Olga's Poetry & Thoughts

I went to sleep one day and woke up on the street With a musky beard on my chin and no shoes on my feet I smelled my whiskey breath and cried to the sky Why have you taken away my youth, God, why? I woke the next day on a downy filled bed Servants round my toes and a crown on my head I was asked to behead twenty people that day Can I please be a beggar again, if I may? After a night full of dispassionate sorrow I could not find a more dismal tomorrow I was a blind woman and a deaf one too I envied the man who couldn't afford shoes The next day I saw in the mirror a face With not even an eyelash out of place A bombshell model who puked up bread I cried because I'd rather be blind than dead In the span of one night I aged 50 years Gained wrinkles and fuzz in my ears I was a grandfather so close to the grave To be a pretty girl again I so did crave Switching through bodies was exhausting, you see I forgot who I was, but I yearned to be me Which will n...

On Halloween Eve I attended a feast Where friends were disguised as brilliant beasts Amid all the rags of black, grey, and plum My red dress blotted the floor with red rum I was the Queen of Hearts for one night Flattered by men who blushed at my sight I was a caricature of women who rage I was a damsel from the Victorian age Though I was proposed to by all the males I rejected them at the swish of my scarlet red nails There was one man, in the corner of the room Who caused my intrigue to tenderly bloom He was not a clown, a cowboy, or an ape He was a skeleton in a flowing black cape This sort of blasphemy I've never seen To dress as the Reaper for Halloween He transformed a holiday of fun and fear Into a reminder that death is too near He left to the garden, and I followed and whined And told him his costume was way out of line He turned his head and I shuddered at his face Which was a skeletal, bleached disgrace "Sir, I demand you unmask your brow! ...

Why do you wear red lipstick? Honey, it just makes you seem lovesick As if the blood from your heart and your brain Travelled straight to your mouth Leaving you heartless and dumb And desperate for a kiss Why do you wear red lipstick? While claiming that you defend women's rights For if you truly did, you would rebel Against the covergirls and the cosmo magazines But instead you draw attention to superficial femininity Eve's sins smeared on your lips Oh, why do you wear red lipstick? I answer: because I like to

We are disconnected stars; artificial constellations A mind set, a fluke, a trick of the imagination We are lines connecting but never intersecting We do what's expected but are never expecting We are tied to each other one day, severed the next We are mere pawns, but think we are blessed Fingers in each other's palms, we are whole Eyes connected, we make love soul to soul A warm word, a kind slip of the tongue A kiss, a relief, a reminder that we are still young But the moment we part, an ocean divides us And a mystical force in the universe guides us The moment that our lines disconnect The moment that our souls don't reflect Is the moment we flee from each other, and fast Lightyears apart, we say the past is the past All the faces I've seen, touched, caressed All the hearts that I've cried to, lied to and undressed All the stars that I've met that produced something new A beautiful constellation in the sky, a dark blue All the friendshi...

*Apologies for belated post. Internet was down for one week!* Yesterday, I went on a class field trip to Florence. The majority of the day consisted of a guided tour through the Uffizi, one of the oldest art galleries in the world. Apart from being insanely crowded and bursting at the seams with tourists (like myself) I was still able to take a few angled photographs of the most interesting pieces we saw, of which I will give a brief description in this blog post. Below is the first art piece that the guide showed us. Unfortunately, I was not able to find the name for it. It features the Virgin Mary, very two-dimensional, with the angels seemingly stacked on top of each other. Her facial features are diminished and there is no use of highlights or shadow, giving no depth to the art piece. Below is the art piece “Ognissanti Madonna” by Giotto di Bondone (1310). This representation of the Virgin Mary is much different from the first. In this piece, she is strong and feminine,...

I refuse to sell my heart, not for twenty-five cents The auction is closed, ladies and gents I’ve already sold my eyes, when they caught sight of the streets So now everyone can see the beauty of my Italian retreat I sold my tongue for gelato, feeling so young Letting the wild berries dance around on my tongue I sold my feet when I traveled to see our Holy Mother in gold Like a saint on a mission, I’ll walk until I get old I sold my ears when I heard beautiful Aida open her lips Echoing through the theatre in which the ancients used to sit But I won’t sell my heart, it is still free For my heart belongs to God and not really to me My heart aches for home, too many miles away Yet for now I am here and I will live for today Yes, I sold my eyes to Italy; it’s all I can see How I wish you were here seeing these treasures with me I’ll try to buy back my sight, taste, and ears too So that I’ll be able to share these memories with you

As you may or may not know already, I am doing a summer abroad program in Italy at the University of Siena. I'm taking an ethnic politics course where we study the different ways that ethnicity influences nation-building, and how a unified Italy came about from ethnic solidarity. So far, the trip has been amazing. Yesterday we went on our first class field trip to Pisa and Lucca. In the photograph below, you can see the Leaning Tower of Pisa (of course) and the Pisa cathedral (which actually leans a bit as well). Pisa used to be a marshy area, which is obviously not a good foundation for these gigantic structures. You could not climb the tower throughout the 1990s because the tower was leaning too much, but they fixed it by putting lead blocks on the non-leaning side in order to stabilize the structure. Walking up the tower is a dizzying experience, as you can really feel the lean! Also, the steps are made of marble and can be slippery. The view from the top, however, is surreal. ...