Alper

photo credit

Isn't it curious that
your mother called you
brave heart while mine
named me after a mountain
in eastern Africa?

That I was meant as
God's resting place,
but it was from you
I learned peace?

(Day 1 of A to Z Challenge. My A has always been for Alper, the first man to see my soul. The poem plays with the meanings of our names)

Orhan

My soul still resided
an old coffee can
inside a cabinet in
the Euphrates Valley
when he found me,
a broken genie repeating
the Hereafter would be 
better for me and
trying hard to believe it.
He told me it was okay
to take the lid off sometimes
and come up to the surface
to breathe.

Written for Magaly Guerrero's NaPoWriMo prompt over at the Imaginary Garden. I first thought I could write poetry after reading Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanık's poem 'Dream' (you can read it here). Kanık is one of the founders of the Garip Movement, which broke with the conventional style of Turkish poetry and literature between the years 1945-1950 by using vernacular speech and surrealist elements in poems. The italicized line of the poem is a reference to Quran 93:1-4.

Never enough to write

Aşkim I've kept the letters.
I read them once a year.
Still wonder what to do
when the paper gets
too fragile to be handled,
when my mind gets
too weakened to remember.
I like to imagine you kept
your promise to never forget me
and I was on your mind
during the earthquake,
you touched a memory of us
and it helped you not to be afraid.
Was there enough time
to run to the kitchen and
get my heart from
the old coffee can
inside your cabinet?
Where have you hidden it
after that?

(This is a poem abou a deceased love. I revisit his memory every Valentine's, you remember him from this poem last year)

(Written for Karin's Sunday Mini-challenge over at the Imaginary Garden)

Valentines

You climb down
Mt. Nemrut every year
the night before Valentine's
to sleep in my drawer under
a bunch of old letters.

I nearly forget
what you sound like,
the years between us
have weakened our story
I rarely tell it now.

But we were words in vows once.
I had your chest,
you had my lap,
we made promises
we wanted to be able to keep.