Winter

It’s winter again:

all that is mortal

breathes slow.

dark roads

lost under infinite white,

lay low, skin to skin with Earth.

rivers

curled at the bottom,

dream of a fish, a rainbow.

cities slow down,

sleep longer,

look alike,

glued by the cascading patina

of a gray sky.

the net of barren trees

tremble…

I think of trees:

stripped to the bones,

embraced by death,

dreaming of life.

at this time

of white reflection

I learn to forget

every day,

as early nights

softly

wrap around  

bones of my memory.

in those short winter days

darkness falls early

~NKO 12/3/13

Language barrier.

in the valley of weathered bones

I speak the language of the rain,

the words of broken continuum:

I understand silence – long and translucent,

I can almost see through it.

I hear the void whisper pale memories,

an echo of something so distant,

so faint…

I dream of a symphony,

a song,

thunder by my door.

…in the house of shadows

all sounds magnified.

sometimes, my love, I want to turn away

from the ocean of your face

and stay in the rain

of my internal landscape. sometimes

I wish for spring to come

and melt your language of snow into water

~NKO 2012

A Thought...

When you remove something important from your life or it removes itself, the empty space wrap around you and a void stares into your eyes like your own grave. By osmosis, the other things start to push in, the things, you kept at bay. Now, when there is a dead zone within you, those things are first in line to sneak into your life, into your being. Suddenly you start to notice some changes - your likes, your tastes, even your dreams are not your old, familiar and comfortable anymore.  You look deeper and you notice you still have a  will (you always have a will) to resist or to let it be. ~ Resistance is Not Futile~, but you may not see any reasons why you would. the emptiness is not dangerous because of the absence of things, but because of indiscriminate acceptance of all things that wish to enter. From my personal experience – keep the emptiness empty, otherwise when unneeded things fill the void around you, they will continue to invade your being, until it breaks you and changes you into something you are not. ~ c:NKO 8/15/13

At the fringe.

I sleep in a house

without walls

half drowned in the rain

that drips from my eyelids

drop-by-drop

trapped in the past

like a mosquito in a drop of amber

dreams condensed in a breath of death

lethal

like a viper’s kiss

c:NKO 2013

Raindrops like heartbeats in silence.

 the summer drowns in the rain

as if Noah’s flood once more.

the sun is pale and half asleep,

wrapped in cotton clouds.

the dusky day flows into darkness.

and prematurely rising night

reduces all to nothing,

to the length of my touch.

I open the door

I listen to the song

of the night and rain,

slow and heavy… cold

like the face of a comet.

a song without words:

a song that guide me far,

in the land of my dreams,

where only silence and darkness,

where the frozen breath of God

drifts toward the distant sun,

where I can hear my heartbeats

~c:NKO 7/29/13 

untitled

The low sky of the afternoon

drops in the dark waters

solitude of the moment

enchants sounds and colors

into the asymmetry

of noneremembrance

the carnival of ever changing things

floods the blindness in every breath

the unknown snarls

flushing bare canines

from the gapping mouth of the full moon

we stare into each other’s eyes

so distant so close

different

and the same under

the tent of blooming stars

the silence of their gaze awakens me

the fresh and gentle wind of the past

touches my face

and the kiss on my lips

tastes like the sea

always fresh

never forgotten

c:NKO 6/17/13

My Feline.

you walk South, I walk North,

we cross each other’s paths,

turn our heads and stare.

we share the road:

you keep to your side I keep to mine.

we often exchange dirty looks

our predatory instincts glimmer in our pupils:

no smiles, no aggression

no winner in the game of deception,

our blood equally hot when it flows.

today

you lay on my parking spot:

stray, stripy, ruddy and friendly

I gently touch your silky, deceptively warm, fur.

I see a pool of dried blood beneath your cheek…

tomorrow

I will forget where you are

C:NKO 6/2/13 revised

Surrender.

power that is lesser

surrenders to the greater one

I say you think we mean

the world is in fragments

order hopelessly faces chaos

the cloak of darkness

wraps around the light

one belongs to one

no senses beyond the boundaries

c:NKO 2013

untitled

you walk South, I walk North,

we cross each other’s paths,

turn our heads and stare.

we share the road:

you keep to your side I keep to mine.

often we exchange dirty looks

our predatory instincts glitter in our pupils.

but mostly it is territorial.

we maintain our poker faces:

no smiles, no aggression

no winner in the game of deception,

our blood knows,

it is equally hot when it flows.

today you lay on my parking spot:

stray, stripy, ruddy and attractive.

