visitor

I was knocked out of my daydreaming by a commotion at the front door. I didn’t hear the front gate slam shut, which only meant that a family member was at the door, for only we knew how it drove grandpa crazy when someone slammed the gate instead of gently closing it. All of us developed the habit of quiet entrances and exits, even when grandpa wasn’t home, like now.

I peeped into the hallway and saw her sprawled on the floor, long wide skirts and all. She pulled her listless lower body with the force of her arms, dragging herself up a few paces and then stopping for a short break.

I recognized her instantaneously, though her appearance on the floor of our house was as unexpected as that of the Queen of England.

A paralyzed homeless beggar from church. I’ve seen her at the parish’s front door every Sunday and on most holidays. Never in a wheelchair; always crawling in the street, wrapped in her scarf; a lump of brown, grey and black. She was a resident church beggar, and unlike the pesky gypsies, no one every shooed at her; people were kind and merciful.

This was grandma’s newest level of charity that surpassed her visits to the mental hospital and prisons. Grandma appeared at the doorway, towering behind the woman on the floor, “She will spend the night here.” The woman was hungry, eating the meagre vegan meal placed in front of her. Yes, now that I think of it, it was Lent, and we ate only vegan, unless grandpa was at home from his truck driving trip. This time he was away, hence the woman on the floor of our house. Grandma would have never gotten away with anything of the sort were he home. Even her father, an 80 year old quiet, humble and frail man, who stayed with us over occasional winter to get away from the snowy mountains – even he got banned from the house by grandpa’s alcohol infused temper. The 80 year old man did nothing but pray all day, eat one meal, and rest his old bones next to the wood burning fireplace.

I kept my mouth shut. Grandpa never found out about our one night visitor on the floor. She was gone in the morning, and I even questioned her phantom existence, until next Sunday, when our eyes met silently on the steps of the church.

Y.

The Continuity of Death

The continuity of death
Mistaken for eternal question.|
An act of mercy – robbery of one more breath?
Or cruel manifestation of oppression?

With pendulous and oscillating cadence
The end’s assured calculated steps
Humanity held in abeyance;
Time is no money. Time is death.

Y.

Pain, Suffering and Truth

It is a common belief that pain and suffering bring us closer to the truth. The difficulties we endure shape our character ever so subtly and make us into who we are. We may not notice a major shift within, but those around us, our family and friends, watch us grow and gnarl under the crushing pressure.

I’ve seen a number of people whose lives were marked by hardship, famine, exile, war, persecution. If anyone, it would be those repressed souls who I’d expect to make grand proclamations and preach till their voices are rasp about the truth, fairness and equality. But isn’t it ironic that current day politicians and activists almost exclusively are just the opposite of what we’d call “sufferers.”

I have known a man with a stiff unbending leg mutilated by Stalin's Siberian Gulag; an elderly woman who survived a famine, a violent alcoholic husband, and built three houses in her lifetime; a mother who raised two kids without any help from her husbands. And do you know what I see? Humility and humbleness - in their eyes and movements. Having witnessed inexplicable pain and suffering, these people silently teach me a lesson of peace.

Y.

Heartbreak

Heartbreak - an ineffective contraceptive against love.

Y.

scavenger poetry hunt

Gems Gemini Germs
Castrated hope
Hopeless Casper
The friendly ghost,
"Love may be forever
but our tattoos
last 6 months longer"
Abortion of reality = creation
Chocolate covered goosebumps
West End & Downtown
Trum pah pah pah pah pah pah pah
The friendly ghost
For your safety please hold on
Aritizia Policia H&M
Chocolate covered goosebumps
M&M
Esso Nespresso Nescafe
Longer than forever
Pah pah pah pah pah pah pah
Trump

Y.

without you

A day without you
is a long exhale,
a downhill roll
towards extinction,
a corpse of purpose
ruefully impaled,
a struggle
for the right decision.

An hour without you –
to miss a breath.
Collected agonies,
imagined meetings, kisses,
compacted,
crumbled,
trampled
in the depth
of drowned desires,
floating,
bloated
wishes.

A minute without you
is damp eternity of sleep
enveloped
in the loyal nightmare
of paralysis;
the crucifixion I return to
and not flinch,
the suicide,
lobotomy,
catharthis.

A second without you –
a memorized hell;
prolonged,
assured,
guaranteed,
familiar torture;
it takes eternity
to tick away
into the well
of blissful saviour –
oblivion,
my fortune.

A life without you...
You without a life.
How simple,
suicidal,
lethal.
I am without you.
I don't need a knife
for there is
no life
and no
acquittal.

Y.

memory

Memory holds promises that time has failed to fulfil.

