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On Tsar Osvoboditel
to Nezavisimost I fly to certain freedom in a yellow taxi that drives faster than memories. I am still drunk. Vitosha is black behind the city. I feel her there, crushing my chest as I speak of the promise I have broken. It ends with a midnight walk alone back to Ivan and the Old Mountain we call home. |
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Sallow skin and reckless insults
cast to the crumbling pavement below are lost in this broken city. Brick layered upon brick, metal and concrete swallow their sound. They cannot resist. They cannot forgive. |
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When I sink into the earth
and my feet cannot find the ground above, and my arms cannot catch the autumn fog thick with all my memories, I can taste your breath around me, sweet, soft. When I sink into the earth, and the moon shouts to me a warning, and the godless night surrounds me, begging for my touch, I can hear the crickets singing: laugh, lust. When I sink into the earth, and April rains upon my heart, I am standing buried in the broken promises of March. |
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If
I lay and faced the February sky, I would feel you there in the wind, frozen and stinging my fingers. The rush of sorrow comes, the sunlight fades. I breathe you in. |
If
I could believe in spring, we would sit in the grass near the lilacs. You would never tell the truth and I would not look at you hands or the blooming hyacinth. |
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In the smoky cafes of Samoranovo
sit the old and the drunk, with breakfast of beer and coffee, A mangy dog paces the Ploshtad, hungry and alone. He fights for his food, fights the boys who throw rocks at him. The barmaid pours rakia and remembers the days when it was warm inside and she did not sleep alone. |
