Ode To My Red Childhood

 

The disinfection of my childhood
All that I understand, misunderstood
All the smells that endure years
       the yellow tears
With strong hands and a violent need
to scream in the ears of eternity
 
The echoes of my self, certainly-
How my body wept!
        To be left!
The smells of men mixed with sweat
The tongue and all the secrets it has met
Patient, atop my shoulders, is the air, bare
Naked truths mention youth
My mothers smell, lilac for hair
I swear, lilies grew from her neck
Her eyes brown as the wood
Oh, a woodpecker would peck!
I recited "I love You!" in four languages
Before she heard the winds of disturbance
Her voice, deep like the Red Sea, salty and coarse
 
The wet air, I still smell
The damp sky fell
Right above my little head
The world fell right above my little head
God smiled
He tried to send me the moon
Busy, I was locked, in my room
My step fathers smoke burnt the walls of my thinking
The dizzy smells of my youth
Anxiety played songs in my small stomach
I swallowed dinner brave, privately with
the fork and knife of struggle, one single tear
Befriended my nose
From a bush, one rose
With those purple thorns, blood
How the knees shook
Read a book
Watched a television cook
 
Prepare Ukranian dumplings
What Spring brings
What Summer brings
My faceless father, a paper tiger
For one day, two days
I get to pretend I'm someones daughter
I get to pretend that this injury is much softer on the skin
My fingers are petite
I still see them grasping a glass of juice
He just stared at me with his mouth full
My eyes full
The smell of sleeping, dreaming
The smell of loneliness
Froze my head, left my hair cold
My scalp wished for a warm cloth to embrace
How beautiful, your face!
This is the smell of the men who want to touch me
At this point, I don't know how to be free
I learned to believe in imprisonment
The stems of chestnut trees
Lakes, streams
Mountains
Fountains
Nations
Plantations
I walk wide and far
Burnt my forehead in the desert
Sex sat with her legs crossed in my ear
  My dear, I walked far and wide
All for you
Won't you greet my feet with mercy and care?
And from evil, My heart, do spare
Won't you come to lift me from the earth?
 
 
 
 
Asli OMÜR
 

To Love
 
 
To love is beauty full, I mean
The simple act of loving
Is so magnificent, splendid
Just as grandoise, as say
The birth of child that was not to be
To love another
with the same fervor, as say
 
A dictator unending with great heat
To love is beauty full, I mean
The tiny motions of affection
From one human to another
Are like bright lights
Leading an injured aeroplane
                                   back home
 
 
 
* * * * *
 
 
 
21 Feb 2004
 
When I was a baby, my mother
Brushed a comb through my soft hairs
Now-
I am a woman
And I brush my fingertips through my tears
 
-- ASLI OMUR 

© All photographs and poetry by Asli Omur. 
Note: The poem is an excerpt from Asli Omur's diaries.