Fear of Death – poem by Gabriela Marie Milton #poetry

The following is a fragment from my poem Fear of Death published in my collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings (Vita Brevis Press, 2020).

ah, I forgot to tell you when I meet you in my dreams
Arabella still sells bracelets in the silver market
she asks me every time about you
while lizards run their greens into the nearby parkette
I lie and promise her you’ll come next time
to buy another bracelet and some juicy limes

now in the silence of long purple nights
the silver bracelets do not hurt my flesh at all
but every minute you are not with me
cuts yet another wound
into my soul

Gabriela Marie Milton
Pushcart Prize Nominee
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author
Books:
Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women (ed.), Experiments in Fiction, 2022.
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose, Vita Brevis Press, 2021.
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, Vita Brevis Press, 2020.

Samos, perhaps Crete – a poem from my book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Samos, perhaps Crete

on the barren shore
you play your mandolin
I conjugate “to leave” in the voice of trees
the air reverberates expressions of old gods
the space changes its mind
maybe it is Samos, perhaps it is just Crete
traces of death, glimpses of the future
your thoughts are cut in marble
scratches turn to yellow
delineations, conquerors of islands
the shore melts in the waters
your eyes tell prophesies
the time changes its mind
perhaps it was just Samos, maybe it was Crete
the dying mandolin, the smell of ripened olives
an unmade wooden bed
solemnity, delirium
the names of I,
You
We

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings was published by Vita Brevis Press in 2020. It is available on Amazon here.

Updates:

Please do not forget to visit MasticadoresUsa. I have so many beautiful pieces up. Subscribe and follow us.
At the end of the month I will announce the new project I am working on – a project that will hopefully feature numerous poets from our literary community. Please stay tuned for more news.

Thank you!

Gabriela Marie Milton
#1 Amazon Bestseller Author
Books:
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow :I Love Poems and Poetic Prose
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

I want my body burned on pyre
a Viking boat will take me far on the cold sea
I want to leave my grave goods for the poor
and take the pain which branded their souls
into a bursting aurora borealis fire
I want to feel the sobs of the North Pole.

I want to burn inside the rhythms of the flamenco
flame in the dancers’ passion in the streets of old Córdoba
I want to entertain rich masters for a piece of bread
inside the silent cries of those who are misunderstood
I want the desperation of the dancers dressed in red

and you, the one who always claimed to know
what powers lie inside the jungle of my soul
you’ll fade into your own acoustic lamentations
the fated day when I, the queen of sufferers, proclaim
that in the sanctity of the mandala
I want to disappear without a name

Included in my book: Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings featured in San Francisco Book Review and Manhattan Book Review.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

Motto
I get drunk on love, charity, and passion. These are my professions.

I walk into the three days we spent together.

On the first day, a nude silence wraps around my lips. Shortly after I can hear the noise of wine poured into glasses.
The hour to get drunk on love has come.
I touch your skin and another you is born.
Birds invade the sky.
A banquet of candles floods the streets.
A white thread ties my blood vessels at the exact moment when a religious procession walks by.

On the second day, drunk on charity, my sights descend upon the earth.
The dirty hands of the woman who owns wells touch my skin.
I hear your voice.
I will not counsel her or belittle her desires.
All she will do is sell her fake dreams in the corner of an empty street for her entire life.
I forbid you.
By punishing her you would have ruined the very thing you set out to safeguard: our love.

On the third day, stars melt in our palms like soft grapes in winepresses.
The intimations of you and I, with their smell and softness of grass and late autumn roses, invade the room.
A convulsive joy impregnates your eyes.
Words have no pigments and no form. Their register sinks in gravity, shiny coil by shiny coil, musical key by musical key, sleepy touch by sleepy touch.
The perfection of the afternoon’s poplars blesses the air.
Possessed by passions, under the wing of a bird, we died three days ago.

My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here .
Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.
image: Sandratsky Dmitriy; Shutterstock; [link]

@Gabriela Marie Milton

You, evening of ours, how beautifully your lips tasted; stars in your unbraided hair spread over still waters like lily pads; rosy skin like the flesh of a pink grapefruit freshly open.

I still can breathe in your aromas of cherry flavored cigars and sleepless expectations.

Exiled under this oak tree…

Please continue reading here.

My poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings is available on Amazon here .
Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review
Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.

Thank you.
Love.
Gabriela.

image: Anna Ismagilova; Shutterstock; [link]

@Gabriela Marie Milton

My Dear Readers,

Below please find one of my new poems entitled Yellow, and a new review of my poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings. The laudatory content and the language used by the reviewer – whom I do not know – made a big impression on me.

Yellow

A red sky sews our hearts together.
The moon threads the needle.
She pricks her finger.
A yellow tear falls on my cheek.

