quilt

I was born white. Caring family, mom and dad, a country that was just one year from getting out of the Soviet Union and 14 years before joining the European. My passport said Latvian, and I believed it to be true, until I lived to my teens and figured out I’m quarter Latvian, Polish and Belorussian, quarter Jewish, half Russian with a hint of German blood. Half of my family was Old orthodox, quarter Jewish, and remaining quarter christened me to be Catholic – then I took the nationality out of my passport stating I belong to them all. Living in an independent country with a bunch of interdependent people, being able to speak loud, say what I want, without too many consequences.

Dad did his best to teach me how to carefully pick my principles and stick to them until I die and never betray any, nor ever to change my beliefs. I grew to learn he was all wrong. Mom did her best to teach me unconditional love – those lessons brought me to some harsh outcomes, but probably that’s a part of the lesson as well. Do whatever makes you happy, if it doesn’t harm anyone else, is the lesson I’m sticking to – hopefully this one stays with me until I die.

We are different, all of us; skin colours, behaviour patterns, religions, names. “You have to grow up and learn all people are following the same patterns,” once said one of my employers, and all I learned ever since was that despite wars and betrayals the world can be beautiful, it can depend on an angle you’re looking from, and she was also wrong. The way you can hug a person in one country and cannot enter a private space of somebody in another one is just a dance with some certain rules; you might not know them but you’re still leading your part. Actually, you might not like dancing at all, but you were born in your dancing shoes, so don’t fuck it up.

Quilt is a multi-layered textile, traditionally composed of three layers of fiber, combined using the technique of sewing the layers together. You, me, each of us in this room, we are just a multi-layered textile cloth sewn together to cover the globe. We are a good large quilt, all of us, and there have been so many times I’ve damn hoped the stitches will never fail.

I know three and a half languages, two of them I talk while sleepwalking. My family lives in five countries and I have friends living in more countries than I can count. The least thing to learn is the ability to be grateful in as many languages as you can, even if the only thing to be grateful for is the fact that this planet speaks more than six and a half thousand languages, and I believe each of them has a word for love.

light

the world is my favorite mess
its wrinkles - my favorite flaws
there’s something in carrying less
of cemeteries, ashes and claws

there’s something in caring more
for people who wander around
‘cause if you undress to the core
you’ll see it began with a sound

how long has your half-rotten ship
been sailing to infinite lands?
you’ll see, if you loosen a grip,
your life-long detour never ends,

i wonder and wonder and stop
inhale and admire again
the last irresistible drop,
the battle of monsters and men,

the humans who’re taking the lead,
whatever they’re climbing onto,
and those who are cautiously hid
behind their angle of view

the world is my favorite heap,
disorganized, tangled and tight
but when you have fallen so deep,
next thing you observe is the Light

calm down

taking care of little things
taking pictures of autumn gold
to your window november clings,
wonder what was the truth he told

through the phrame of your latest pic,
auto-focused on grainy glass,
there’s a sparkle within a thick
sacred message “this too shall pass”

after learning to be a huge
irresistible warrior hound,
next you’re learning to build a fuge
that’s as tiny as it may sound

fill the shelves with your fiction books,
pour some tea to your dearest friends
satisfactory as it looks,
hug the battlefield while it ends

to the art of those pumpkin pies,
smell of cinnamon in your hands,
under humid november skies
lie some infinite autumn lands

now you walk through them, calm and slow,
captured hero through tiny lens,
when you try to recall that glow,
you’ll be given a second chance.

as quiet as

he says there’s nothing in the world
as quiet as a snow,
as painful as the art to hold
and art of letting go
as skillful as the epitaph
to clearly put aside,
as pure as a silent laugh
before its amplified

i tell him there’s an art to live
and craft of breathing in,
you’re lucky if you learn to give
and eager to begin,
no matter what you start anew,
despite you’re bruised and scratched,
there’s cost of anything you do,
untied and disattached

and if the cost becomes too high,
you’ll learn to unexpect,
since it’s the only way to try
stand honest and direct,
there’s nothing in the world as quiet
as notes you cannot hear,
so put your ugly thoughts aside
and play to someone dear

and then you look above your head,
each cloud up there has seams,
but things by which you were mislead
can’t hold you off your dreams,
as grounded as you walk on earth,
as slippery your way,
remember everything you’re worth,
and all you’re meant to say

he says there’s nothing in the world
as quiet as a snow,
as painful as the art to hold
and art of letting go
and so i promise i will learn
stay thorough and tranquil
his music echoes in return:
i will
i will
i will

lighthouse

that big dirty planet spinning around me is just a huge dark-blue bucket of stars which have actually long ago died, some of them have been dead for not too long – those still shed the light on some strangers, and those strangers think they're following a beautiful road full of streetlamps shining down just so they don't ever get lost. 

i once was that stranger.

i'm not anymore, for i've become wiser – now i know what's hidden behind the streetlamps, lost souls, let's sit together and promise each other we will never again talk about the meaning of life. take that meaning in your hands, roll it in your palms, see how it shrinks, convulses then disappears at all.

