Mitko Gogov is entrepreneur & conceptual artist, published poet & short stories writer born 1983 in Skopje, Macedonia. Youth worker and civil activist, blogger … open for communication. #culture #art #media
He writes poetry, short stories, essays and journalism. He writes haiku, senriu, renga which he publishes occasionally in the micro blogosphere twitter, but once published in London by Yoko Ono as well. His work so far has been present and translated in several anthologies, collections and journals for literature and art in India, Pakistan, Philippines, USA, Russia, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Check Republic, Germany, Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria … He’s current with his first collection “Ice Water” published 2011 in Serbia, and in 2014 issued in Macedonia, in the edition “Fires” for the publishing house “Antolog”, supported by the Ministry of culture.
As conceptual artist with several exhibitions, installations, performances, scenery, short movies and multimedia projects he participated in few international group exhibitions and projects in Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, France, Norway and Italy.
President of the Association for cultural development and protection of cultural heritage “Kontext – Strumica” and organizer of the international movement and festival “100 Thousand poets for change” in Macedonia, Strumica. CEO & founder of the internet portal strumicaonline.net and one of the editors at the ezine for culture and literature reper.net.mk. He organize many other cultural and art events, collaborating with youth, art, film and theater festivals.
As youth trainer provides different creativity workshops as: forum theater, multimedia, design, stick art, street art, graffiti, use of organic and recycled materials in contemporary art, handmade and social aspects as PEER & non-formal education, EVS, youth participation etc..
Poetry – Mitko GOGOV
Whetted Paths
(since my feet will not walk on anything else)
I look for you like a needle in a haystack
Like an iced plane
On a melting island
In which I could
Put a polar bear
So that it feels a bit
Safer
I look for you like I would a mirror reflection
Hiding my age
Like a bicycle hidden in the attic
In order to ignore my youth,
I look for you like I would the knife
Of the neighbor who slaughtered our footballs,
Or like the net, the fish trap, the sack
We went fishing with
Along the riverhalf-dried up
I look for you like for a Manila hemp thread
Torn off the kite
That would fly off in the endless blue
We would patiently go and pick it up
So that we could try
Anew
I look for you like I would my secret crush
From the days of childhood folly
Or like sandpaper
To sand off the beer bottle caps
So they’d slide down the tarmac
When we played
A game of Paths
And I know you are lost on a path
Searching for something
And you’d turn round
And speak my name
Like you would a pledge,or the ancestors’ forgotten shadow
As proof that my ludens exists
To demonstrate there is
No pool we haven’t leaped over
That hasn’t tried to do us harm
And there is no man that has scared off
Our presence
There is no child unborn wanting to break
Our unframed family
Mirror
– of course seven years of bad luck
Will befall on us,
If not a lifetime…
We are human,
That’s why we’ve fallen
Here.
A Recycled Trimester, a Sign of Relief
(days in which we collide, but in which, as frames from the wrong movie, we get alienated, we pass one another)
We throw away time like it bears no meaning
We let the rain wash off
Approximate sins daily as we go on
With our game – you started it!
These nights get their warmth from the last of the fires
Vernal paganism and neoplastic nerves
– old journals, the scent of unheard tales
Under the street pines you can hear the wind rustling,
You’d want the drain the marrow out of air’s ribs
Our interest is exclusive,
Our attention – shocking
The desire to change something – Hurry up!
We throw hope in the maze of despair
Then squeal like white mice stuck in bitterness
Like most beautiful animals do, we beg to have our fur stripped
All while feeling the flaying an inch at a time
The next day we wake up
With coffee consoling us
That at the bottom of the mug
Someone’s put poison
To make our day shorter
And wherever we may go, we’ll be
Welcomed with cake
We invest in the wrong sighs,
We are all a ‘but’ in the wrong theater.
We lose what little we have
From what we’re not enough
To purchase more often:
Time, patience, gazes, warmth and smiles
Constant (re)appearing
Heavenly, otherworldly delights
A trap is every attempt to close the door
You’ve never opened before
We’re miniscule souls, specks of dust lost in the cosmos
Dreaming of the grand gardeners’ magical gardens
Yet we never seem to plow in our own
We’re nowhere near producing food
Yet we’re considering flowers
We miss the busses
And pay through the nose for taxis
We forget our phones on the seats
And let our dreams be eaten
And in the end we get fevers
And inner cold sores of the soul
And the odd anthill in our weakness
Which,
Again pollutes our joy.
The Forgotten Three-Legged Chair We Should All Sit On
Proud of the past
Unstable at present
We tremble in front of the future
We cut down trees knowing
You cannot build a terrain for football
On a hill on which you can’t
See the goals posts
We run uphill with rocks in our pockets
Doors and windows creak no more
Yet behind them the same snobs
Get rid of us like last year’s preserves
They won’t even smell us
They scatter us around the storehouse
As destroyed, invalid evidence.
What happened to true values?
Everyone is (being) in charge of
The Lost Sane Attitudes Department lately.