Childhood flashbacks with timed precision. A cold winter night. Our little room hot with body heat and wood-burning fire. Grandma and two neighbours bent over their embroidery; wrinkled faces - buds in colourful babushkas. Grandma is laughing. A song breaks free and gets passed between three smiling faces - up and down, side to side, bounces off canvas, lands on a curtain rod and plants itself firmly in my memory.

A feather circles its way around the yard. Once again, grandma is laughing; so hard, her eyes squint shut and you cannot see their greenness. She is freed of her babushka. A goose is tucked securely between her knees, head down, ga-ga-ing its orange beak off; but grandma is not perturbed by the commotion - she is focused on the neighbour's joke and the job at hand - plucking soft baby feathers. She already has a pillowcase full of weightless down - for our new blanket.

I watch the stray feather trailing grandma's laughter across the yard, into my memory, full of promises that life will not betray her happiness.

Y.

memorable kindness

Kindness can often be mistaken for weakness; one’s gentle disposition taken for insecurity, in today’s loud world of proclamations, promotions and self-advancement. The need to be noticed becomes compulsive, the thirst for attention – deafening.

What if one would rather be remembered for his or her elegance, grace, politeness or modesty? Are these qualities so out of fashion nowadays that the crowd can’t recognize or identify with them and, hence, feels threatened?

One doesn’t have to get noticed in order to be remembered. A memorable presence is often subtle, such that leaves us with a feeling, a sensation, an effect.

May you be blessed this season with an unforgettable experience. May you be in peace and quiet of the mind and remember someone gentle and special in your life. May you be an act of kindness and may you be remembered.

Happy holidays!

Y.

an accidental prophet

Hands neatly folded in his lap. Blue-grey veins matching his clothes. Long grey beard and dreadlocks, rugged clothes, layer after layer, down to his knees.

He sat quietly, wisdom in his calmness. Moses against the stone backdrop of the city in a hurry.

The black and white limitations of my mind gave way to the greyness of the man in front of me. I could not take my eyes off his hands; a sense of serenity filling me.

In this way we meditated together – two strangers on the opposite side of the street, one on a bench, the other on a bus. An accidental prophet to this doubting Thomas.

Y.

Anger

A short telephone conversation snakes its way through the hidden tunnels of your mind, unearthing experiences and reactions you thought you had put behind, made peace with, let go. Like a mole, blindly and relentlessly, burrowing in, upheaving mounds of emotion, leaving a void of anger underneath.

Being one-on-one with anger is scary, especially if you are not used to it. Anger is darkness; it’s complete vacuum, where familiar sensations of rationality and common sense are no longer within your power.

Anger doesn’t care about you or anyone. It feeds on your thoughts and fears, regurgitating them into a distorted reality. You follow it blindly, faithfully or rather faithlessly – for there is nothing else left to believe, nothing sacred.

Anger violates you; it rapes and mutilates your sense of self.

It sickens you and turns you inside out, until you wretch the vile gall of your abused ego. There is no sense of propriety – your worst and hidden is exposed.

Anger is your miscarriage; it’s the ugliness of an abortion – slimy, bloody, writhing unnaturally, still warm and living as it slides out of you. Looking at its convulsing body, you realize that it is, in fact, small and defenceless, and wonder how it grew into a monster within.

No one is to blame but you – for nurturing this ogre, feeding it your lowest emotions, basest thoughts, for making it a part of you.

The list of casualties grows; the victims of your rage are family, friends, colleagues. How much is lost? How much gained? Was it worth it? It never is.

The trauma of shame. The shattered shards of trust. The gaping void of regret and loneliness. Through the desecration of it all, a pair of eyes is peering from the bottom of your soul – the eyes of a victim or an abuser?..

Y.

Breathless

You disturbed my peace,
yet brought me harmony.
You challenge my spirit,
yet nourish it.
Your presence speaks volumes -
through your respect
and unabated kindness.

The awe-inspiring act of giving life
comes easy for you -
because you do it through love.
You gave the entirety of your being
to love,
so that you may offer this last
ultimate sacrifice of selflessness
to me.
So that we may join together
to fulfill a prophecy,
to complete the alignment of stars,
to shift the tide of time.

When our eyes meet -
our souls brush against each other
ever so lightly,
slowing the breath of the world
to a mere whisper.
Time exhales.
Angels take respite in its folds.

Our eyes meet -
silencing the shrill of morality.

You bring me peace.
Nourish my spirit.
You breathe life into me...
yet leave me breathless...

Y.

piano in august

Anticipating, almost tasting the pleasure of biting into a new book’s story, I set off down Hornby Street in search of a quiet bench to cradle my reading.

