QUICKSILVER
I am lost to passing vessels
Flashing by in metal lustre vapourising air
And turning time to gelatinous goop
Inside which the moon and sun grow meaningless
Shipped and parked cross sea and sky
Solace solely from hairbreadth glimpses
Of they who stay, seated, sedentary
As I gulp a half measure of recycled air
A ghostly man sliced across time zones
Where am I? Can you see me?
Can you read the visage of a voyager, just a glimpse?
Or do you fear the modern quicksilver spirits?
There is seldom rest for the constant traveller
Whose atoms upon atoms storm the x axis
Unburdened by gravity, defiant of light,
And shielded, spoiled, from all natural enemies
Still, I beseech, freedom is found
In the crossing of clockwork
That offers an observant eye the opportunity
To cast aside calendars and manmade mechanics
ISTANBUL
The cat is damn tired of bagged crisps –
And nuzzles my sandal before realising I have no scraps
Then, it scuppers up the city’s hill
To search for the greater donors than I
How about the wheelchair bound man on the Byzantine Wall?
His suit and fez and potbelly, so rich!
If cats could swim, the Caspian Sea is Eden –
I could dive off the pier myself into perfect water,
Seashore of my lineage, port of my people
My Turkish blood is but a drop yet
I am home, docked, watched over by minarets
Coddled by the Caspian breeze and salty sea –
There goes a woman, wheelchair bound too, on the wall,
My prosthetic perhaps not so far behind.
City of smells, clear my passages!
And offer me yours, labyrinthine, Ottoman,
Under this newly found stray investigating a coffee cup –
He mewls and joins his alley cat posse in a soulful strut,
Through bricks of empire and domes of holy stars
Descended from mangy travellers just like me.
CERBERE
An itinerary error has bumped me into France
And nudged me to the breakwater sunset of Cerbere, Cerbere,
South of France’s secret –
Two open eat ins and one cafe for coffee leaves me
Stripped, stranded, silent and sleepy
With nothing to do save for eying the ocean rhythm
That so effortlessly disarms me here
And for once in my loop-de-loop rat-a-tat life
Tames my traveling mind with only a quarter klick cove,
A garlicky plate of grilled razor clams,
White wine cold and French bread hot,
Middle aged madame wetting varicose veins
And two novel divers removing their boots.
As I am lured agog to a perfect purple dusk,
Where the concrete abstractions fend off the storm
Big funny blocks now my private port playhouse,
The panorama gifts me from dusk to dawn –
And my one-hour sleep in a twenty-four-hour transit
Cannot compete whatsoever with this magical mistake,
So briefly a respite in paradise pleasure
Of cigarette smoke and breakwater brine
For once, once more, do I love my love my faults,
This gift they have given so generously
Nor even is my failure in French such an issue
THE ICARAN SEA
That sliver of Turk blood in my bones?
Were they a seafarer like me?
Hopping and slicing through these glassy waves,
Picking up Palaeolithic pots and cretaceous conches?
It must be so – these waters have the memory of home,
Their cleanse does not wash grime but imbibes upon you ions
And brine, that cocoon the flesh within the wind
Avowing, ‘here, son, is the true self,
It matters not if we were children of Ankara
Or Cappadocian cliff dwellers or Istanbul alley cats –
But a grain of Turkic sand is in you.’
I turn my salted lids to not so distant Lesbos,
Anchor my knees into the surf like my forebearers’s vessels
Wave after wave after wave after wave in the baptismal scourge
Until the sun falls softly down towards the dark
And whispers out my conversation with the ancient grains.
NEAR RIUDARENES
Music in language and movement
Peak of the Pyrenees please bless me
And put in good word to that sweet Spanish sun
That yolks the wild boars from their pig-holes
And sends them scurrying out into the vista
I covet a Vespa by the casa’s clothesline
So I may join those feral hogs in snorting,
Sneezing, slobbering all across Spain
These lands make me a base creature
That feeds off of sun-kissed romance and ice cold beer,
Leaves me dumbstruck and agape and the pen in my hand
Can move no longer
Nor does my poet’s mind muster any meter
All that is left is to drink yellow-green,
Perch by the veranda with folded sharp wing
And wait my turn to eat and sleep
Though the Kylzkum Desert shrunk me and laughed,
These vast rolling hills hold a quieter hypnosis
Where the memory of ancient powers do not lord godly
But lullaby with strum and a stem
Its mystical fruits and fruitful music
Command you sleep among the foals
Rather than outrun them through Iberia
KYZYLKUM
I could just lie down and surrender to this endless, arid earth –
There is no harm in admitting your shame for thinking:
‘My lens is worthy! My eye understanding!’
Curiosity drove me to Uzbekistan –
And in Bukhara, my unrequited infatuation of a Muslim minaret,
Should have been clue enough to know my place (dog, ant)
Now, these siren mountains of Nuratau, cloaked in hellish haze,
By a choking Martian sun that draws me closer to my doom.
I could just walk out of the car and disappear into the Kyzylkum,
Beg forgiveness and offer my body as recompense:
Forgive me, Uzbek, for daring to look at a god
Who turned my head back down towards my knees!
For scuttling past this prehistoric plot with waifish gaiety!
For chasing such modern trivialities when the desert lords over all!
I could just weep at these insignificances of my life,
To which Nuratau thinks nothing as the red light dies
And it is time to press onward, humbled and humiliated.
GIBRALTAR
There in Tarifa I got on the great ship
To spirit me dreamily to the Port of Tangier
Leaving naught but a crash of massive seafood
And, an old stone Christ draped in a dusk
When strokes of orange darkened violet
Tangier twinkled towards the sea
Igniting stars to light the hurtling world
As Spain was left behind and faded
For one precious eon I was eaten in the crux
A teardrop plinked between two oceans
A fish adrift amongst two shores
A soul outside of all creation
CLIFF TIDE
Do not weep should I choose to sit upon this cliff base indefinitely
Even as the tide grows high and makes me a barnacle
For the clear glass sea anoints my feet
with every petty surf and sea breeze,
neither sting nor scorch,
Is lover’s hand with every touching my hair
Know that a slow, starving thirsty rot would
Come in portions of peace
I could sit atop my foam kissed throne without craving
Sustenance nor senses
Other than the ocean wind and briny blanket
Or the song of gulls and white noise of waves
Soon these atrophied limbs may become metamorphic
And if I am lucky, a haven for Neptune’s refuse –
The cockles, clams, amoeba, crab legs, urchins
May make a home on this newly crowned king
So I beg whatever deities of mutation
Take my blood and stew it saltwater
Pluck my eyes and grant me anemone
Graft me with sea rock skin
Let loose whatever acts you wish in humble order
In exchange for my material surrender
Preludes to remain upon this rock of Iberia
Rather than huff and shrug, hop and swim,
Back to roads of manmade make and misery
Peter Carellini is a filmmaker, photographer, actor and writer based in NYC. His photography and poems, short stories, and essays have been published in over a dozen publications including, Travel + Leisure, Bruxelles Art Vue, Kelp Journal, and Mythos Magazine. He is currently a 2026 Pushcart Prize nominee for his poetry. His short play, Vermin, debuted in the New York Theater Festival in December 2025 as an official selection in their Winterfest lineup. He was also a resident filmmaker at the Can Silvestre Art Residency.
