In that moment, we exist
without grief 
without fear
Soaking in our birthright

Helen Mark

What is a teacher?
(Nov 21, 2018 Noblesville Middle School, Indiana)
A teacher teaches knowledge
Hopefully it will turn to wisdom someday.
A teacher guides thoughts
But does not impose his own
A teacher asks questions
But may not give answers.
They may be inventions in the future.
A teacher inspires and may not know
How far the inspirations travel.

A teacher protects and saves lives of students
When they are in danger.
"That was the only acceptable action"
Jason Seaman said casually,
After wrestling the shooter to the ground
Eating three shots in his body.
Blooming three flowers in his soul.

Amaya Maulino

Lazarus of Memory

In an hour of shadow and grim
There is always a ghost that follows
Sometimes with an empathetic sorrow 
Sometimes with a distant smile 
An afterthought of loss
Maybe it was your first lover 
Laughter at arcade birthday parties 
A childhood friend you used to bike with
The taste of silk mango left on your tongue
How your mother hugged you while trembling
Transparent yet never cold, waiting beside you
Belonging and breathing
As a whisper of proof there is autonomy
Then dissipating into the air 
With a trail of sweet scented smoke 
Leaving you with a hope 
That someday it may return alive and well

Eva Nemirovsky

Gray

There was a time when she was gentle. 
Kind. Compassionate. 
When the grass was green, the flowers bloomed, 
coating the world in pink and red and lilac. 

But when the colors faded 
to pastels and grays
her heart hardened against the greying world,
the tumbling skies, the weeping trees,
and the zombified people.

Yet if the heart hardens and the world fades,
then where will our children grow?
run, walk, laugh, play?

So, she softened her heart,
let the pain flow through,
and taught others how to live beyond the gray
and see color, again.

Ryan Nishikawa

burying you

i buried you on a warm gusty friday
clear skies marred by faint gray dust
right above horizon in the periphery

i held you without touching
cold and limp was your frame
cheap paper was your shroud
a shallow hole is your grave

covered you in topsoil
more alive than you now
hope you find peace here
maybe Mother Earth will
show the care that i did not

i kept you in a cage 
because i wanted you to stay
should’ve been my only sign
 we are not the same

now i’m burying you
where i can never hurt you again

Melody Quevedo

Farming the pantheon

stumpy green sprouts grow out 
of the grief razed heart,
fertilized by sorrow 
but planted with hope. 
their roots guarding against the next erosion 
of sadness

we tend gingerly to our reborn garden,
it’s hard to trust the work 
until new blooms come

Cami Rothmuller

Goodbyes

I pull my jacket tighter 
and imagine my cold lips against his, 
his the colder--
my hands grasping for his, finding 
only thin bones clattering in my palms.

I mouth the words of a song he used 
to sing, see the ghosts
rise from my mouth 
into the night like prayers ascending.
The moonlight fills my eyes like water 
and I wonder with rising panic

how any light will find him 
where he is, whatever we call it, oblivion,
and will he be truly in darkness. Can I
go with him.

Tara Saeed

Like No Other

I lost you and I lived
Not before I realized 
Someone should have put you in your place,
You waited to see my face
when I realized that your love was a lie

Audacious enough to bring me down
soon enough you’ll drown in your own tears
All your fears may fall on deaf ears.
Your constant need to overcompensate,
All of your hate 

Makes it so hard for me to believe you
Because now you’re so easy to see through
But I may be able to forgive
Because I lost you
And I lived

Jesse Saldivar

Elegy for Lynn

I cling to the days you got older
long enough to forget you won’t anymore
so it’s about time I step near your 
brooding rock, your telegraphed epitaph, and
I see your life strung out in the hyphen
planted between those imposing dates--
my hydrangeas mock the grass that crunch
beneath my feet and surround your immortal frame--
I touch you—you’re so cold now—I 
sit next to you—read you “Elegy for Jane—” 
I always thought it macabre, 
how much you enjoy that one but
I hope you still enjoy how a horse's
neigh reverberates through the woods.