I gently touch your silky, deceptively warm, fur.

I see a pool of dried blood beneath your cheek…

I will look for you tomorrow,

I will forget for a moment where you are

C:NKO 6/2/13

when I am alive

 Words slowly crawl from my fingernails,

a few still dormant under my skin-

silent decaying shells on the shore.

some spill the sunset, the darkness,

rain over the water.

I long for something-

words fail to define.

words sparkle

remnants of a broken rainbow,

shed their eyes

over night’s landscape

swim in the liquid lead of a full moon:

I wish for a clear and simple, rolling tears

I wish for a day, which can’t be translated,

and breaks language, time and distance:

for spring tapping on my heart,

which sips into its deepest chambers:

for birds flying in pairs over the fields

the grass sprayed with flowers, growing wild.

I wish…for the yellow sky of an exploded sun

~c: NKO 2013

blind thoughts

I’m waiting for the rain

in the hour of a broken clock.

when you don’t look-

shadows prowl…

I’m blind!

fall…

my thoughts are heavier than air:

I am a sinner

waiting for the rain.

~c: NKO5/14/13

gently

 someone said “ love conquers all”

 someone else said “love is a dog from hell”

when gravity grasp her shadow,

and pin her in the land of webs,

she sees your face, touches

it

she knows no sadness;

 It’ll make you sad.

she knows no pain –

you’ll ache.

the air, you breathe, thick and hot,

like melted wax.

endless flow of nights

your days - your blindness.

 she keeps you afloat

over the ocean of liquefied salt.

cold moon, half drowned, for company.

the sunrise parted far, lost in the past,

 in a world which isn’t yours

anymore.

the rose petals, like drops of blood,

heavy,  

she picks from the ground,

 trash cans, freshly filled graves

and blows away, with her breath

in all directions.

 your eyes are shallow.

you learn to breathe again

C: NKO 3/30/13 

when water tastes like bitter almond

I wouldn’t dare

to go further at my will

where all the shades

of darkness

disappear,

from where the fear

retreats in shame.

where

every drop of rain,

on its descend,

recites the seconds

by the names:

and-one, and-two,

and-three, and-four…

to the infinity of ends,

without end

~NKO 3/28/13

not as it seems

not as it seems

honey is not about the sweetness

 -viscosity?

as bees not about the honey

 -labor?

flowers are not about the bees

 -pollination?

and the ground is not about the  flowers

 -fertility?

your eyes are blue like water in the sky

like a road for the rain to travel

like the blood in my veins

when oxygen is a scarcity

when midnight mixed with solitude

the words are  trash or a code

but not a thought not

even the reflection of it

c:NKO 3/15/13

I want to live

I want to live

                without tomorrow,

like an autumn leaf, still attached,

touched by the breath of winter.

cold…

breath…

I want to live like a ship,

separated with the land,

embraced by tides, wind

and  bones of the abandoned moon.       

…a feather upon

the violence of restless sea.

I want to live like a migrating bird,

driven by  the harmony of invisible lines,

blinded by the fate of the moment.

…as a whisper

of the departed thought,

a surge of red through the spider web

of blue.

I want to sleep without dreams:

wrapped in a tight cocoon of my own skin,..

still and absent,

reduced to the droplet

 that never breaks

~c:NKO 2013

suddenly (a one sentence poem)

suddenly,

the sky breaks with multitude of colors

around my eyes, chasing last night’s dwellers

through the intricate labyrinths, into

dark corners, while

dreams still clinging to the surface, still drum

forbidden thoughts, repeated by the bird

in last flush of angular vibration

between heaven and earth,

between the sky and my eyes,

like fractions of the fractal

that looms from invisibility

and disappears into its smaller self,

leaving behind a few feathers, a song.

