V. Ulea has a Ph.D. in Russian literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches courses dealing with systems thinking and predispositioning theory based on chess, literature and film. She is a scholar, a writer, and a filmmaker.
V. Ulea is her penname.


Time and Space

Feelings in humans
Are like time in space:
The former moves
While the latter stays.

Time is forever.
Space doesn’t live that long –
It requires updates.

Though imprescriptible,
Time is still wrong
For space.

Space is suicidal. It tends to an end.
Time has no goal –
Like this evening that no one knows how to spend,
Or the clock on the wall.

Time never stops – it moves ahead.
Space loses that race.

Time never turns backward
Unlike your head,
And is aimed at space.

Space wants stability, tries to be fixed.
It works on the absolute.

Time is unsteady. It constantly leaks
Through space, which it tends to pollute.

Their clash is their factor,
Their meaning, their cutting edge –
Like “before” comes with “after”
Or “forever” with the mourning for change.

They are far from agreement.
In them we face
Our weird design
That makes us dream and
Suffer like space
From acting like time.


The Ocean


Whether you sleep
Or just rest with your eyes closed –
It’s there, you can hear its tides.
It expands through your consciousness, it talks
In a language that never dies,
But only augments versions of the told.
There is always you and you
Between the ocean and the rest of the world
Whose different points of view
Created God. And He still expands.
The more you think of it,
the more you feel alone –
A mollusk given a chance,
One in a million.
Your life has a purpose, your life has an end.
Life of the ocean is purposeless and endless.
Close your eyes to embark from your land
For the constant tides of the changeable vagueness.
Close your eyes to ride your boat,
Balancing on the waves of notions
Like a homeless astronaut
In the cosmic ocean.



* * *
Now autumn comes to earth from worlds unknown
Where pensive planets float above the trees,
Land on their branches, turning into leaves,
And dance with winds of life until they’re blown.
… A man walks slowly to his abode.
His wife is waiting there for him, and children
Are quiet on the walls of empty rooms.
Their shadows grow, and rise to scattered moons,
And reach the worlds unknown, but still linger…
The man walks heavily. The fallen leaves
Crack like seashells. He picks one up and listens
To tides of cosmos flowing to his brain.
What does he think about? No one knows.
And even he who quickly moves away
Thinks in bewilderment: "But what was it all about?"


* * *
Cosmos leaks through the heart of the skies.
A fuss has abated. The soul is ready to listen
To the foreign language of stars,
Whose distant wisdom
Flashes signals, unable to reach ears
Unequipped for higher frequencies.
The kitchen window fears
The view of eternity with celestial species –

All that happens in open space
Has no relation to daily order.
The moon has looked through the window, faced
All discrepancies, and rolled forward.

Man yawned, blessing the end of the day,
Muttered his usual “O, Lord!”,
Regretting that above those who pray,

There was no one in the entire world.

From There

In memory of Carrie Drake, the editor
of Mind Matters Review,
my dear friend


So, I’ve departed… Covered with the sail,
I embarked on my journey along the still waters.
Everything we thought, we dreamed, we said
Followed me as an echo of our dying-out voices.
It’s too spacious here, too serene, too silent,
And the smell of ether is mixed with iodine.
Does the ocean smell so on this side of the planet?
You will never know that: it’s for those who die.
You should not disturb me on my way to something
Which you can’t imagine, which I can’t describe…
You can only watch me sailing through the sunset
And accept my changes on the other side.


Meditation

Another evening, another finished-up day.
The clock-face ponders
On the expansion of π.
How much time has already passed away?
How many grammatical tenses
Have passed by?
The room is empty with things
And full with thoughts.
The habit to write
Aches in my right hand.
Do you think it’s easy?
Each letter inside me has fought
For the freedom of speech,
For the freedom “to be” – to the end.
And I cannot deny them,
I cannot pretend that you’re gone
If I still talk to you through these letters
Against common sense,
For the verbal world has been superior
To the physical one
And it changes the past
To the present and future tense.
And it changes the grammar of nature, of death and life,
Makes the physical world its pupil who needs to learn.
So I start with the word,
Separating darkness from light
And the day of your death from the day
When you are to be born.


To my beloved husband

Look at the variety of forms in the cosmic world!
Whoever was responsible for such ingenuity,
Sent a message
That the meaning of life was to create a manifold,
While the meaning of love was to create beauty.
So we hover in the infinity – two creators,
Far from the common sense imposed by gravity
On plants and creatures that envy us
For the flights we inherited from the Almighty.