Each month Visual Verse posts an image an invites writers to send their thoughts inspired by it. I wrote this poem inspired by the image for this month (the one above). My poem can be found on page 94 in the Visual Verse Anthology, Vol.9, Chapter 6.
Dust and mud cover cold fingers,
Forging symbols,
That create a civilization of which all of us are victims.
The waters turn red,
From the blood of those trying to escape the bondage of chains,
But how can they fight themselves free,
When the other side of the swim means drowning?
I am here to speak to the ones that still have a soul:
Be strong,
They cannot seal the horizon,
We will all be what we’re destined.
I no longer tremble; I no longer fear.
I am no one, and I am everyone.
Together we swell the numbers of those bearing the burdens,
And they no longer crush us.
Out of the spirit of love,
We burn incense to clear away the hate,
And manage to escape it.
What now it’s red will turn into spring.
There will be flowers,
A landscape ennobled by the ones who hoped,
By those who ceaselessly believed….
© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Hello everyone,
I just want to share with you a little presentation I did for our school district, in which I talk to high school students about what is it like working in academia and what are the challenges and the rewards of being a writer.
You can find the recording here:
When asked about how hard it was to sculpt his masterpiece David, Michelangelo, the famous renaissance sculptor said, “You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David.” He believed that each block of material had a sculpture divinely embedded within. I believe that so are we, people, we just have to find our passion, our calling. Mine is writing, researching, and teaching. If you would like to hear what it entails to pursue an academic career or be a professional writer, come learn from the story I will share with you.
Presenter Biography
Andrada Costoiu is a mom, an academic, and a writer.
Before she became an academic, she worked for the Romanian Foreign Trade Center and was involved in the privatization process that took place in Romania right after the Romanian Revolution. She is currently a Tobis Fellow at the Center of Scientific Learning of Ethics and Morality, Irvine, and an Associate Director of the Summer Mentoring Program at the UCI Ethics Center. She is also a nationally published author in her birth country, Romania. Her first novel “Under the Iron Curtain” was published in July 2021 by Niculescu Publishing House, Bucharest.
CTE Industry Sector/s: Academics/Literacy
by Andrada Costoiu
Both my parents are cancer survivors. This month people come together to honor cancer survivors and raise awareness about reducing cancer risk. This is me, walking for my parents.
Inspired by someone dear to me.
We doubt everything,
Except you.
We can’t deny you even if we wish,
Your work is written in blood.
You inspire me.
You bring us great spiritual transfiguration,
You bring us love, desire,
You bring us life.
You’re shaking, spinning and trembling with giddy generations.
You define the past with its theories and progress,
And the future with its visions and its dreams.
Time: the collector of debt,
Now and then,
From me, from you, from all of us.
*******
Forget the petty,
Focus on life,
Focus on you.
The history of you matters,
Even if it’s ordinary,
Even if it’s chaos or anarchy.
You add to US,
Even in the hours of your unconscious sleep.
© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
It’s Mother’s Day here in the US.
I started the day with a walk on the beach, which is something that I always try to do when I have time. It is a beautiful cloudy day here, a bit unusual for Southern California where is always sunny. But the clouds will disappear, they always go, without leaving us a drop of rain….
But the weather is not what I want to write about in this post. I want to say a few things about life, as I thought about it on my walk.
The path to go down to the beach is always steep. There are so many ways to get down, you can either take stairs or go down on different paths, some paved and some are just dirt paths.
But whichever way you go, you’ll always start at the top, and from there the views are incredible.
I took some stairs and while I was going down, I did what I always do: scan the beach, look for dolphins and whales. I haven’t seen any whales in 2 years, and I have only seen dolphins 5 times this year – but I still look for them every time!
There were no dolphins today either, but there were more people than usual.
Out of all these……a group of people caught my eye.
They were facing the ocean, and when I got closer, I realized it was a mother (elderly – with white hair). She was on a wheelchair and on each side, there were 2 adults, a man and a woman (I think her children). This almost brought me to tears. I wondered what was her story, what were their stories? I passed them thinking how wonderful for them to build memories like this. I also felt a bit of sorrow, thinking how quickly time passes…and with it, our life.
Then there was a younger mom, she might have been in her late 50’s. It looked like she was having a picnic with her 3 kids, teenagers all. When I was walking towards them, she started smiling, I knew she couldn’t possibly smile at me like that, so I looked back. Guess who was coming with a bouquet of orange rosses? Her teenage daughter…..
What a wonderful day she will have!