~NKO2/28/13

the name of your shadow

the name of your shadow.

when dreams grab all their children and hide

deep underground:

when the words burn in my mouth

I call your name

the wind hisses back:

the river knocks on the glass

of its coffin: my heartbeats

increase intervals

between

their own echo  and your name:

letters splatter over the mirror.

I try to find my face in the shadow,

beyond the glass:

I call your name,

each time louder

c:NKO 2/21/13

de-light-of my-eyes.

de-light-of-my-eyes

I can say many things:

“whispering leaves, shimmering stars,

singing raindrops, trembling snowflakes”.

I can say the things

as they come and go: coffee in the morning, flowing delight

filling my cup, the sunlight slides over

the glass of your window into the afternoon and the night

forms formlessness

somewhere in the periphery of your mind.

you may go to the door, open it, let the wind in:

a breath… , a touch… , a caress… ,

a trembling shimmering whisper

and the rain 

c:NKO 02/2012

all, that was omitted

the last thing I remembered –

the moon looked me in the eyes,

before falling into the reflection of its own nakedness,

 into the abyss,

splashing black ink  at the shores of arising dreams:

 

spilled milk, a fog lost in the cloud,

strips of white silk woven into my hair,

 flowers in a vase,

forgotten for days.

I watched as they decayed,

while the  winter  glued snowflakes

over the sleeping landscape,

on my windows…

if I remembered my first thought, I’d have found the origins,

but I was spellbound by the stillness of a frozen river,

by the sound of the rising sun, your voice,

 a whisper of the dying day, by your name…

the first thing I saw

was the vastness of my failures

~NKO 2/10/13 

words

some words are thick as honey,

the truth 

poisoned and corrupted,

caught

in sweetness  without limits,

trapped in words,

like a bee’s fragments in honey:

broken wings, parts of a legs, half of a jaw,

something small and dark,

could be an eye,

and a useless sting...

~c:NKO 1/24/13

my swords, my wounds

my swords… my wounds…

my slowly bleeding life…

a few drops of rain

trapped in the cobweb.

the thunder resonates

and rainbow drinks my eyes.

wind rustles through the wheat

and settles by my feet.

barefooted spirits of the plains,

my long forgotten friends,

kneel by the puddle of me.

o blessed emptiness,

embrace me,

let me rest.

~c:NKO 1/21/13

in dreams

it’s dark and cold.

what’s missing maddens my heart.

in slow motion, fragments of me

afloat

until they freeze, until they sparkle

like snowflakes, mixed with silver

like stars, lost in dark heavens

in my dreams

I’m searching for what’s missing:

your voice in silver,

your eyes in my dreams,

I am in your eyes

~c:NKO1/19/13

dreamscape

dreamscape

it’s more than a coincidence  when

another day weaves its way

through an empty bird’s nest,

through the dry riverbeds,

through the sleeping streets of a city

and doesn’t awake a single soul, when

moonlight fills the eyes of the sleeping,

when the wind is caught  in the eye of a trembling window.

when a frightened wolf, spellbound

by the endless night, howls at the full moon

trapped by the nails of the leafless branches.

I cannot decipher a single sign,

 I can’t recognize a single face.

there is no place to rest among the sleeping,

there is no place to live among the dead.

I slide on my knees. the last sound

escapes my lungs and the mist swirls

over a dreamscape

~c: NKO1/11/13

distance

you  wouldn’t have recognized me

if I wouldn’t held yellow lilies in my hands,

if the wind wouldn’t played with my hair

when I stayed still, alone in the middle

of the flowing crowd.

what was the separation, before we met?

just  knots on the face of the clock.

what is the distance? it collapsed

between our heartbeats.

the meaning is in now, it exceeds

all previous knowledge, as the sound

exceeds words. the world begins

in my eyes and ends in yours

~c:NKO1/8/14

grain by grain

…grain by grain, speck by speck

I’ve been assembling myself

for many days.

I have lost count…

I will let the rain

wash my shoulders, my hair,

the back of my neck,

until I freeze and shatter-

back into the sand and specks-

and then,

I’ll start over again.

maybe

this time I’ll do it right

~c;NKO 1/8/13