Ann Savageau

Bedfellows 2006

Strange bedfellows, Grief and Joy,
They lie together in the bed of my brain,
They spoon, assuming like contours.
Sometimes I can't tell one from the other.



Do You ever Pause


Do you ever pause, wherever you are,
And wonder how we are doing,
How we have managed to put
Our broken lives back together,
Like the shards of a teapot,
Looking somewhat like the original
But never fully whole.
We will never be without cracks
While you, on the other hand,
Are in a place of glorious Wholeness
Where there is no brokenness,
No sorrow, no cracks or shards.




Five Moths Drawn to the Candle

Five moths drawn to the candle’s flame, only to be consumed--
what they saw in it, we’ll never know since they kept that 
to themselves.
Perhaps even they didn’t know why, only that they had to do it
although it meant they perished.

You and I, on the other hand, are not moth-like at all, 
but trees that thrust deep roots into soil and rock then
 stay in place, watching others come and go, flourish and pass
until at last we watch our leaves fall and our limbs hollow out, 
as we sink back into the earth to rejoin those 
moths that graced our branches for such brief time. 


​
Grief

The ongoing-ness of Grief--
It’s impossible to imagine
without direct experience, 
and there’s no practicing for it

It sneaks up on you 
at the most unexpected
times, clobbering you
with its immediacy, 
tying you to the tree
while you beg to be let go

Let me just tell you this:
once you’re branded with the beast,
you’re stuck with it forever,
for good and for bad--
no ablation can erase it
and besides, you don’t 
really want it gone, do you?



Guarding Against Death (March 15, 2021)

We stuffed the chinks with socks,
taped shut the windows but 
you floated in so tiny, a moat
on the outside breeze to steal 
our second born when we 
opened the door one September day 

We nailed the doors and plastered
every crack but you slipped in
on mud from our shoes to take
our firstborn one fine December 
afternoon when we weren’t looking.

We sealed ourselves in an airtight
room with our last born, but you
rode in on a sunbeam to snatch
her one September afternoon.

You take only the finest
so don’t bother coming 
around for us
​



Loss

Who are we kidding, trying to appear normal
when we have a big L emblazoned over the
space where our hearts used to be whole



​
Sun-kissed Boy (September 4, 2005: the fifth anniversary)

Sun-kissed, curly-haired boy
With the sea-green eyes:
If only I had known
I would have clasped you
With bonds of love and
Prescience so fierce
You could not have
Slipped from earthly grasp
To go wandering among
The stars, too busy to
Write home.



​
Wall (4/1/2001)

The Iron Curtain dividing East from West
Has finally come down; but that final curtain--
The Berlin Wall dividing life from death
Has never been breached.
If only there was a No Man's Land,
A DMZ between your world and ours
Where we could meet to share news and a quick embrace.


Jamie Serrano

Dalinar Kholin Taught Me How to Hope
April 20, 1775. December 8, 1941. September 12, 2001.

"Accept pain, but don't accept you deserve it."
"The most important step is the next one." 

Holding onto hope takes a little delusion. 
A little belief, beyond evidence, that things
Are all going to be ok. 

A little faith people will do the right thing.
A little faith you're doing the right thing. 

Fiction makes it easier to believe in 
clean, happy endings. 

Ones where everyone lives. 
And it's all ok.

Binti Sohn

Funeral Face

In the end, funeral face is all that remains.
Pumped full of chemicals, 
every corpse that lies in the casket 
remains unfamiliar to loved ones. 
I saw someone I didn’t know. 
Pale and drained, 
the expressionless face 
disturbingly lingers in the back of my head.
An ugly sight to see!
During late nights while I’m studying, 
sometimes a funeral face will suddenly appear.  
I slip out sobs and 
let some tears stain my homework. 
Funeral face wasn’t real! 
He was supposed to be smiling, telling jokes, 
tasting delicious food. 
But he died
and now I’m writing sad memos on my phone.
​



Reaching the Ocean

Rivers of time run this plane
Just like any other body
We are the fish who swim within
Often, some people–
Some fish–
May observe a pretty rock in the shallows
Of a bend they slow to admire
But the current will pick up without regards
To any small brain’s prediction
Downstream is the only option
Learn to forget about the rock,
Little fishy,
It’s okay to let go.

