Will you vote for me? I run first for Author of the Month and for Publication of the Month at Spillwords

My Dear Readers,

I run first for Author of the Month and my poem, “The Train to Vienna,” runs first for Publication of the Month at Spillwords press NYC.

I am humbled and thrilled. Will you vote Gabriela M for Author of the Month and “The Train to Vienna” for publication of the month?

You don’t need a Spillwords account to vote though it is easy to open one. You can vote with your Twitter or your FB account.

I will be delighted to have your vote but you should feel free to vote for whomever you think is deserving.

The voting will begin on the 26th of each month at 12:00am Easter Time
The voting will last for 4 Days.

Thank you
Gabriela

Please vote here.

Vote

My book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, can be ordered here.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

on the last Saturday of every month
I see the little girl
who lives inside the world of withered roses and of plasticine
the world of our making cries
delusional
a window thinks it is alive and tries to dance
and in the world of withered roses and of plasticine
where ravens talk
pianos have shut up
I see the little girl
her dress, pale pink
her eyes, mad blue
on her cheeks two tears pantomime a waltz
and on the last Saturday of every month
from the world of our making
the world of withered roses and of plasticine
I send to you my love
a kiss and a forgotten dream
both gloved

My book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, can be ordered here.
Thank you
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

image: olgers, Shutterstock; [link]

My book – Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings – was published.

Thank you to all my followers who’ve supported me. I wish I could make the sky rain blessings on all of you. I wish I could heal all wounds with my words. I wish I could send you a rose hidden in whispers of love every day.
I will try. I will never give up. You’ve showed me love. I’ll return your love. Every day I’ll try to give you more than I take. That’s my promise to you.
Yours
Gabriela

Shiver (a poem from my book)

A full moon weeps cold fragrant oil on my face.
Shiver.
The cicadas’ song penetrates the membranes of the space.
On one of my arms a purple mark sighs and then falls asleep.
Looking for prey a snake’s tongue splits the time in two.
I feel the bite.
You.

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings contains new poems, poems published in various venues, and a few excerpts from my manuscript “Glass Lovers.”

Click Here to View Publisher’s Announcement

Order PAPERBACK Here!

Order Ebook Here!

@Gabriela Marie Milton

trap me
in the rhythms of the Flamenco
whose sounds invade the nights of Southern Spain
to breathe the notes of the guitars which play
and fill the lustrous eyes with burning pain

trap me
in the Florence of my dreams
to walk with Leonardo in its streets
to cry with the Madonna and to verse in Greek
when the last word of Christ forever speaks

trap me …

fragment from the poem trap me [included in my book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings]

you can pre-order my book here

Thank you.

Gabriela

image: Everett-Art; Shutterstock; [link]

My Dear Readers,

My book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, is now available for pre-order.

You can pre-order here

The paperback version will be released on April 20th.

Below please find the acknowledgments I included in the book.

I am deeply grateful to Christina Schwarz, the author of the
New York Times Bestseller Drowning Ruth, for reading the
manuscript of my book and for offering me her wonderful insights
into my poetry.

I am also thankful to the great Italian poet, Flavio Almerighi,
for translating several of my poems – included in this book – into
Italian, a language that I love deeply.

Last but not least, I am grateful to you, my dear reader –
wherever you are in this world – for your willingness to spend time
with my poetry and to walk the roads of passion and fantasy with
me.

Welcome to my book, my dear reader. For you, I wrote these
poems. For you, I opened the doors of passion, love, and
imagination. Look no further. Come with me, and together we will
defy mortality.

More from the back cover here

Thank you.
Yours
Gabriela

my dress is red
your heart is pounding
your passion
matador de toros
bleeds from your arms into my veins
your eyes flame every soul in Salamanca
your fight is dance
your body burns
the bull is raging
flesh is cracking
roses from my hair fall on your wounds
stars are deaf
eternity is stopping
…
now I scribble words in lonely Sundays
echoes of bullfights in Salamanca
….
fragment/draft

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, my poetry book, will be available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

image: Fresnel; Shutterstock; [link]

let’s take the train and go to Vienna
rent a room for a night and then waltz
in your arms the waist of the night trembles
fingertips touch a blue door which is locked
I sit barefoot on the floor
the windows’ eyelashes are yellow and drunk
your voice moves stones in a lonely graveyard
to bury the tears I cry
and lonely like children of war
we cut…
please continue reading here.

Please read my Spillwords Author of the Year (2019) interview here

Tomorrow in the U.S. most people will celebrate Easter. From the bottom of my heart to those of you who are Western Orthodox, “Happy Easter! Christ is risen!” To those of you who are Eastern Orthodox, “Happy Palm Sunday!” To those of you who are not Christians may you have a thousand years of happiness. May we all live in peace. Do not listen to false prophets. Do know listen to those who in sweet voices lecture you and claim they know better. Let your heart be filled with love. Read, write, paint, dance, sing, work the land, do what you have to do but remember to think for yourself. Only then we all will be fine.

Happy Easter. Buona Pasqua. Feliz Pascua. Joyeuses Pâques.

