It Was All Too Much 

I don’t know how
But bodies under my window
Managed to open the seal of poppies.
How further they were,
In their life of bloom
Bodies, were guessing.
Yellow, white or red?
It’s a game, we have to play
To direct strict shapes of affection
At those, who remain.

Keep an eye open, said the bodies
As I peered from inside
For those with whom you can sit in water,
Jeered the bodies
As I sit in my bathtub, unable to move
Thinking
Silence missed me, by a toilet brush.

Middle C, strike the Middle C, said the bodies
As the piano
Shudders at the touch of a non-author
Like me,
Scurrying to smell music
Over homelessness.

Find your seasoning, the bodies clamor
I don’t find any.
Only eggs boil boisterously
As smokes reflect on
Tarnished tiles
A stillness, in time
Rushes in
And like a long-lost love
My neck pain returns
To say hi.

In And Out Of The Woods

After aloneness,
My grand
Coming-out-of the-woods
Stopped a deer on track.
Piercing eyes, heavy in altruism
Beside it, a tree
Moss growing on its sides
Moss lifting a veil
And moss, remaining.
On it is an insect. Waiting.
Mutually exclusive.
And small.
Heartbeats. River. Forest.

I, the river-noise
I, the forest chirp
Promise each other windows
Spaces, so thick
That if cracked open
They would let out
All the flux of my injuries,
Butterflies in arms.
We dare not.
We acquit ourselves
Of this hiddenness
To finally prove
That my breath
Was white-
A description of silence.
Heartbeats. River. Forest.

I, the heartbeats
In between spasms
Of light
Saw
The curve of exile
Of these eyes
That are washed
Clean of bliss
The retina’s
Lack of solace.
We render
Arithmetic, incompetent:

There is zero promised land.
There is zero promised year.

Life equal to life.

Also, read Sami Baydar’s poetry, translated from Turkish by Murat Nemet-Nejat, published in The Antonym. 

Selections from Sami Baydar’s Poetry