Fall 2018, Volume 25

Poetry by Peycho Kanev

Undisclosed

        “Are we tired yet? Are you finished debating the blind
               who insist that light doesn't exist, and have proof of it?”
                                                                   —Franz Wright

Autumn light, illuminating the last bees
and even the darkness beyond
their darkness, which
chaotically merges with the vanishing
summer cells filled with terminal
malignancy, while the night
as an endless snake crawls to the edge
of the end and the sea comes and goes
whole eternity.
Night light, a door through which
I descend into the deep wells of your eyes,
there the memories are splashing and
nothing has changed and I’m pouring
myself into the open palms of your heart, where,
satiated, I will never again experience that thirst.
I believe again, everything’s slowly approaching,
inconspicuous, beautiful, like rain falling in
the future, wetting the bones, going even deeper,
to the deep buried secret, and I’m lost again.
Church light, immense pain,
(the redemptive one):
we can be ourselves without anybody else telling us that,
our dirty halos, our candle light guiding us along the way,
there is nothing impossible
in this melting madness
of two gushing veins transforming into one;
time drips into the past—
everything I say is written on the paper of non-existence;
a child, you are only a child, I say to the sparrow
who makes holes in the sky
through which we can ascend.
The words fall and melt
like an ante-mortem snow, they melt
in last year’s puddles of our eyes.
There, underground,
where I watched your laughter
hitting the walls, I’m looking at it now, still…
And I want,
when I will no longer be here,
to continue to exist with you, inside you;
that feeling of reversed irrevocability,
frozen between the ticks of the smiley face of
the clock, and you, guiding the time,
to hibernate throughout our winter
so we can meet again in the other
life.
Endless love light, this
I have hidden in my belly
but I know you can see it, feel it, red and
warm,
pouring over two hearts inside one warm body;
it will tell you, when I will no longer be able to,
what to do next
after the silence of darkness
and everything else hidden inside—
so many countless things, untold and forgotten
but no one should take the blame for it, just
sometimes everything gets lost
in this life but not here,
not now, not never.

 

 

 

BIO: Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and three chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Rattle, Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others. His new chapbook titled Under Half-Empty Heaven was published in 2018 by Grey Book Press.