Trees lining the alley start to say their autumn goodbyes, tickled by the last bittersweet rays of August. The wind casts intricate lace designs of gold and brown on the sidewalk, whispering, hushing me into a new rhythm of thought. I draw my face up to the sun, meeting its beaming smile with my own, slightly shy and uncertain. Reassured by its warmth, I continue on to a small courtyard, lodged between the polished silver of high rises.

Casually strewn metal tables and chairs seduce me with their bright colours – green, blue, pink, orange. I settle for the turquoise blue, under a tree, with a perfect view of a crowd of students noisily discussing something in what seems to be Portuguese or French. Teenage boys and girls lazily lounge on the steps, animated by cares of the youth, dashing and daring among the bright colours of the courtyard.

As if unnoticed by others, a girl breaks away from the group and walks to a tree, where the keys to the streets public piano is hidden. A melody escapes from under her fingertips, as light and eerie as the breeze, in tune with the tinsel-like shimmer of leaves. The music bubbles up and floats aimlessly into the atmosphere. Funny how this courtyard – without special acoustics, drowned by mid-day traffic and crowd – holds the music in its special way, making it one with the summer. It seems as though the piano naturally belongs here, reminiscent of a little European town, poised and elegant, charmed by history, stories and nostalgia.

I put the unopened book down and listen, as the French melody sunsets at the horizon of my 38th August.

Y.

Silence

Remember the peace there may be in silence...

Silence possesses excellent acoustics, echoing thoughts in every corner of our mind with architectural precision.

Silence is free of gravity. In silence, objects are not limited to their weight or shape; they float and tumble in our head, chaotically synchronized.

Silence can be a fertile soil for personal gardening and growth, as well as an uninhabited desert for experimental annihilation of self.

Silence is honest. In it we face ourselves with brutal directness; we can’t lie or run away.

Silence is brave, for it is tempting to fill it with distraction and commotion, chasing away our inner voice.

Silence is porous. Memories flow down its surface, snagging and stretching against abrasive edges, trickling into dark craters. Silence is unpredictable in where it will take us, what it will force to the surface or bury under its heavy blanket.

Silence can kill - slowly and torturously. Silence can heal and provide solace. Silence, along with time, is the greatest teacher, as long as we have the courage and humility to learn.

Y.

Fuzzy Blue Sweater

As I am driving in the rain this morning, I am suddenly taken 12 years back to another car, in Detroit, MI. We just moved there a few months ago; didn’t know a single soul. Immediately, we located Detroit’s Ukrainian community, finding solace in its familiarity, so comforting in that defaced underpopulated city.

Ukrainian Orthodox church was our anchor. A cluster of groups – from the newly arrived to the well seasoned immigrants to the haughty Diaspora – all united by that invisible connection; no, not the ethnicity or cultural background or even the language. It is, as my mother so eloquently put it, the Slavic breadth of the soul, the need to pour out one’s feelings and heart into another person and feel safe that you are heard and understood.

Olga is a second generation Ukrainian, born and raised in Detroit. Speaks fluent Ukrainian, no accent; her life - a thick and solid braid of Ukrainian and American cooking, interests and culture.

In her car one day, I am doing my best at small talk but Olga shocks me with the detailed confession of her recent divorce. I remember the pitter-patter of the rain on the roof. I feel my fuzzy baby blue sweater and the weight of Olga’s pain in the tips of my fingers. I question the reality of the situation – has someone really trusted me to the extent of unloading her life and baring her soul in front of me? The feeling of disbelief and awe weighed down by the heaviness of responsibility I all of a sudden feel for the woman next to me.

We became very close friends. Olga was my son’s godmother and my family for over seven years. My move to Vancouver cut that friendship short. I still don’t know what to think of its end, as even six years later I can’t recover from the pain of losing her.

As I am sitting in the car on this rainy day, I wish for a friend in a fuzzy baby blue sweater who could hold my pain in her gentle hands and comfort me with true friendship while the walls of my life are slowly crumbling down.

Y.

Teo

Teo's picture makes me think of my son. Kissing his hair leaves different aftertaste every time. Mostly, he smells of a boy, sun-kissed and sweaty; his hair the colour of wheat in July. My lips pick up a whiff of the wind and some dust. Sheer and unknown boyhood, so mysterious to me.

Y.

dandelion

Curiosity at its best, with mischievous imperfection. Let's not photoshop our life. The beauty lies in its flaws.

Y.

soaring

Being free of the impositions of the outside world requires courage and vision. We inspire in our aspirations. We soar in our peace, owning the magnitude of humanness. 

Y.