AXIOM AND GRIEF BY STANIMIR PANAYOTOV

book cover, layout, graphic and art design: Filip Panchev

editor: Nadezhda Radulova

proofreader: Polly Mukanova

72 pages

Metheor, Sofia, 2020

ISBN: 978-619-7291-18-6 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-619-7291-20-9 (hardback)

 

I. AXIOM

Dead Peace

An Utopia for the Tribe

Death to the Grammatical God

The Savior, Name for a Suitcase

the blinding angelic gas…

The Beautiful and the Rational

21.03.2009

as I submit...

Blind Date

Love in Kevlar

Ivan Shentov

Shelter

 

II. GRIEF

On August

A Curse

those men in my backbone…

“Watching You” / “Writing Me”

Soliloquy for Two Voids

To the Dark Streets

To the Three Beloved Ones

To Write

Things

What

On the Weight of Your Absent Embrace

 

III. GRIEVING AXIOMATISTS

Dark Theorems: A Portrait of Tzvetan Marangozov by Zlatomir Zlatanov

Void Formulae: A Portrait of Zlatomir Zlatanov by Tzvetan Marangozov

Criminal Axioms: Self-Portrait by Krassimir Kroumov

 

A Note

 

“Watching You” / “Writing Me”

 

“Watching you”

 

your body

seen from behind the picture

of me drawn with the bruises

of the bold

 

brush that you brandish

with wrong

and rotten

memories of the borderless

 

image of my body that you have not seen

 

*

 

“Writing me”

 

there is my body my fingers

 

skeletal scratches lusting

to fool the distance between

with the flawless easiness of a flash

 

here are my finger my body my loyal stringer

 

all easing word after word

the distant desire

with the unruly urge of a uraeus

 

where my fingers are there are your bodies

 

written while they walk in

the sentences I cannot brush in

the strokes I cannot hush

 

wrapped when the words lull the drive to draw you

and while the stylus withholds the poem as

to sing not the song I have not written