YANA DJIN

                                                                                                                                 IN MEMORIAM NODAR DJIN

Father.
All is calm.
Calm upon this scene.
And bare.
The blank stare of time
leaves me untouched
like the heart of an Essene
before temptation.
The images of all I’ve seen
shuffle in my head –
like playing cards.
And there are no Aces.
Father,
Being here without you
is more than hard:
It is unreal.
Like thoughts induced by morphine.
Still,
with the solitude of an orphan
drawing senseless breath –
I will walk to the end of this
valley of death.
 
 
Father.
The weight of empty words.
Their oppressive gloom.
Their dampness.
And neglect.
We, foolish, wooden,
we collect
and shuffle them
around.
We arrange.
Then re-arrange
and worry them
into the ground.
Into the breathlessness.
Into infinity
that has an end.
And leads us
to a dead end.
With an erected wall
made up of words
like bricks.
 
Father.
You always knew:
The trick
is to break,
to tear the wall!
See one,
whole,
undamaged soul…
And freeze like the wife of Lot
at the earthquake in one’s thought.
In stupor.
Horror.
See through the
blue, eternal lens.
For, like madness,
horror is a form of
innocence.
 
 
 
Father.
Innocent,
At times, insane
I speak to you
from the now-strange domain.
Strange,
since you’re no longer here.
Yet, Father, I know,
I know, you hear.
You hear this din.
This noise I make.
Perhaps unbearable,
But never fake.
For I speak to you
in the language of the soul.
Which doesn’t recognize
words like “part”.
Knows only “whole”.
And knows to hear.
I speak to you
without sadness.
Without a tear.
For we will never be apart.
Father.
The woodpecker,
it knocks against my heart...


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Desert # 10

Father.
This empty space.
This wind grown mute –
Bored by lack of things
to sweep or loot
are still.
There is no sound.
No stir.
In total silence my soul’s
astir.
 
 
Father.
Upon this land,
this bare terrain –
inaction is the only way.
Like bug in amber –
frozen inside the moment.
I wait.
Unable to discard the torment
of the weight
of the ashen-colored sky.
That hovers and condenses.
That covers me.
Repels my glances.
And ignores my eye.
 
 
Father.
I stand here
Immobile.
Downtrodden.
My exit – it will be like yours:
Light.
Sudden.
 
 
Father.
Let me describe
what you already know.
Let me describe this scene…
Let me become you
for an instant –
an Essene.
Whose eye is keen.
Whose heart is vast.
This quiet, Father,
is a remnant of a blast.
A remnant of an uproar
in our essence.
Father.
The distance between
me and me here lessens
and hits the level Zero.
My thoughts,
they veer
from their habitual course –
Like under a wounded soldier
a reckless horse
gallops in an unleashed gait.
Father.
Against infinity I break,
I wreck my fate.
 
 
Father.
What is it that I stumble on?
These words.
These thoughts.
These rocks.
My heart,
it locks
and cramps.
My nerves,
they crack.
There is no moisture here.
Nothing, no one
that can shed a tear.
All around – no water.
Father.
If I falter,
and I will,
who’ll give me strength
to climb this hill?
To drag this rock
towards the peak?
Who’ll sacrifice
the streak
of generosity
to finally unlock
these tangles,
stabbing, wounding in my heart?
Who’ll risk a fall, a lapse
and save,
redeem me from collapse?
 
 
Father.
Am I alone?
The stone,
it rumbles and it crashes.
Father.
Without you –
these days are lashes
against the bare skin.
Father.
As the only kin
that I have ever known,
tell me:
How do I atone
for the limited expanse
inside my brain?
Father.
How do I break free
from sculptured pain –
the suffering of memories?
The connection to what is…
…To what is here…
How do I leap
upon a tear?
And see it all at once!
And let it all explode
into a heart-burst of absurd –
like a believer in a trance.
How do I quit,
just for a time,
this layer of meat?
Is there no way?
So, am I bound to roam
with a face like grog,
body like withered hay
into the fog?
Like a homeless dog
who no longer needs abode –
where to unload
the temporary grief.
And strike with fate
another useless bet.
But only, only –
To forget.
 
 
Father.
This life.
This wounded gravity –
deserves oblivion.
It is an endless game of mirrors.
Each reflection is a slap.
An insult –
that haunts,
brings me to a halt
where horror,
shame
alter places.
Since all our faces
express no qualities:
Mere poverty of self
whose hands will never stretch,
whose heart won’t delve
into that of the other.
Salvation, Father,
may well lie within us.
But it also reaches farther
into the unseen realm
where inaction is the rule.
Where “I” won’t dare
to speak of loss.
Like a bloodless moth
exhausted by the struggle
to survive,
says NO to life.
To growth into a burtterfly,
in order to elide our eye,
trained on the hunt for blood.
Instead,
It flutters into emptiness
away from loud.
From lewd.
 
Away from us –
who are unloved.
Unwanted.
The monsters stuck
inside eternal crisis.
Where the dice
has long been rolled.
And the result is :
Solitude.
An overplayed etude,
composed of a single note
played upon a lute
of boredom.
Of vanity.
Of grief.
Of all that vanishes,
then reappears.
All that’s brief.
And punctured –
like a road by a bridge.
That must be burned
at its very core.
Its very edge.
Its very brink.
Father.
This leads into infinity!
I need a drink!
A rest!
Lest,
in ignorance,
I pick up the stone
and cast
it into the blueness:
The oblivion
to which I’m headed.
Father.
I leave this wasteland,
this dead-end
empty-handed.
Without bait.
Like you,
Against infinity I break,
I wreck my fate.
 
 
Father.
Upon this parched expanse
I stand.
I shiver.
A wolf that’s
strayed from the pack.
And looks around his solitude:
Astonished.
Deep in wonder.
Father.
The wind,
the soul
meander
and whirl.
Let out a shrill
and slice the silence –
A black crow
with its obvious violence
of  distinct forms
against the fat,
the drunk,
the ashen-colored sky,
doesn’t bother
to let out
its superstitious cry.
But chooses just to cross
this canvass –
like across white page –
black pen.
And in its lack of purpose,
capture Zen.
 
 Father.
Again.
Where are you?
Here!
Here is my grief.
Here is my life.
Here is my tear.
I one big sweep.
Father.
In solitude
Into the Blue
I leap.