Open Mic: Adriana Ciontea's Night Poems

Born in Bucharest, Romania, Adriana is studying Creative Writing at Falmouth University. Her poems are about people and the fragility of human condition, about religion and nature. Inspiration comes from everywhere, from observing people and landscapes.

Aside from being a student, Adriana is also a restless traveller of the Cornish coastline and the night sky.

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Life Under the Golden Tiger Striped Sky

Tonight I’ll be looking for you
amongst the starts, 
between the feathered cirrus.

I’ll be looking
for life under the golden tiger striped sky.

Last night

Last night I fell out of bed
and the sheets smelled like you again.

Like strength and stammering thoughts
pouring out of your head
through your eyelashes, barely touching your cheeks.

I saw the silhouette
of your memory
shaking in the corner of the room.

Absence lingers,
safely kept on the shelf above my head.

I’ve don’t believe in ghosts, 
but you haunt my every step.

Wicked

The body is often made from scraps,
Latched together by forgotten threads of time.
Flay the skin and peek a look inside
Don’t be unsettled by what lies beneath. 
Exhume the fundamental truth of our insides.
We’re all the same mess of odd collections,
Of whittles from long wasted selves,
Bound by wicked and elusive threads,
Stitches engraving the Creation
in the pale phantoms of ourselves. 
You shouldn’t coy reality away.
It will do no good to renounce what is already set.
We're all a sort of unholy brutes.

Return
 
I keep a tally of my sins, lay a trim of lace around them
Because I've seen the bottom of the sea and smelled its fishy stank,
They told me to think before I speak, kneel before I rise.

The message was clear, don't count before it's time,
Mummer saw me standing there and told me to come forth
To drown the life I bare, return as a new man. 

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by Adriana Ciontea