chess

not even nabokov by the light of a coal miner’s headlamp can deter them. the child prodigy. blindfolded. paraded all around europe by those who wish to profit. these tumultuous nights and dreams…i am paraded around the same. i awake to cry my heart out before sinking back reluctantly into sleep. there are a couple pieces left on the board. cat on a windowsill. sentry. the tea candle has burned off. the lover. answers my call, day or night. take me. i am your queen.

sorry division

the old sound was nothing like the new sound, and the new sound nothing like that which would replace it, but when the music was at its level best, well, you could tell the old lived inside the new,  a candle cased in glass, where all the moths gathered, and world reflections wide came to a collective point, we became one again you and me, before the flame flickered and the wick succumbed, gave way to the sorry division.

real unreal by katya

typewriter.twelve

The traveled stares of tired faces
hung out off wood chairs
watching the story
unravel

they wondered where
had i been was
i there?

far from auspicious
my roughshod room
papers struck through with words
scraped up wood floors
the devotion of the place
toward suspicion toward
life

being seen could be tiresome
something bland and
undisciplined

being unseen held a promise
i thought
like a single candle
its trembling on the faces
of the walls

i tended to let the world inhabit me
so i might inhabit the world

letter

one lonely night ona

edge ina pool
of light

inscribed by hand
taken from the scene

collected bya squeeze

ofa heart

folded in thirds

double encrypted
inaccessible to all

but one

like pores
touched by witch

hazel

ona edge

ina pool

of light

one candle

 night

kept

 from a
world and

given

you

– KatYa

impossible unique

I can love you
seven. eight
days a week
our love
in / of
impossible
unique

regenerates
the snake

a nation
beneath
the lake

a question mark formed
around the life form
inside of us

thirty-two seconds
to unconditional

a timeless future awaits
spirits on dates
drifting down rivers
of corrugate
glue

heartbleed city
who knew

zero
balanced
degenerative

yearning for the night
predawn of artificial light

candles. burning
lifetime supplication
in / of oxygen

fall asleep breathing
in / of love
impossible unique

not the same old narrative on a fog bank overdrawn
yawn

take all the pictures
marry them silently
passionately

take all the i’s (before e’s)
teach them selfless living

strange to suddenly see
receipts of deceits returned
to the store

strange!
impossible unique

strange / dear god!
so suddenly free
impossible
unique

no longer above
no longer below
candle wax flow in
and of love

Candle

Bedtime came early. The lights, i extinguished. In favor of my brief candle. Once lit, she told me a flickering tale of terror. The milk waters enlarged around my pupils, as I listened to the madness, in silent breakbeats on the walls. Each shadow spoke twice the flickering volume of light, all around. A sweet scent of chamomile came out of liquid wax, and froze my bones. Like spider venom. All so subtle. I could have screamed! Were I not so seduced, lying in bed in my silks and cotton. Watching murderous tales of blood lust from dark places. Apparitions along the walls. Then the flickering light drew together, so strange I can hardly describe! As the wax just congealed, in this unnatural way. While burning was the wick? Then I became of a blur, all my self. As her tale spun me around and my feather down, down…into a sleep so deep… I would never be found. Just a solitary candle signals smoke, in an empty small room, at blue dawn.