Akshat Tiwari

Nothing better in one’s life than being told,
“You’re not good enough” “you’re too much” “too bold.”
But something about our spirit endures,
Says “I’ll show them” “what I am and what I’m not.”

For I am determined, like a spreading wildfire,
Will achieve everything, fueled by your mire

Emma Tolliver

Afterglow

The shadows of the life I fled 
Follow me back home 
Always running from what I left
Behind a long, long time ago 
Stuck in the labyrinth of the past
Lost in familiar catacombs
While the wind carries the echoes 
Of my cries, I am not yet hollow
As there is still something within me
Gentle and soft and — behold: 
With it my heart is set alight;
Hazy warmth in my chest, aglow 
I draw my sword and venture forth 
With quivering hands, solo
There is nowhere else to turn -
So now it’s time for me to go 
And I hope for my life and to find my way back 
In the afterglow.

Pachia Vang

kab yeeb

pink petals so fragile
they break at the touch of my fingertips.
melt into the palm of my hands.

my grandmother use to cut open the bulbs, slit-by-slit,
and my eyes would grow big watching them bleed 
a lustrous milky substance, day-by-day,
drying brown as they aged in the sun

wilting.

i watched my grandfather clean his pipe neatly.
disassemble the pieces. wrap them in leaflets. 
burying it in a box underneath his bed
as the smoke lay thick in the air.

it billows to this day...
the memories of my fading youth.
the memories of our fading youth. 

Rova Yilmaz

Siir

They were from our country, they hid themselves, like me...
It's like seeing a person's similarity in a mirror.
Even though it didn't cut, it hurt me,
And my prayers are with the fog inside me
begging and pulling myself back
between believing and believing
In an endless thin line, cutting me like a steel rope
As if the result is just a matter of choice
It will take the heart to love, now it's my job to raise it
They were from our country, they gave a hope and left

Whether the days pass or not:
A
Smile and look
The world was loving me
like someone else's help
Like the lack of self-love...
you should be able to love yourself
Reminded like a memento
​



Kişiler

Geç kaldığım kabusumdayım yine
Giriş saati geçmiş, param yok.
Param var belki de!?... Cebim kuru.
Gönlüm elime vermiyor gücü
Yine de hallederim ben, yolda taş, yolda taşlar.
Selam veriyorum, dışarıdan oynatarak kendimi
İplerim ellerimde, resmî gibi.
Hayret hiç yadırgamamışım kendimi
Büyük olan hep biriymiş gibi, sanki neden
Ve ellerinde olduğumu gören 3.ben
Asıl ben ise bu izleyici; oynayan ve oynatanı...
Demek ki en az iki değil üçmüşüm
10 taneye bahse girmiştim; ama işin doğrusu;
İkiye tamah etmiştim, görüyorum şimdi üçümüzü,
yollarda taş, içimde iki arkadaş, ağır taş,
olur buradan yak Atilla taş.

Zita Wong

the smell of rain

ive learnt to be okay with the smell of rain
and the images with which it trails
the ones I predicted would blur but never did

as clear as day i remember what once was
with all my heart i wish it would return
we could run away in the cold
the smell of rain once again your musk

please stay, i beg
with words that fail me
if only you never looked away
maybe you would have read my eyes

instead we stood
with raindrops and bloodstains
trailing down path where we met
and wondered of the possibilities endless



Strange

how real was he
he who stood before me
he who looked like you

the audacity of this strange man 
to remind me of a love that wasn't meant to be
of affections unshown
of feelings unconfessed

in the second that the elevator doors opened
I watched him as he watched me

how real was this strange man
who stood as tall as you did
with a glare as hostile as yours

and how unfair to this strange man 
that his existence to me is tainted by you
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home