Youth and forgiveness

A car drive — a long time ago. That feeling of death around me, of tears that do not want to leave my eyes, of emptiness. Numbness, youth, and a highway. A relationship died and I went for a ride. A relationship died because I called it off. I returned the ring, destroyed the dream. The stereo played the CDs that we adored. “Don’t you cry” came next. A tear slid down my cheek, followed by tears showcasing the sadness of hurting him, while hurting me. Don’t cry! — I insisted as if my voice would stop my emotions, my despair.     A young love ended and marked our separate destinies. I moved far away — a thousand kilometres north. We did not talk for three years, until that night. The night we both cried. Our paths had changed… He bought a red rose for me. We hugged while our tears blended into a single sorrow. We forgave each other, we forgave ourselves. We kissed good-bye and parted ways. I wished him well, he did the same. That is when I knew it was really over.     I smile when I remember the magic of our love and youth. I can almost cry when I remember that part at the end. The passion and the despair. The tenderness, the promise, the impulsiveness, the confusion, the separation, the broken fairy tale. An innocent love that now lives forever, immaculate, as in a dreamlike world in our memories. We do not talk anymore. There is no need — the innocence of the memory remains pristine. We did well. Perhaps the tears taught us something. Perhaps it was our destiny to be happy in each others absence.

Eternal innocence — late
spring memory of a tear
Forgiveness and two paths




_____Adriana Citlali
II-V-MMXVII

Haibun Monday: Tramps like us were born to survive… | dVerse

Today at dVerse, we are writing classic haibuns about singing along with music while driving. I haven’t been driving for a while, so I played some music (old favourites) and looked into my memory box. I found that first love story, that first closure. A past that makes me smile, a past that makes my heart remember bliss and ache as if they could blend into a single feeling.




Silver with a dash of blue

I saw a silverbird the other day. We greeted each other as curious strangers –with a subtle eye recognition,         at   the  distance.
Silverbirds are known to be reserved.

One moonless night, he came to my window and sang a spellbinding song —Just for me!
I waited impatiently each sunset for darkness; darkness dazzled by that ephemeral song.
Then came the midnight sun.

Unbreakable until then, I did not understand the spiral I was falling into. I longed for crystalline enchantment, longed for the song.
In dizzying sunlight, my steps trembled.

I fell and broke.




_____Adriana Citlali
XVII-II-MMXVI

For dVerse | Poets Pub’s challenge to write a poem using the first person –-an apparent first person (maybe).

The refusal (PrimeNoPo version)

Today at dVerse we are combining mathematics and poetry, as it is done in the OULIPO form (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle) introduced in 1960 by French mathematician Francois de Lionnais and writer Raymond Queneau. The OULIPO is a playful form in which one takes an existing poem an exchanges each of the poem’s nouns with the noun appearing seven nouns away in the dictionary.

I decided to invent my own form, the PrimeNoPo (Prime Noun Poem) in which one substitutes the prime nouns. In other words, each Nth noun in the poem (where N is a prime number) gets substituted by the noun appearing N nouns away of the original in the dictionary. Pronouns are not substituted and, as in the OULIPO, the substituted noun has to be a word with a different root, not a derivative of the original noun. Ahh! Nouns in the title are also counted.

I chose to try the PrimeNoPo form on my 2012 poem The refusal.… smiles … Here is the result:



The refusal

A ghost-fact against the silicate that keeps playing that song haunts me…
Is the musketry an effect of the vision? Or does the sop draw this ethereal face note by note?
I close my facility seeking quietness, darkness.
The song acts as a sniffle biting its own tail.
I break the silence with my voice: Aaaahh!
… No chapel …
I know the ghost. It is you and it is me. Or you and not me.
I try to forget this colossal mentality, again.
The song refuses to end.




_____Adriana Citlali
II-X-MMXIV