Imouna Meraklou!
She cried
I’m doing this for you!
She cried
For your youth, not mine!
& my woes of a lost life
Failed pride
Absence of essentials
A mattress is all I have
& I sleep with a ritual for company
It’s not about me!
She cried
I live for you
But without you
***
Kind words fail dutifully
Sifting through clothes & jewelery
A mother and daughter
for company
Relevant only upon death
By Maria Grujicic
Copyright 26th February, 2013
Meraklou is a woman who has style in life and fashion. It’s a word in Greek and knowing this will greatly help with interpreting the poem. This is a fatal end, though I assure you happiness is set in disguise. As always, likes are appreciated and impressions are most welcome. Feel free to ask questions, as long as it is respectful, there is no right or wrong in poetry.
The day my soul was given a name, was the day I was taken away. Like a caterpillar, with one aim, to grow… change… fly, and find you again. Dying alone is delicately defined as dying in a loveless tone. My deepest fear isn’t the inevitable act but the unpredictable, lonely journey. Oh if only I could have you near. Though, only … When love is still warm in my heart I can die. And so I’m alive, I cannot stop until I find It. It keeps my light sparking the trail. It lifts me up high. And when it’s time to die I don’t feel alone with my beautiful memories. I sleep with my friends. Details are beyond my reach, but the feelings hold my peace. I can smile. This is my Truth. It’s true because it is in my thoughts. I can feel It with all my heart that pumps the warmth through my blood. I’m dead in my head.
Sweet dreams,
Venus
This is a letter from Venus to Mother Earth in my first novel, Do It Like A Dance. Read it like a poem.
It was you I saw from afar
an angelic phantom
I needed not the magic of sound
to feel the beating in your heart
it trickled and flowed,
it caressed my soul
and in time I became soaked in you
The softness of essence appeared,
dripped slowly into the years
I grew old with you
Upon death
The candle remained in my head
You were the living light
You weaved yourself deep in my soul.
In the half-light you were my whole
In full-darkness
words appeared in your ever-lasting glow,
your gentle words encompassed me about
They held me closer than close
Upon death
I could smell your melting eloquent scent,
feel your softness
& life of the unknown
I am speechless
You are my gift
Forever you will be
My living breathing beauty
who showers the heavens above
with sparkling light,
Your sublime presence and anonymous love
Has enough for everyone
Write
Peacefully
But know what it is in your mind
This is the key to unleashing
the wretched disguise of patterns
in daily life
I write and keep writing
This is what will remain of me
after I die
With a set of clues
Relevant
Only to anonymous eyes
I place my soul in my own heart
& I will always have you
When I feel the rays of the abundant stars
Your words will always live in my head
Your body and mine will always be
This is the love I have
for an anonymous star
By Maria Grujicic Copyright 2012
I’d like to introduce you to a Serbian singer named Toma Zdravkovic. An unknown, Toma Zdravkovic started singing in a pub. You know the kind, a smoky room full of people, entertaining them while they drink, smoke, chat, laugh.
Memories of The Last King of The Pubs
He was inspired by women, alcohol… He grew up in a very poor village and started singing ay 15 years old. Because of poor and bad life he decided to go and move to a town close to his village. Frozen on the street he came across a female singer, Silavana Armelvic who took him to a pub close by the street. Afterwards he went to a town called Tuzla and he spent 5 years in one hotel making the party room full every night.
Afterwards a friend brought him to Belgrade and he got a job. He met his first wife in Novi Sad and he had one daughter. He got a divorce. His first love sent him a telegram in a hotel in Novi Sad that she was very sick in Bosnia. He decided to spend time with her up to her death. After that he wrote a song called Buket Belih Ruza, in English Bouquet of White Roses…..
He had cancer and the doctors told him he had only a few years to live. After I learned of him, the words of his life touched me so deeply, a sadness crept up on me. Why didn’t I know of him sooner? Why didn’t I experience his magic? But a reply in my conscience realized his soul lived on by the words he left behind. The video alone one can view and sense the atmosphere that radiated through his charisma, his voice was like a touch that said all will be all right if we can live this remaining life together.
Toma Zdravkovic said in an interview that the pub was the place for his performances because it was like a theatre. A unison of famous people joined with him at this pub, entertaining. Watch them in the video. He was an unknown, an anonymous star, he touched their soul, and he expected nothing more from that but another night of the same.
At the end of the night after everyone left he found some unknown to give all his earnings to. Incredibly it took him 15 years to produce his album. 15 years battling cancer, and other challenges life brings, he wrote all his own songs. He felt humiliated performing at first, he was laughed at in his first performance because he was so shy. About 5 per cent of the world population knew about him, people in a pub who loved him. He carried on and after 15 years he produced his album and he was on TV, and shortly afterwards he died of the cancer that he battled up to that point. I was further touched to find out that he had cancer of the throat.
I dedicate this poem to Toma Zdravkovic. The man I never met but touched my soul. His story alone, his music, his stance, the emotion in his eyes that he pulls away, seemingly hidden away, touching souls by his voice, his music. My poems are designed to touch a soul, to reach the unknown, not to reveal the mystery of life, rather, be immersed in it. At times I give up. I had a spell of not writing for months, but after some soul-searching with Toma Zdravkovic I was presented by an answer.
There are those that battle to be rich and famous, and those that battle each day just to do what we love. Give me a chance of another life again and again, and I’d choose to pursue my passion.
