Against All Odds
Late at night we stood against the moon
and observed the image of infinity
without knowing that infinity is inside us both.
We overheard the great emptiness,
and we looked for each other
in its endless circle.
And we listened to the wind with its
ghostly steps between the trees.
Time,
like some black bird circled
into the center of the moon's gravitation
and then perched there,
burning its previous coloration
in the now bright, purple wheel.
We observed the image of infinity,
lost in the bygone eras.
But soon we found out
that we are exactly the same –
that our image was lost too
and the black bird called us.
The Dogs
Sitting in this dingy room
in front of the keyboard
as the moonlight penetrates
through the venetian blinds
and the bottle of white wine
pours life into me.
The walls shift and get
darker.
I am picking at the memories
and let them unfold in front of
me…
I remember now two years ago
visiting the country of my birth
in Eastern Europe,
and what I’ve remembered most
were the dogs on the streets,
free and undisturbed: no owners,
no collars, no worries, no food;
lying in the parks, sleeping on
the grass between the highways,
picking in the garbage bins for
scraps, chasing the cats in the
alleys, taking their time, biting
the legs of the pedestrians, and
at night, when it’s quiet outside-
wailing at the moon.
Why they do that I will never
know,
but now as this memory bites
the whiteness of the page,
one wail is blasting upon this
sleepy neighborhood, causing
the city dwellers to jump off
their beds.
My throat is sore!
At the Museum
Time has stopped here.
The colors hidden within the shadows play
indecent games. Frames and paper
whisper silently to the last visitors.
Something very noble and old is trying to
tell me to stop and I do.
From the dusk,
Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring laughs at me,
with closed eyes.
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Peycho Kanev is the Editor-In-Chief of Kanev Books. His poetry collection Bone Silence was released in September 2010 by Desperanto. A new collection of his poetry, titled Requiem for One Night, will be published by SixteenFourteen in 2013. Peycho Kanev has won several European awards for his poetry and he’s nominated for the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net. His poems have appeared in more than 900 literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Hawaii Review, Cordite Poetry Review, Sheepshead Review, The Coachella Review, Two Thirds North, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others.