One day I’ll collect all the flags flying in vain
And put them in the washer
As they all need cleaning – together
Using the same detergent and fabric softener
As that should make the new freedom!
We fly around life like plastic bags in the wind
In a feature-length silent film. Those who recognize this,
Do so even more.
The grand will depart, the young souls arrive
– except those washed up ashore
Will they be grand or swallowed by fevers?
In an abundance of roughness, dumbness, insignificance,
Everyone’s in pursuit of a place to
Scream out all that bothers them.
We dream to be cherries, yet
We’re worms hidden within
A mandala of sand left in the wind is what we are
Until someone steps breathing
– and then we continue with self-destruction.
Lobotomy of a Lament
Let all cats under the ledges
Speak in their baby talk
Nonsensical nonsense
In the eyes of elders,
Let minimalism be created
By the shadow of the day
– our stolen footballs are forever gutted
Animals do have feelings
But they don’t have words to tell us that
A silent echo has burst.
We drown in the sink of imagination
We dream
A bathtub is not one until your
Electric whisper
Falls into it
Yet the century?!
The century crosses the road on red light
Heavily captured
Enclosed
Frightened as on the face of a doe
With her slow and steady pace
With no joy
Or caress
With no blades of grass
Touching, a trickle forgotten in her eyes
With a country that’s twisted and a dance that’s stopped
With a noble soul,
Yet desert-like
In chains,
Heavy chains
That ever so slowly
Collapse
Their prattle
The Forgotten Retort between Two Gazes
And so we role-play clockmaker and time
Both with hammers aimed at mutiny’s head
And a clock is a bigger bastard than both man and everlasting sun
As we forget burnt words and human dust
Ugly tongues and nasty minds
They drag the lent of the soul
The inner voice doesn’t (ever) go out,
Like angels’ dander or hell’s gasoline it just booms
Skip the small lightning bolts
Twist the lowest mountains
The force of forever would, like a mother to her son,
Bind
And barely ever
Alienate
In the rood of our heads
Like snails
We hide our true home
Not realizing that the slime of our soul
Leaves traces of disquiet in our sleep
We keep the stars in our hands,
Why is it when we throw them
They strike like heavenly boulders?
Stones have learned to resound
Yet our dulled hearing needs to wake up!
Both fire and abyss alike
Are eternal
Just like our pensive, darling souls
Just like a shard in marbles, when our bell breaks
We are of piercing glass, yet
Troubled as the soul remembers
But knows not to reciprocate
We’re birds that have decided to build their own cage,
We sing of the freedom we’ve created
But the space in which we act is
Barely as large as our wingspan is
Be the river that desires to break through the cold
And the ice of the mountain whose home is winter
We all want to see the whole
We all want to be a part of someone’s whole
We want to add to the whole, bid for it,
Increase it, make it rich
Or
Cripple it without realizing
As we don’t grasp we’re nothing but cutouts
A squareon a Rubik’s cubepersevering, searching for its match
On the other side of the cube
We’re seemingly moving in a circle
Rolling all over the globe like a stolen bobbin of yarn
From grandma’s old chest.
We leave our people like
Forgotten church bells in our soul
Though we’d like their thoughts to echo
But you’d only hear the blood of your words
And angels pacing on the cobblestone road
Leaving without making a sound,
With a touch ingrained in us like a scar from child’s play
Like a mother’s hand holding a teaspoon of soup
Like a father’s lesson of how to chop kindling
Without losing a finger
We cut and we carve, but the truth can’t be carved,
Because, if we do, it will carve us back
And bury us six feet under
Even though we never brewed enough coffee
Even though we never leaped over enough bonfires
Even though we lied when we said that spirits came but we summoned witches
And the fairies choose our shadows as their mates
No, our shadows, like us, would rather hide in verses
And battle quietly for their hidden lives.
We’d rather be snow: white, clean, untarnished,
But you can’t keep snow in a jar, it won’t sit still,
Neither will love
Trapped, lonely, not shown, framed.
Love floats alone in a frame, like a cross-stitch
Of a woman spinning yarn as her wool is coming to an end.
Let’s make our minds ascent in a global fire
And resurrect the enchanted souls.
A forgotten retort between two gases
(therefore)
Please leave me
Leave my
Predicaments be
It’s not the time in which
The soil on its own and
By its own volition
Did turn over
And roll over
We all move,
Twist, roll over,
As we live we do not remember
Or notice,
While we’re dead
‘we do not eavesdrop
As others gossip about us’
And
Probably all spine issues are gone.
Leave the world be, darling,
It is not a part of you
Can’t you see in your naiveté, how,
Through your breath of lunacy they pass you by
They skip right over you
They won’t even cough anymore?
Leave the trams, darling,
In them fewer wishes are travelling these days
Towards you,
Inside you,
Next to you,
No more hands reaching out
No more raised voices
– we drown in our own outcry
We hope that hope as our last refuge
Will pay our debts
Will turn off the light
And in the end
Just like us all
Will leave
And go
To hell.
