Three Poems by Ninko Kirilov

 

IMAGINARIUM

 

and now imagine all your fears as a teddy bear

and watch the children with the teddy playing

and watch the adults run away so funny

and now imagine all those streets as people

and the awards as lessons

and all these bows as sharpened daggers

and the excesses as idyllic foam

and everything as something else

and yet imagine

that seeing honestly again not being scary

and all the people and the streets

the same

they were

the same

they are

the tamers of the dawn 

 

 

FOLLOWING THE EXAMPLE OF WHITMAN

 

Now I sing your body acoustic

and every other body. Whitman knows

that if you never sing the body

it will just condense into a ghost,

will be just like a trash to itself, an AI portrait,

an annoying epigone, ersatz and golem.

And therefore if you don't object

I sing you.

I sing you now with gestures only

and in the bones vibrates a mad hermit.

is perfection of the falling leaf.

is a rumble in pianissimo, a wholeness.

the palette of the pains I sing,

the resin right between the lips I sing.

I sing your body acoustic

because the silence sings God. 

 

 

A HAIL TO ARMS

 

we danced without music everywhere

this is not pathos, this is not a love lyric

this is simply the subtle implosion

that we have been waiting for

and just like centuries the trains keep passing by

and just like the station the clocks recharge

and just in this clumsiness of the movements

we learned that dance is a weapon

this hail is just a departure

its recoil has the taste of the unknown

 

yes you are here but somewhere else you are not

and something there dances

Ninko Kirilov is the author of books of prose, poetry and drama. Works of his have been published in newspapers, magazines, online editions, poetry and prose collections, almanacs and anthologies. He has won several awards for poetry and short prose. His texts have been translated into English, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish, Serbian, Greek and Montenegrin. "Rawer" was published in India by Taj Mahal Review (2022) and "Orange" / "Naranja" – in bilingual edition in Bulgarian and Spanish by La Tortuga Bulgara (2025).