see? your hands are free now.

the whole galaxy to fill in. throw a dice then decide what comes first: before you can think of anything else than music, there comes music, so you feel it in your hands and your palms and your arteries until you consist of music and there's nothing else to put in.

stupid damned dice failed again.

so you continue moving along that road. lit with streetlamps, scratchy and coarse, do not stumble. reach the sea, special place, good enough to throw the damned dice away to disappear in the dark cotton waves, there's a boat, take me further, take me away, take me home, take me nowhere until i'm lost.

everything's dark but the music.

it's glowing within, full of stars and souls and buckets and meanings and palms and convulsions and galaxies and dice and cotton waves and nowheres and darkness. nothing else exists, noone to show you the meaning, no way out, no way out, no way out, until someone tells you he's coming back to be a lighthouse.

then there's a lighthouse.

come look

come look at us, funny, not mastered to pray,
come look at us, lost in our searching for way,
come down to take part in our upcoming shows,
the seeds that you've planted so weirdly arose

look after, look after, we're mumbling too loud,
look after me, visible far from the crowd,
look into me for i deserve you to look
i'm open, i'm ready, your coloring book

present me a language i'll master so deep
somebody will love and will beg me to keep
way back from the schedule, i'm leaving behind
the stones that were keeping it harder to find

the sky is enlightening the snowflakes that fall
and warm up the earth that is brighter of all
he's telling me language i speak is a gift,
i'm sticking to thought that will keep me adrift

he's telling me music he speaks is a prize
i look at the snowflakes that started to rise
he's saying he'll never allow us to stop
those words in my head slowly piling atop

he's telling me things we create and enlist
are colors you've had no idea exist
let's find them the names let's invent them anew
let's never conclude what we've started to do

come look at us, shy, unrecalled, insecure
come hug us to hearten us, to reassure
we'll break and we'll cry and we'll fall and we'll bend
and nevertheless you'll be holding my hand

leo

Leo is tired of trying: he sits and watches
dreams that he’s carefully dreamed of are mixed with lying
seasonal mix, reassuring and reapproaching:
none of that lead him to actual real trying

Leo is tired of dreaming: he’s tried to conquer —
lead him to thorough experience whatsoever
years of learning the truth made him kind of stronger,
missing the final results never got him clever

Leo is really tired of dissecting magic:
messages, public relations, releases, credits
nights by the bottles of wine start to seem less tragic
days are the ones that require his cuts and edits

mid of november so suddenly dawns at Leo
socks to the drawer and dreams to the hidden closet
making the deals with subconscious seem so real
«look at the life you are living, it’s you who chose it»

Leo is tired of wandering in his nightmares,
maybe that’s spring that could save him: he’s getting older
Leo’s a part of yourself: get a little kinder,
pour him a whiskey and pat him on graying shoulder

music

take the music away — i'm not sure if i'll survive
until now, noone did, for the heartbeat is also music
when the humans appeared, the cosmos was going live
with those podcasts that streamed songs of lullabies, love and losing

take the music away — and i promise, i'll go insane
songs that fill up my holes are the only existing savior
while we pity ourselves, while we never do stop complain,
play the music that makes you endurable, stronger, braver

while the world's going crazy with small talks and hiding dreams,
first of all, from themselves, then from every related human,
there's a special place in your head tailor-made, it seems,
for your infinite what ifs and maybes and just assumings

then you nervously bang on a table, impatient, dumb
with your fear: that's rhythm of loneliness, longing, grieving,
that's the tune of your «mama, just look at what i've become»,
that's your own composition on difficulties of leaving

take the music away — and i swear, there's nothing left,
just a planet of lost and unbearable lonely creatures
pressing «pause» on your player is humankind's biggest theft,
silence's great 'till the moment you realize what it features

act

the world is your playground. act.
if there is the only fact
to show you it's so much fun —
that's proven by anyone

the second you're out of bed,
take care of the things you've said,
while words can define your day,
think hard of the things you say

there's always an awesome choice:
the words can create a noise,
or shoot, or involve you in
the ultimate shame or sin

the world is your playground. do
things you don't believe into:
i bet you'll survive the fright
and learn that they turned out right

and look who has turned up here:
stand up and embrace your fear
that's one of the precious toys
that teaches you or destroys

so play with it and persuade
you're ready to get afraid,
cause after it disappears,
you're stronger than all your fears

the world is your playground. act.
if something will stay intact
and put on the highest shelf —
i hope it won't be yourself.

Jim

Jim was twenty. An age when you're ready to win,
even if there aren't any battles
He just thought that there doesn't exist any sin,
but that's bad if there's someone who settles:

it's so tacky to settle and trendy to move
to the lands that are constantly changing
from the people not ready to travel and groove
and from those who are too prearranging.

Jim was awesome. His family missed him a bit —
well, they still haven't seen him for years.
Like a lighter that's up to be ready and lit,
he was ready to lands and frontiers.

But when those whom he luckily met on his way
asked of family, background and vision,
he was ready to run (cause was scared to say
that his illness was called indecision).