Before going to bed

Lights are dancing on the walls at night,

flickering shadows talk to me.

The silence is too big to handle,

it suffocates us all in.

And the writing of it,

brings the sleepless tension back.

 

Can the past hear my whispers?

Can it read my lines?

 

Dropping love in the dark

I shiver.

I wouldn’t trade this silence for the world.

 

The morning’s light breeze

wards off the endless thoughts.

Keeping my mind busy

is all I can think of.


Photo: Minolta Dynax 7000i (AF 35-105mm). Fujifilm Provia 100F, 35mm film. Dwingelderveld National Park, the Netherlands, September 2020.

For the Women who came before us

My body breaks,

it shatters into millions of pieces.

I carry the voices,

the screams,

the whispers,

the beggings,

of all the women who came before me.

I, too, feel their pain,

deep in my skin,

it goes through the flesh,

and reaches my bones.

Cold, it crushes me.

 

The pain lingers,

in the dark rooms of our bodies

it fades,

it withers and then stops,

leaving only remnants of suffering.

In its place

anything ugly

is transformed

to strength

and courage.

It breathes survival.

 

And the flowers in our heads

blossom,

out of coal and ash,

our saliva becomes sugar between our tongue,

washing over the bitterness in our mouths

and we swallow

all the false masculinity,

or whatever is left from it.

 

We are one.

Our bodies connect

through hundreds of years of abuse.

The pain in our bodies,

now a tree

with deep strong roots,

is capable of defeating anything.

 

Our mouths make sounds

as last!

they move,

they vibrate,

they tell the stories of pain.

 

Our voices create waves and waves and waves

of endless vibrations,

weaving webs of strong fibers,

ready to catch a sister who might fall.

Our voices are the voices of truth and pain,

and all that’s in between.

Our voices are strong,

they finally echo.

[I cry with them too]

21.10.2018


Photo: Nikon F75 (35-70mm). Kodak Ultra Max 400, 35mm film. Warns, Friesland, the Netherlands, July 2020.

⛰️The mountain meditation⛰️

I am a mountain,

tall and silent

I stand,

while seasons change

and the weather rages.

 

I am a mountain

steady with trees,

rocks at my core,

and water flowing at my feet.

 

I withstand change

and I celebrate it

when it takes over

everything around me.

But it does not affect me

– it can’t.

 

I am a mountain,

solid and tall,

that sits proud

for thousands of years

and will continue

standing and rooting

for more years to come.


Photo: ‘View from a mountain’. Nikon N4004s (35-70mm). Kodak Gold 200, 35mm film. Thessaloniki, March 2016. Credits to Nikos Grivas. 

♠ Ode to the Now ♠

When our lives were happening,

we couldn’t stand still.

Now that our lives just are,

we cannot move forward.

 

Embracing Silence is all we can do,

embracing Stillness is all we can do,

embracing ourselves is all we can do,

embracing our weaknesses is all we can do,

 

for us,

our families,

the world,

now is the time to look inward

then gaze outward and

just BE.


Photo: Praktica MTL 5 (1.8/50). Kodak Gold 200, 35mm film. Groningen, the Netherlands. April 2020.

Refuge

Layers upon layers of restlessness,

upon layers of unburnt stars,

of overheated supernovas

and overflowing dark matter.

 

Poetry,

is my only refuge now.

 

I can’t look myself in the mirror anymore,

no reflection is looking back.

Eyes are dried out – forgotten –

almost like dying stars

we only see in our dreams.

 

The rooftop has fallen

on us

and our dreams,

it has ‘2020’ carved on it

and its debris attacks the silence

while we laugh at our own jokes.

 

If only I had time to read more.

If only I had time to watch more movies.

If only I had time to catch up on my to-do lists.

Now there is time,

but no soul to put into it.

 

The sky is dark,

like the inside of my room.

Words escape my mouth

but bounce back at the walls around me

and enter my mouth again.

 

No sounds,

No world.