Yours

Gabriela

image: Nomad_Soul; Shutterstock, [link]

My Dear Readers,

A stunning piece by two magnificent writers: Rachel and Watt.
I am thrilled to have them as my guests today.
Below, please read their comments on collaborating with each other, and their piece All’s well that ends well.

Rachel: regarding Watt and I’s writing, it has always been a remarkably easy process. We both admired each other’s writing, and in his words: “It’s easy to tread each other’s tracks without losing our own essence. When we write together, inspiration seems to brush shoulders with us like it might with an old friend, and words gather themselves effortlessly and travel to the mind.”

All’s well that ends well

Over time, real time, life has segmented me in sides and faces with very vague definitions. I sense that there are things about me that are routinely yet obscurely fed to a vending machine which gives me newer passions, different interests in return. Maybe I can trace it back to “when” but “why” is draped in nights when I lay awake with a dream in mind, and the next morning seems to blur it into a background that slowly fades into wallpaper that needs to be torn down because it’s just not as pretty anymore.

The ‘why’ is so much harder than the ‘when,’ but December raises the downy hair of yesterday on the back of my neck. No embrace for the girl of that calendar month, just a sigh of resignation and despair that rustles all the other pages of the calendar. My eyes see a whole year of good intentions and failed dreams that cling so desperately to that wall and under my skin. It’s like the realisation that last New Year’s hope was just an impulsive mistake and I forgot to make any brightened resolutions.

And it becomes an yearly abstraction, a push that plummets fractions, breezeblocks, out of an otherwise linear tower of reality. I look back at the lost pieces, and with what may be an illusion of growth, smile. That ache seems so small, unimportant, and what I have now seems okay for a minute. Maybe longer. Depends on the length of the song I listen to, and the longevity of the setting sun.

I can only say it in a whisper but this year has magnified the aches that have lingered for a lifetime. There’s a desperation in looking for the missing pieces in the fading colours of the sunset. In the hungry chaos of noisy gulls, I try to collect my crowded thoughts into groups of words that might ease my chapped lips and pour my coffee in the morning. I string them into necklaces and charms made of sentences – poems of moonless Septembers and melancholy Sundays. That way I can at least look at tomorrow without shielding my eyes.

There is something about words strung together in a sensible philosophy. Its incomparable to have had times in your life that sharpens its blunt edges and cuts into parts of you, refreshes everything somehow, and becomes strange to look at. Like gawking at your reflection on the mirror plated wall of a hair salon, while the barber keeps trimming your hair in a really bad way but all you can do is investigate your face and strike your eyes with a gaze they obviously meet. Just to realize, that it’s all there what needs to be, what isn’t, will grow back with more original strands and fibres. There’s always a road to walk towards everywhere, and since ‘all roads lead to Rome’, why does anybody worry.

Please continue reading on Rachel’s site here
or on Watt’s site here

I truly hope you enjoyed their magnificent work.

A gentle reminder that my book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, will be available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

In a flash my mind shows me a thousand streets tormented by loneliness. These streets – once the grand wine-presses of human bodies and cars – are now haunted by sickness and eaten by desolation.

It’s spring. The ocean’s water is warm like a country bread. I can taste it. The crisp crust, the sweetness of grains and earth melt on my tongue.

I miss you and the chestnut tree from that pastel afternoon when we first kissed.

Why did I love you? Of course, you were handsome, but it wasn’t that. I loved you because you could not have been conquered by the tricks with which a woman conquers most men. Why would I even want a man that any women with lipstick and stilettos can have?

I am digressing, am I not?

It’s spring. The water is red. Under the light of its pearls, flowers open like fresh young lips.

I avert my mind from the memory of your arms which tries to drag me inside an abyss of naked love; a love blessed with the force of the mistral and the sensuality of linked fingers under the moonlight.

The earth and the waters are one.

Yet the pain is heavy and filled with fluids like the chest cavity of a dead animal hanging up-side down.

I can see your boat. It’s beautiful.

The world is sick.

If I say I love you will you tell me what I can do to heal it?

Please read my Spillwords Author of the Year (2019) interview here

My thanks again to Kevin Morris – a wonderful poet – for interviewing me. Please read Kevin’s interview with me here.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

Heaven and earth change places.
The core of the earth shines. Rays pierce waters, beamed from below, springing from the phosphorescent floor.
Dark corridors open in the walls.
I put my hand in the water.
My hand metamorphosizes into bright silver.
Noise. A nymph?! Oh, that pristine beauty which always dethrones Aphrodite’s pagan looks.
I don’t want to leave. This is the only place I’ve known where any remembrance of human neurosis dissipates like morning fog.
“Clara we can’t stay here. We need to leave.”
“Miguel, I am not leaving. You said everything for me.”
“Clara, they don’t sell the damn grotto. If they did, I’d buy it for you. We need to leave.”
“I am not leaving.”
The light from the water floats inside his eyes.
How beautiful.
How seductive.
Is he angry with me?

(excerpt from the manuscript Glass Lovers)

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, my poetry book, will be available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

@Gabriela Marie Milton