PEYCHO KANEV - POEMS

Peycho Kanev is the author of 4 poetry collections and two chapbooks, published in the USA and Europe. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, such as: Poetry Quarterly, Evergreen Review, Front Porch Review, Hiram Poetry Review, Hawaii Review, Barrow Street, Sheepshead Review, Off the Coast, The Adirondack Review, Sierra Nevada Review, The Cleveland Review and many others. He has three nominations for the Pushcart Prize.

---

The Way It Is
​

​The stars are there from
the beginning of time,
but it’s not the same with the eyes looking at
them from here              
and from everywhere
 
The beginning--
 
The beautiful hand, the muscles, the huge brain, the neurons,
working together in perfect harmony
 
We were created perfect.
 
So
thank
You!
 
* * *
 
But now the miniature signature of
the Creator climbs up in the bloodstream
of the worshiper: cancer.
 
 

Dead Man Walking
​

​“Rise! Walk!” I am watching the Word abandoning the chimney
(it doesn’t want to rise and doesn’t want to walk…), and the
winter, the fog, the whiteness and everything else, and I rise from
the mud and step on the Word, like a today certain Lazarus--
and here I am - starting slowly to walk on my own here and
everywhere, where my dreams can’t find me, hidden - even
from all the nightmares, that I am Him.

Children
​

​All the pranks we did as kids, descend into my memories
now, using the same threadbare rope, which we used to
play cowboys and Indians with.
The land receives green telegrams from the spring
and responds with blossoming and new fragrances,
sweeping the snow under the carpet,
like a drug addict who heard banging on the door.
The sunset is creeping like a vulture in the sky,
the blue and vast, enormous sky inside my head
and soon the dark will be here again, but before that
the memories will come back to that deserted place
with the windmill and the sails that didn’t budge
even in the most powerful wind.