 

My jaw is broken now,

the lines are blurred,

and stars flicker above me

in the night sky.

They remind me that life

is like Silence:

You fee it the most

when it is the only thing you hear.


Photo: Nikon F75 (28-100mm). LomoChrome Purple, 100-400, 35mm film. Groningen, the Netherlands. May 2020.

Our Summer

Dead bugs around me

dead end

no land can caress my sorrow,

no land has room for my depth

and the crows’ screams.

 

At night we see others swimming

steadily and slowly

into dark blue waters

while crickets sing

undisturbed.

 

Soft waves touch our skin.

A light sound that reaches our dreams

reflects on the water’s surface.

No memory

or sense

stay undisturbed.

 

This is our summer.


Photo: Minolta Dynax 7000i (AF 35-105mm). LomoChrome Purple, 100-400, 35mm film. Agios Ioannis, Pelion, Greece. August 2019.

Shadows and lines

Lines are dancing on the walls at night,

flickering shadows talk to me.

The silence is too powerful to handle,

it suffocates us all in.

And the writing of it,

brings the sleepless tension back.

 

Can the past hear our whispers?

Can it read between the lines?

 

Love drops in the dark,

and shivers dance on the body.

I wouldn’t trade this silence for the world.

 

The morning’s light breeze

disappears the endless thoughts.

Keeping the mind busy

is all I can think of.

 

Photo: Minolta Dynax 7000i (AF 35-105mm). LomoChrome Purple, 100-400, 35mm film. Agios Ioannis, Pelion, Greece. August 2019. 

Outside my window

Outside the window

the wind howls violently,

it’s that time of year

when nature crashes silence

and together they march

on our souls’ path.

 

I can’t sleep at night,

slowly losing my breath,

while the streetlights flicker.

Time stops partially,

it crumbles underneath my pillow,

suffocating dust particles

and lost dreams.

 

Listen to my voice,

it is hemorrhaging

stardust and fear.

 

The pages filled with letters,

the books turn dusty,

my eyes hurt, swollen from the wind.

There’s an ink stain on my bedsheet.

 

Photo: Nikon F75 (28-100mm). Kodak Utramax 400, 35mm film. Stadspark Groningen, the Netherlands. December 2019.

the body issue

Being thin and flat chested

I felt like the Other,

walking, mumbling

merely existing on the margins,

trying to hold on, to remember

how it felt to be me beyond my

non-feminine existence

-distorted

 

My body never belonged to me,

it was always their property

to look and to devour,

to judge and to despise,

always not feminine enough.

With a thin, awkward body,

a tomboy,

the never belonging aura

hovered above my existence for

decades to come.

 

A wall kept growing around me,

till my heart turned into cement,

and hardened,

cold, grey and barely living

full of self-hate bricks.

 

Years passed,

my body swayed

back and forth,

in time’s soothing breeze.

The wall blossomed

with colorful flowers.

My body gained strength and

I managed to break the cement

with my bare hands.

The insecurity bricks were destroyed,

allowing the light of real beauty

to shine through.

 

Photo: Pentax P30, 35mm with Pentax-A 50mm F/2 SMC Lens. Kodak Gold film 200. The Netherlands, 2014.

Celestial Connection

Millions of worlds apart

and thousands of words

are missing

between the space

we created for ourselves.

 

We stop conversations,

mute or misuse them,

while the big ice rocks fall apart,

like our lives when we refuse

to listen to ourselves.

 

This world is scary,

full of angry people,

but Earth remembers

and promises to color

our dreams and hopes

with gold dust extracted

from the deep, dark, daunting

place we call space.

 

And right into that moment

we glow furiously;

full of celestial body magic,

we dive back into the blues

and the greens of our reality,

the worlds we build

and the ones we destroy,

conquering one more day

from the eons that await us.

 

Photo: Livraria Lello, Porto, Spring of 2019, Portugal. Minolta Hi-Matic S, Rokkor lens, Kodak Portra, ISO 400, 35mm film.