Review

[In Passions] each poem unfolds different scenery with its very own landscape and emotions. It offers a full repertoire of sensations to explore with all the human senses. The reader will be able to smell, touch, see, taste, and hear everything that the poem narrates, transforming the reading into a unique experience. “Those roses which die in the winter/played the piano last night/a whirlpool of notes and of poems/inscribed on a wall painted in blue” (p.26) Reading these lines, it feels as if you were immersed on them, surrounded by those roses and the whirlpool of notes and poems. Closer to the end of the book you have the Prose Poems and Flash Fiction. These are short stories written in poetic prose, which is a hybrid genre of writing that mixes the attributes and structures of both prose and poetry, meaning you can find short stories divided into brief paragraphs or separated into lines on the page, which is the process known as lineation, used when writing poetry. The stories narrated in these sections address issues like the strength of character, loneliness, obsession, love, family, and every little thing that comes with human relationships. It is exceptionally and beautifully written and it completely captivates the reader and makes him feel the same way the poet does….

The writer of this book uses symbolism, alliteration, and other figures of speech such as metaphor, metonymy or simile brilliantly and intellectually. She creates a complex yet excellent layering of meanings, forming connections between the verses that were not previously perceived, and it also establishes a resonance or even similarity between images that may seem disparate when you first read them. It is a wonderful book to read if you are interested in a kind of poetry with universal meaning and value….

You can read the entire review here.

You can order Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings on Amazon here .

Passions featured in San Francisco Book Review

Passions featured in Manhattan Book Review.

Thank you
Love.
Gabriela

image: agsandrew; Shutterstock; [link]

@Gabriela Marie Milton

We desperately want to love, to possess each other, caught in a perpetual rush to justify our existence.
Yet there is no love that can fully satisfy us. The passions of the flesh get exhausted in bed. What is left is exhausted by our imagination.

Excerpt from my book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings [on Amazon here].

My Dear Friends,
Thank you to everyone who reads my work. Your support means the world to me. Below please find the review of my book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, in San Francisco Book Review.

“The series transports us on a journey of love as much as it delivers us a thematically diverse set of emotions. This is a superb collection.”
Bobbie Peyton

Please read the entire review here.

Thank you.
Love.
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

image: Liliya Kulianionak; Shutterstock; [link]

The forgetfulness of summer, a poem from my poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings [available on Amazon here]

On my left mountains of passion lost in lunar light.
On my right poetry.
An African violet beats her eyelashes.
Spanish moss lingers on the waters of the Bayou.
The smell of fresh cocoa penetrates my nostrils.
Old wounds crawl on my skin; columns of ants searching for honeydew on a tropical tree.
The forgetfulness of summer.
The silence of a blue lagoon.
You.

and another review of my book posted on an online forum on May 17th.

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings was one of the most beautiful and well written collection of poems I have ever read. Each word was so perfect and beautiful, and the prose were wonderful. With each installment of the prose it added puzzle pieces to a stunning love story with what looks to be a dramatic love triangle between friends….
Please read the entire review here

@Gabriela Marie Milton

image: Liliya Kulianionak; Shuterstock; [link]

The water bucket was brought by a woman.
She left.
Her child needed to be fed.
Sands.
The time comes from nowhere and goes nowhere.
Between my thirst and this bucket of water,
Between the consciousness of man and that of the stars,
Matter passes from blue to gold.
Sahara
Tonight
Your love gives way to his.

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

@Gabriela Marie Milton

image: Liliya Kulianionak; Shutterstock; [link]

in this pink summer of Jaipur
dressed in silk and in monsoonal dances
choked by smoke
forgotten by lovers
the nuances in which you speak my name sound hollow
and the little girl
who has only a grain of rice
continue reading here

Thank you again to everyone who bought my book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, available on Amazon here. The book has been a bestseller under Poetry About Love for quite a while including yesterday and the day before yesterday.

The following is another review, one among many, done on an online book club by another reviewer whom I do not know.

Excerpt:

“This is a mesmerizing collections of poems, ranging from love poems and writings in form of prose poems. This book brings back old memories, it re-ignites the long gone fire of love within the reader. It has an amazing effect on the reader as one reads the poems, one by one….With an excellent lovely language and lavish imagination, Gabriela ignites a fantastic mind full of emotions….I rate this book 4 out 4 stars. It makes me want to write poems. It is an inspiration, an entertainment and a lively way of educating and reigniting your fire of love. I quote a line in one of the poems,” we desperately want to love, to possess each other, caught in a perpetual rush to justify our existence.” It really makes sense and will make sense till the end of time...”

Inspiring reviewers, people who I do not know, and people who I know, is an honor.

You can read the entire review here.

Thank you.
Love.
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton