poems by Mykyta Ryzhykh

wine

remember we drank together tasteless wine from a cardboard box

now I’m even poorer and I drink only your silence

sometimes the thought creeps in that no one knows how to love

sometimes the thought creeps in that no one knows how to live

this psycho killed you with his gun, smashing you like a crystal chrysanthemum

the mirrors of the heavens are not able to reflect your faded beauty

they caught the killer and took his word that he didn’t know about your orientation

so no one will ever say that you are an innocent victim

remember I drank tasteless wine from a cardboard box

imagining every time that one day I will drink this wine with you

Water-reflections first

 

I look into the water – in response everything speaks to death:

This smooth immobility of the snake-current

This stone speed of the scarab of minutes

This time spent and hours tired of delaying our term

In my palms like foliage and like pity

In my palms crumpled worried water

The lips of the deceased will forever remain dry

And there above the depth of the air another river flows

The starry current like marble milk splashes out of the banks

This is exactly what silence looks like and this night is endless

I cannot touch this river I am incapable

And young death like lightning floats out

No one is able to speak either in words or thoughts

We are close to you like chicks to a nest

Endless breadly prayedly death

We are far from you like chitin from a trembling body

Uncomfortable cast-iron bitten death

A bone will grow from my belly

The rain will pour and the garden will bloom as before

Glass moonbeams will calm us all

We have all overcome the fear of swimming

We are all drowned

The impossible to pronounce lover’s seed dripped down

I had no choice but to lick this sperm from the boot

This night everything began anew and the morning is like death

And the morning like death knocks on the closed room

I was again left in this bedroom absolutely alone

(Did anyone ever truly love anyone or was it just faith in your love –

Love as an extended ego as rightness)?

No one watered the iron flowers

Imaginary emptiness

someone in a raincoat standing on the edge of a bus stop beats time out of himself

*beaten time hurts unnecessary like a candle*

I ask a mysterious creature: who are you: but he doesn’t remember

it starts to rain for the first time and again: my lips drink milky and chitinous silence

a man is a mystery like a sail dissolving in puddles bubbles voids

and with him everything around dissolves and it seems to me that life is only a dying vision

scarabs of minutes crawl along my *what is it called in books and dictionaries* leg

in the distance I hear the footsteps of the water of the future and like stones or beans fall on my head

these are your eyes father I suddenly think and then I understand that my father was eyeless

*many became crippled after this or one of the subsequent wars*

but what if this stone is only my former form of silence and the absence of which I was floating in my mother’s belly

I don’t know

in this world there are no objective things and ideas worth living for or believing in:

realizing this would help get rid of many of humanity’s problems\

or I don’t know/

rock-filled nothingness

I looked around

emptiness reflected in the mirror

and the mirrors without me are directed at each other

*silence has no friends: only imitators*

I screamed like a wave washing away the sand castles of childhood and adult dreams

fear and despair are driven into the open belly

meanwhile the shore grew to the size of my belly

I fell silent like a wave that washed away forever the sand castles of childhood and adult dreams

morning crept up unnoticed like the flag of the crow king in the black forest from which I emerged as a baby

this forest robbed me this forest stole me at birth and appropriated me

a cloud of ashes floated over the heads of the decks and the sailor fell asleep and looks at the stars in his sleep

will this dream ever end or will the sailor never move from his place

I don’t know and I don’t know

and we both don’t know

and we take a step towards each other

and for the first time and again I see myself as a bee with three hearts

the first heart for love and feelings

the third heart for blood

the second heart for sharing with others

like a bee with three lives

the first life for honey

the second life for the swarm

and why a third life is needed no one knows

and I I don’t know

and I don’t know

and we both don’t know and we stand touching with empty red veins

and we both sacrifice the silence of our home for your words

*I haven’t been expecting words of love from you for a long time

Lord*

and we both sacrifice silence but you are silent

and this rain is like an infection of happiness for no one

we go into the garden but the garden turns out to be a forest

I don’t know what a forest is and I leave this coffin as a corpse and a living being

I inevitably slip on a piece of glass and prick myself until I bleed on the marble ice

and I pass this bread and wine to the birds having already lost hope of finding the crow’s kingdom

the other me screams:

but suddenly I remember that I am all alone

but suddenly I remember that everyone dies alone

but suddenly I remember that everyone has their own world and every world dies because the ability to live and move the minute hands of a clock means simultaneously and continuously dying

I fancied flowers without graves or graves without flowers

a forest of minute hands of a clock grew in front of me

the path led me to a gingerbread house made of meat

corpses of flowers screamed under my feet like suicides because every birth means a quick death

bones or flowers? crunching under your feet or inside your chest?

the forest doors closed and I found myself on the outskirts of the city near a bus stop

what is this?

someone in a raincoat standing on the edge of a bus stop beats time out of himself

poems by Mykyta Ryzhykh

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