Month: August 2017

Free Verse # 413 (the diary of my travels)

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

My life — letters written to an imaginary lover, a lover who never comes, who is always here.

~

On the poem’s wings I rise to the clarity of her eyes.

~

My poems are the diary of my travels through the regions of her soul — a collection of leaves, flowers, teas, honeys,

~

Nowhere to go to,
no one to find,
this love I want
is in my heart.

~

Dans mon poème
elle s’est venue
chercher son ombre
qui s’est enfuit
dans l’abime des ténèbres

~

The winds of longing
racing in my chest
where the blooming flowers
sigh out your name

~

Your love touches me
and though a dewdrop I feel
the ocean in my heart

~

Her moan rising shapeless
over the sea of dawn,
kissing the sky and soaking
the earth in pebbled dew

~

Starbreath,
the sigh of a candle,
I am travelling inside of you,
into your night,
your silence,
the expanse of that world
spinning behind your eyes.

~

Everywhere I go
I hear you,
a music
older than time
strumming the waves
of my soul.

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Wandering Thought # 59

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

You become worthy of the object of your desire, be it a lover, a poem, or a way of life, once you are able to let go of the numerous bits and pieces, the distractions, in order to dedicate yourself to it entirely, down to your heart and soul, to the truth of your life. Otherwise you’re just fooling around and passing time, and nothing great will come out of your life because you have not aspired to anything great.

Letter, August 13, 2017

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

Tell them I spent my life banished amid the pages of books, reading, feverishly, fluttering like a firefly amid words of darkness and light. Tell them that in the pages of books I found myself entangled like a bee stuck in honey, like a lover’s fingers in his beloved’s hair. Tell them that, contrary to what they think, it is no wasted life, it is a life of solitary abundance, a life of living at the source of what makes humanity great, and what makes life worth striving for, worth living. Tell them that I have been blessed, to read, to be able to read a fragment of that which is truly, spiritually great. Tell them that in an age of anxiety, of spiritual crisis, I have dared, through books, to gaze at the future, to imagine a different future, and that through these visions I strived to birth and live my life, my present, my spirit and state of mind. Tell them, beloved, that amid the pages of books I have loved and been loved, made friendships the likes of which are so rare on earth, shed tears, oh so bitter tears, rejoiced and found a joy that is simple like flowers and grass growing in a fallow field. Tell them, beloved.

Free Verse # 412 (the difficult art)

Pierre Mhanna3 Comments

I go on loving you
past the total closure
of the heart,
for you are in me
as a ray of light in the flower
when it is still a seed
buried in the earth.

~

My poems go
where reason cannot follow,
entering that silence
where her breath lives,
dissolving in her light
the longing in my soul.

~

Dissolve…
the candle as it burned
sighed this secret
into my heart

~

Dusk descends…
my heart a pebble
hurled by rivers
coursing amid the stars

~

Love
ground me in the silence
of your heart,
teach me the difficult art
of opening again and again,
the grace of being a rose
in your garden of dawn.

~

No poem will ever capture the beauty of this moment, yet this moment is beauty steeped in poetry.

~

My heart
a cemetery of unheard sighs
and love whispers
lost in the wind

~

I exist in two places at once — in the poem, and in the silence of your heart.

Wandering Thought # 55

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

I remember the fear in my sister’s eyes as she laid in her deathbed. I felt so helpless and powerless, and this feeling kills me to this day, cuts into me with a pain I cannot describe. It haunts my dreams at night. I could not ward off death and save the being I love most in the world. They tell me to get over my guilt, that the responsibility was not my own, and though that is true, you cannot not be or feel responsible, and hence powerless. I do not know how to get over this feeling, this incredible pain, but maybe I do not need to…

I also remember the light in her face, a light that became so clear to me towards the end. I don’t exactly know what this light is or why it shun with such clarity, or why her dreams became bathed in white as death approached. Was it her soul, getting ready to leave her body? Was it the beauty of her heart, a beauty that was there her whole life but that became more visible to me as I saw into who she truly was, beyond and inside the flesh and form. I don’t know, but this light! God, this light. As though I was beholding her essence, and it reduced me to tears.

I remember being haunted by this question (and I still am): Will I ever see her again? I will see her again and again as I bring her to life through me in my daily life. I will meet her around the corners of my life, as I live out more and more my own heart, love, and essence, as I become truer to the great love that bound us, that will forever bind us. But the question remains: Will I ever see you again, Sarah? You will come to me in the moments of my life, but at the moment of my death, will you be there with me? Will I feel the press of your hand in mine as you welcome me into the eternity of light of which you are now part.

Cursed be this life! Yet infinitely blessed for having allowed us to share this love even if for such a small period of time.

Wandering Thought # 54

Pierre Mhanna1 Comment

Like a tight bud I closed in upon myself, but that was only the outward appearance of it; in truth it was an inward motion, a closing in upon the self that is an opening up of an inward world, the inward world, the world of the soul; and the most precious thing this gave me? (and this I call poetry, the self-expressive, the inwardly reflexive) — the ability to withstand my solitude so I could deepen myself and give myself back to the world through my heart and from the depth of my soul.