I guess what I am trying to say with these little scenes of life, on a Sunday morning, on a beach in California is that we all have our life stories. We all have a story!
For some the story is just beginning, for others it nears the end. Whatever the end means! Maybe there is no real end and is just transformation.….
But we each have a story, here, now, our own story to build, to cherish and to live….. So let’s do that!
I want to recognize one more thing.
Life is not the same for everybody, some people have it easy, some others have it hard (I pray for the people in India right now). Some people battle depression. To you, the ones going through rough patches I want to say this- you are not alone. But when you’re feeling down, remember that somebody brought you here on this earth, so please stay for them if not for you. Stumble, but please, no matter how hard it is, keep moving forward. To those feeling like quitting, don’t. Play Scarlet O’Hara instead. “Tomorrow is another day!” There is light at the end of the tunnel…..
To all, young, old, mothers or not, happy day to you…..happy day to life……
Weathering storms by hiding in houses,
Or deep inside yourself….
You’re caught in the game of making and unmaking.
Your human heart,
God’s open wound,
Is master of dramatic effects, both candid and frightful….
Blink….
Every day you save a part of yourself,
From the refined culture of forms and frames,
In which this world is trying to shape you or judge you by….
That’s good!
You’re fire and not shape!
You have wings and these don’t bow,
Instead, they make you fly,
Away from the sclerotic narratives that want you down below.
Smile….
Out of the shadow of the abstract man or woman,
It’s you,
Bursting out the volcano of your being,
Poisoning the whole world with an eruption of your dreams.
© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Photo by Michael Easterling, for Visual Verse .
I have written this poem for Visual Verse Anthology of Art and Words, it is published on page 24, you can read their current issue if you click here: Visual Verse Anthology of Art and Words. The poem is based on the picture above and represents what I saw when I looked at it.
The antithesis of obliviousness
By Andrada Costoiu
Peeking through the gates of time and space,
I seek escape from the place I am stuck.
I do not belong to this sentimental ecosystem of hollow chests,
With people that smile to convince their bodies that are happy.
In the place where no one cares,
I water the tree of love,
Pluck its leaves and send them away
To the ones who play the same game.
We connect,
If there is a wind, there is a way.
They say that romantics make the most unreliable spies,
But this time I made it.
The whole in the fence is the path,
Not slow, but fast,
I bid goodbye to the place that sings everyday happy birthday to the death of souls.
I feel like a citizen of Hades blinded by the sun.
I stumble,
The heart is a small muscle with a tremendous strength,
It got me here, across the fence, back to the place where it all started.
I am an unbound soul smitten with the eternal light,
I sync with the others, across the flying leaves,
Maybe one day we’ll break the fences of all mundane places,
And save the ones that shrug and fade into the dark.
© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Blue,
A stare of unparalleled depth,
Whispering thoughts and sending desires.
A stare that has these built-in effects,
That shake you and churn you.
Audacity on the fly,
Coming from an absolute beginner
That had just arrived.
This is the place where no one cares,
A world filled not with willful ignorance
But with colorless
Blind eyes.
Blue,
You jam up the system,
Clog up the pipes through which indifference was flowing…
You make me feel.
That’s all it takes,
One……to be different
To change the place where no one cares.
At a first read, you’d think this is a poem about love. It is, but not only…..
I’m not going to say anything, but try to think about it from your own lens, your own feelings….and your own world.
© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
This is a poem inspired by my work with war refugees. You can read it at Spillwords Press by clicking on the following link:
Undocumented,by Andrada Costoiu, Spillwords Press
Undocumented
By Andrada Costoiu
The sun above is scorching the playground,
The child burns his fingers on the only swing,
From outside the walls the eyes are watching,
His every move, his everything.
The camp keeps other people that fled from war- thorn place,
The snipers are now far, but other jailors rule this space.
A sad national symbol that flies above the ground,
Had stamped undocumented the boy’s and other souls
And locked them up because they made it,
While buried free the souls that drowned.
Pushing his legs the child is swinging higher in the sun,
Oblivious to man-made rules that shouldn’t,
Build cages for the lives of people like him,
Or for the lives of anyone.
Perhaps one day the current faith in borders,
Will dissipate just like the air under his swing,
Leaving the truth, good morals, justice and good conscience,
To document belonging to a society where fair will be the king.
© Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020- . Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Andrada Costoiu and a-passion4life.com, 2020 with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
My new poetry book “Love poems: insights into the complicated mystery of love” is available on Amazon. You can get it here. Please write a review if you get around it. I would really appreciate it.
Andrada Costoiu 