The Sensual Crayon

Marconi Fire

2011-06-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

across the white bridge
orange fire still licks the horizon
traffic stopped, the people are walking
walking and turning towards the smoke
sunbathers capture the sun on their bodies
we walk, cycle, step in step together
across the river and down the white
stone steps where the rough sleepers sleep
and past the backs of the hotels
where smokers gather and parcel men find no-one
to take the parcel and all the while the sky
burns and the meteors rain down and little plastic
things people carry to speak and see bleep no news
about this exit over the river into the evening
to drink and talk and go homeward a different way
nobody runs

Sweets and Chocolates

2010-06-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

I have made a counter
for my sweets and chocolates and the counter
is in the distance of the tunnel
where many feet pass by at all hours
my counter is made of such beautiful lace
and many people stare at my counter
and I stay all day with my sweets
I stay and watch and keep watch over
my green sweets and yellow cubes of jelly
and my crazy shaped chocs that freshly daily
wait on display far away in the tunnel deep in the cool
tunnel where the sun shines only from a mirror
at night it is good to breathe the nightsummer the sweetsummer metropolitain air.....

My Sensual Crayon

2009-12-28T15:02:00.000-08:00

Paper resists the press of wax
I push the rounded tip along whiteness of sand
the beach where blue gravity flies with light:
meet me in the open air restaurant
by the River where there is no more fish.
Together we will suppose and imagine,
still familiar with the blond beer, the bread and olives
the white salad and salmon from a can.
If I cannot write about you, at least let's meet.
Everything I haven't told you yet is mad.

Poetry Pivotal

2008-08-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

Documents for Poets 3

“Transcendental Meditation helps
a man to remember who he is.”

So said the oldest man in the world
after learning the simple practice.

Go with a few clean clothes in a suitcase:
you can find a hotel room somewhere

overlooking a canal, close eyes
for twenty minutes, slowly open again

and find that you are there
looking out at unfamiliar surroundings

which over a few hours, a couple
of days, take on the semblances

of the old walks and pathways - faces
of the young recall old friends –

knowing also that they can’t know
whom they resemble. There’s no

satisfaction in knowing that
you too must resemble someone. So

with its unique attributes a leaf –
and just a leaf – floats down the canal.

+++

The Wall

2008-06-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Wall

At first the wall
was easy to paint
my oil-crayon colours
mixed so well
to do mortar and brick

a step closer
and then another step

the wall got harder
and the closer I got
the harder it became

to paint the wall

each brick
became itself
bit by bit

brick by brick
a crayon-full
of colour

driven by hunger
each pock and crevice
forced me closer

soon I needed
a whole wall
to paint my wall

my arms ached
and my body hurt
as each new wall-sized picture
required more
of my crayons
than I could carry
more paper
than I could hold...

now I am working
a section at a time
to cover each
small surface of
a brick’s existence

the paintings
are getting smaller

one portion of a brick
becomes a crumb of cake

another a ward-
robe made of
autumn twigs

a drop of water
gets in
a sky-blue drop

with miniature crayons

to-day
I did just one part
Of a drop

a drop
that has invited
me to paint

inside its walls
of breathable glass.

+++

A poem About Me

2008-05-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

To the Point of a Leaf

Look for me in the gloss
of an ear of corn
and on the surface
of ocean waves

you do not want to go
to the treacherous
diaphanous depths

don’t go down
to the gaunt caves
of earthen shade
to find me

look for me
where the yellow rose
casts an illusory light

in the light
that streams forward
through an open beach window

in the sand that
breaks down to tiny jewels
on your finger

not in the cellar’s restive dark

come to the point
of a leaf to meet me
to the old orchard’s
bearable noon -

or
don’t come, don’t come.

+++

Dance Macabre

2007-12-31T15:05:00.000-08:00

The dance did not begin
or end with sex -
we just fell over each other, a spin,
an innocent trip in the darkness.

We held onto each other
to keep the illusion of sameness
from day to dawn: a changeless colour.
It took the hopelessness

out of despair - expressos
stretched our words to balance
tight-rope walkers' gains and losses,
only by staying in a trance

hour after hour. Our longing has become
the need carefully to tell
about life's last connundrum:
how we learn at last to fall,

to roll, and walk towards the night
with nothing in either hand
except the memory, still gripped tight,
of the indefinable, defined.

+++

stacked Up

2007-11-04T07:31:00.000-08:00

stacked up
stashed away
secreted

everything i wanted to tell you
everything i would have told you

everything

The Road

2007-05-07T04:54:00.000-07:00

It is not the same road
it is different

it moves forward
in the same way
with the same white line

the car
handles the long bends well
- as before -
and glides ahead
following a long white line
the same white line

it is different
all the other cars
have turned off dropped
back and the houses
have longer spaces
between them

that song
on the radio
is in another language

a beautiful song
a melody that floods
my car like a scent

like a person's
exotic perfume

how easy
it is to love that song
whose words to me
are sounds full of promise

the hill-shapes whose
long outlines are

horizons without knowledge
where birds are wheeling
with bird-names
I do not know

and where
each smile and every
beautiful glance

belongs to someone
whose heart beats
beyond my understanding

hidden from me
on this road
that is getting stranger

in this land
I see rolling
on through my windscreen

rolling off
in the mirror.

Extract from Chat Rooms and Envelopes

2007-04-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

Think of a park after snow
two tone trees
white mounds where shrubs
have vanished -
its crystalline expanse
the white tablet
nothing has touched

and you about to rush
headlong into it...

when everything in you
should be waiting
silent as a lens.

Wait longer, until
from the other end
of the park - you see
there is someone there -
a figure is walking
to reach the centre.

That is where you too
thinking your warmest thoughts
must walk by a separate path
some time in the future soon
until you reach that spot:
the intersection where
your trail of footsteps
meets that trail -

keep walking
calmly and without extraneous
movement, knowing that

the two lines of footprints,

where you did not meet,

will cross crookedly, yours

and those - you won't regret

the compactness of this hieroglyph.

The Rationale

2007-03-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

Maria Esdovin is a Perovian poet living in London. Her forthcoming collection "The Sensual Crayon" is to be published by the Perovian Arts Collective. For contractual reasons Maria is not able to blog her poems; she is however permitted to talk about them and quote reasonably fully from her own work.
That is why she has asked me to start this blog. In this way I can transcribe the interviews that over the next weeks Maria has promised to give.