The story is based on word of mouth because I don’t understand the Serbian to interpret his interview. If some details aren’t correct or if you have more information about Toma Zdravkovic please let me know. The poem is part of my new poetry book titled, Poems That Touch The Soul.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. Anaïs Nin
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
This is the world
According to us
Play the life
They command
Complexes mix
Head in the sand
Fix
A place
One cannot hide
The bush once was
Residue
Was left behind
My escape
Flew
The skies were all I could see
My place, My identity
It was true, once
Danger
A graveyard lurks beneath
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
This is the world according to us
By Maria Grujicic (Artist name Malena)
This is of a spirit that roams lost, and unable to find home. If origin is lost, there is no direction for destiny. Lately I am preoccupied by a pointless industrial development that plans to go ahead just across from where I live. The problem is that the beautiful bushland will be torn away, and what’s more, a sacred Aboriginal burial site and meeting place will also be buried.
If you’d like to help, no matter where you are in the world, please sign the following petition.
Hi Everyone! I’m pleased to announce that my poetry book “SUDDEN CLARITY” is out now. It is so far my best work and I couldn’t have done it without my artist friends from around the world. And of course my husband who is also an artist!
No words are enough to describe my feelings. Keep on dancing!
Whenever you find lack of inspiration, look to the sky and open your heart.
I hope you enjoy my first attempt at making a film.
I kept it simple and easy.
T o d a y I w a s f e e l i n g a l i t t l e d i f f e r e n t .
And so I did something very different.
I just finished putting together a poetry book that I really love. It has a very different flavor from my other books for various reasons, but mainly because of the setting. The people who have been following me will know that I have moved back to my home city from Europe. I now live in a very tropical environment with not a lot of people in sight. With distance a barrier, and the expanse of the horizon, nature is more visible. The sense of reality is different here in Darwin, Australia. It has its own set of challenges along with its pleasures, and certainly a huge transition period for me. Change is the underlying theme of my poems and this includes memories of home, transition of times, and adapting to the new.
If you are interested in reviewing my poetry book, you can either join my Facebook fan page where I will be posting the link, or add me as a friend on Fastpencil. This is particularly useful if you would like to some day publish a book yourself! I hope to soon find the resources to do up an audio CD of my poems as well. If anyone has advice on this, I most welcome it!
And all of a sudden he’s pretty again
His mouth doesn’t make a sound
A shape is seen
He left to the sound of the wind
From here to somewhere in between
By the ripples where waves eventually meet
He left
To the sound of the wind
Drops made the water in the sea
And the ripples played
Where the waves would eventually meet
And it was clear
It was the wind that led him to see
And all of a sudden he was pretty again
‘I don’t feel thirsty,’ he said, surrounded by rain
Sudden realization
Ended in pain
Rain
Pushed him to the side
Again and again
How was it that the rain came,
It surrounded him
With the sound it made
A battered mind
Chattered too much
It swayed and pressed side to side
Strands of hair combined
Created a look
Blades of grass
Were a maze to the truth
People gathered to crowd it
The boy drowned in it
And all I was able to do was see
It was the absence of a name that led me
It was found
And then it alerted a sound
To where I felt abundantly free
I wasn’t thirsty when it rained
It was then when I created
Sudden clarity!
By Maria Grujicic (Malena)
If you need clarity to this poem, let me know. Thank you for reading, as always.
Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.Carol Burnett
Walking, talking, moving
Nightmares
Pierced face and eyes
An old woman, a girl
Physically drawn to her
She walked over to her
And gently touched her
That night
The room became alight
Nurses, doctors, family
Suddenly
Awoke
Safe in a world
And in its originality
A vacant bed
Across the view of her face
Left an empty space
In a fragile heart
And the strength of a rose
Released a determination
Of self creation
That she made her own
She left
An empty space
Before the time
That she would die
Free
Of the originality
Of a world she made her own
Shelter
Made her feel better
For a time
She left an empty space
Across the view of her face
Before the time
That she would eventually die
By Maria Grujicic (Malena)
The Desert Rose. Darwin, Australia
This is a poem that I wrote today as I remembered the time I was in hospital. I had an illness and I nearly died. I was too young to understand this as a girl, and the impressions that stayed with me were the activity of people around me. I seemed to have absorbed the idea of death, and carried the impressions forth in my life and I eventually came to write this poem.
The poem ‘describes’, if such a word is adequate to use, the unspoken, spiritual relationship of an anonymous dying old woman sharing a hospital room with a girl who is fighting for her life. Two souls are joined as one. When I write of ‘her’ I am referring to both the old woman and the girl, who is of course me. I was 13. When I refer to shelter and the ‘world she made her own’, this is the youth and innocence that protected me from knowing what was going on.
To this day I’m not sure what happened to the woman. I presumed she died. I was deeply saddened by the old woman’s death and my potential fate. I didn’t know why it was happening, but it stayed within me subconsciously and I wasn’t able to comprehend it until I became an adult.
This is the audio of a prose that I wrote a while ago while I was living in Germany, related to this theme. Now I’m in Darwin, Australia and my impressions are different again. The word ‘rose’ in each poem I wrote is used to mean the noun and verb of the word ‘rose’. For example, if you read the desert ‘rose’ as a verb, you will get a different meaning to the desert ‘rose’ as a noun. Both meanings are intertwined. The photo is of a desert flower found in the bush, not too far from where I live in Darwin. It is a symbol of strength and survival.
The Desert Rose
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can’t help it.— Leo Rosten
As always, likes are appreciated and impressions are most welcome. Feel free to ask questions, as long as it is respectful, there is no right or wrong in poetry.