Translation from Macedonian language: Aleksandar Mitovski
ПОЕЗИЈА – МИТКО ГОГОВ (за препев)
.брусни патеки
(затоа што нозете по други не знаат да одат)
те барам во сеното како игла,
како мразна полјана
на леден остров кој се топи
на која можам
да поставам поларна мечка
да се чувствува барем уште малку
безбедно.
те барам како одраз во огледалото кое ја
крие мојата старост
како скриен велосипед на таванот
за да ја игнорирам
мојата младост,
те барам како ножот на
соседот кој ни ги дупчеше топките,
како мрежата од кошот
и сакот со кој ловевме риба
по реката која се суши
те барам како конец од манила
откинат од фортуната
што одлета во недоглед
а ние спокојно го собиравме
за да можеме повторно да пуштиме
нова
те барам како тајната симпатија
во лудоста на моето детство,
како брусна хартија со која
ги гланцавме пивските капачиња
да лизгаат полесно по асфалтот
кога игравме
патеки
и ти знам дека изгубена на патеката
бараш нешто
и секогаш би се свртела
да го изговориш моето име
како аманет и заборевена сенка на претците
како доказ дека мојот луденс постои,
да докажеш дека не постои
прескокнат вир кој се обидел да ни наштети
и дека нема човек кој ја преплашил
нашата сегашност
нема неродено дете кое сакало да го скрши
нашето неврамено фамилијарно
О.гледало.
– секако ќе не следи седум години несреќа,
ако не и цел живот..
луѓе сме,
затоа и сме паднати
Овде.
.рециклирано тримесечје. звук на олеснување.
[деновите во кои се судруваме, но како кадри од погрешни филмови
се оттуѓуваме, се одминуваме]
ги фрламе времињата како да немаат значење.
оставаме на дождот секојдневно да ги мие
паушалните гревови,а ние продолжуваме
да си играме –ти прв почна!
овие ноќи се топлат во последните огништа.
пролетен паганизам и неопластичните нерви,
– стари дневници и мирис на непознати приказни.
под уличните борови се слуша шушкањето на ветрот,
како од ребрата на воздухот да посакаш да ја извадиш
коскената срж.
заинтересираноста ни е екслузивна.
вниманието – шокантно.
желбата да промениме нешто – дај побрзај!
ги фрламе надежите во лавиринтот на очајот,
а потоа квичиме како бели глувци кои заглавиле во јадот.
како најубави животни плачеме да ни го откорнат крзното,
иако чувствуваме како ни ја дерат кожата – милиметар по милиметар.
се будиме утредента со кафето кое не теши дека најдоле во шолјата
некој ни подметнал отров, за денот да ни биде пократок,
а онаму каде што ќе заминеме да не пречекаат со торта.
:инвестираме во погрешни воздишки;
сите сме „но“ во погрешен театар!
губиме од она што и така малку го имаме,
од она за кое немаме доволно мудрост
често да го купуваме.
:време, трпение, погледи, топлини и насмевки;
константни п(р)ојавности
рајски, вонземски сладости.
замка е обидотда затвориш врата
која никогаш претходно не си ја отворил.
сите ние ситни души, прашинки изгубени во космосот.
сонуваме за волшебните градини на големите градинари,
но никако да си ја ископаме сопствената бразда.
далеку сме од тоа да произведуваме храна,
а веќе на цвеќе мислиме.
пропуштаме автобуси и
дупло поскапо плаќаме такси,
забораваме телефони под седиштата,
дозволуваме некој да ни ги изеде соништата.
на крај добиваме телесна температура,
внатрешен херпес на душата
и некоја мравја дупка во слабоста
која,
повторно некогаш ќе ни ја загади радоста.
_____________________________________________________________________
Заборавениот троножец на кој сите треба да седнеме
горди на минатото
нестабилни во сегашноста
се тресеме на иднината
сечеме дрвја иако знаеме
дека фудбалскиот терен не се гради на рид во кој
головите не се гледаат
трчаме по угорница со камења во џебовите
вратите и прозорците повеќе не крцкаат,
но позади нив истите снобови како расипана зимница
не фрлаат, не нѐ мирисаат,
нѐ расфрлаат во депото како уништени,
невалидни докази.
нели вистински вредности?
сите с(м)е директори на канцеларијата за
изгубени здраворазумни ставови.
еден ден ќе ги соберам сите знамиња кои залудно се веат
и ќе ги ставам во машина за перење.
на сите им треба перење и тоа – заедно.
со ист прашок за перење и ист омекнувач.
оти тоа би требало да биде новата слобода!
лебдиме во животот како пластично ќесе на ветрот
во долгометражен нем филм. оние кои не препознаваат,
уште повеќе.
големите луѓе си одат, мали срценца доаѓаат
– освен оние најдени на брегот.
ќе станат ли и тие големи или јанѕата ќе ги изеде?
во раскошот на грубоста, глупоста, ништожноста,
секој си бара место за да си извика
сѐ она што му тежи на душичката.
сакаме да бидеме цреши, а црви сме, скриени во нив.
мандала сме од песок оставена на бура,
сѐ додека некој не престане да дише
– ќе продолжиме да се уништуваме.
