Poems
Poetry
My poems emerge like fragments of light—brief, distilled, luminous. They rise from my inner voice, from listening inward to memory, emotion, fleeting thought, and the music of sound—the whisper of rhythm, the pulse of breath, echoes that stir the unseen.
Often confessional, they move in vivid imagery, shaped by my eye as both painter and observer of light. Placed beside visual art, they form a dialogue of word and image, yet each poem can stand alone, holding its own quiet radiance.
For me, poetry is essence: a momentary illumination, a quiet window into the inner landscape. From quiet moments of light to the pulse and friction of city streets, each poem offers its own illumination.
This collection moves through shifting landscapes of memory, city, and time. From luminous, painterly moments to raw intimacy, from urban chaos to quiet reflection, these poems trace cycles of perception, fracture, and release.
,
Light Land Looming
Land in limitless light
Looms level with heaven,
Rewards us with reason--
Sprawling and safe.
A mountain emerges,
Spoiling serenity.,
Pointed lines draw our spellbound
Eyes uphill
To a cold place where
The wind blows without logic,
Up and down the peak
In excessive screams.
We do not resist,
But are lifted willingly
Toward the summit--
And our nightmares
Hypnotized, we grasp the
Needing automatically,
Perceiving the peril
As our own.
c. 2009 Triada Samaras (revised 2025)
The Conundrum
The artist groped through the paint
trying to see
With her fingertips the things she could not say
The more she could see
The less she could say so
She spoke in whispers
Even to her secret self
Asking, where does the paint
Want to go?
The more she could say
The less she could see so
She stopped the brush
To catch her breath often
The paint drifted about the canvas
Like waves on a lazy boat
Lapping here
Landing there
Landing nowhere
In particular
The artist played
The game she learned long ago, pretending
Her brush was deaf
Her fingers mute
And the game of smiling
When it was not called for
She stopped the brush
To catch her breath often
The more she could say
The less she could see
Asking where does the paint
Want to be?
She spoke in whispers
Blaming paint
Even to her secret self.
c. 2007 Triada Samaras (revised 2025)
Luminous Pine
The sun rises
behind a towering pine
my home
my strength
my goddess
my courage
to rise above the rest
But I wonder
will she fall
and when
The sun ignites her body
highlights her spine
her limbs
the wind pressing
against her back
her trunk dissolving
into empty blue space
I sketched her once,
on my summer deck
her shadow stretching long
against the bones
of my house
Charcoal dust on my fingertips
I pressed her lips
I felt her shape
onto waiting paper
She can fall
like snowflakes
I heard
softly upon your page
Her towering height
resists capture
yet I refuse to shrink her
I need to see her
as she is
to learn her wisdom
There is so much in me
that is fragile
so much
I must outgrow
And still I wonder
will she fall
and when
I think she will tell me
But honestly
I think
she already did
c. Triada Samaras 2025
I heard a train
I heard a train today in the bathtub, and
The mold on the ceiling bloomed into a
purple flower garden
The paint chips, all the dancing people,
My job: Summon the poet.
I once saw clouds on the Jersey turnpike
Paint Swiss Alps over Lake Geneva
My job: Remember the fluffy pink vision and
Leave my love of dreaming alone.
In the tub I heard the Hudson River
Lie beneath me rushing and cleansing and
I prayed upon the Palisades
To cliffs westward and soaring
My job: Wander from the pain
Just long enough
To glimpse it by any means
Seize images
In its momentary absence.
Quick! Arrange dreams of gold dust,
In swirls around my sparkling mind
Wallow wade just long enough
To make a few words
Before taking the downward plunge again.
I am constitutionally incapable
Of sitting still
Very long
c. Triada Samaras 2013 (revised 2025)
Home
Home is hearth
Home is window
Home is doors
Home is walls
Home is skin
Home is sin
Home is talk
Home is silence
Home is sanctuary
Home is prison
Home is spirit
Home is space
Home is secret
Home is caution
Home is red flag
Home is darkness
Home is light
Home is love
Home is safe
Home is not
Home is refrigerator
Home is enclosure
Home is endearing
Home is entrapment
Home is form
Home is shape
Home is reflection
Home is deflection
Home is life
Home is dysfunction
Home is terror
Home is light
Home is cinnamon
Home is apples
Home is mold
Home is dust
Home is collected
Home is connected
Home is disarming
Home is alarming
Home is love
Home is war
Home is hope
Home is continent
Home is cake
Home is shouting
Home is money
Home is overrated
Home is underestimated
Home is total
Home is cigarettes
Home is the last puff
Home is the last word
c Triada Samaras 2015 (edited 2025)
By the Sink
I wish I could hug you by the sink,
where the broken window leaks cold air
upon your shoulders as you wash the dishes.
You pretend prettiness,
but you’re rusting more than ever
In the murky room near the exit
my ruminations turn inward
Outside the window, a flock of grey geese
disappears into the empty sky,
Later, in my soft sheets,
I long to hear a loving voice
emerge from your empty mouth.
c. Triada Samaras 2024
Broken
Recycled cans lie crumpled in the dust bin,
shading colors from a warm afternoon sun
that glides to another side of the house
passing faux gold poinsettias
sparkling with light rays
peeking through tiny holes,
surrounded by gold dust,
while they sleep on white windowsills.
The sun falls
onto a clock face ticking
toward a time that never comes,
vaguely recalling years one after another.
Round and round,
to the melancholy rhythm in my heart
and an empty pen trying
to write a love poem in my lap.
It starts:
The sun might miss your lies,
but, trust,
the sun, the house, the window-
do not--
ever mend my broken, piercing heart.
c Triada Samaras 2025
The Witness
Yes you did
Hit her.
I saw what I saw.
No she did not
Deserve it and,
Too bad you were bushed.
Though she was too boisterous
In the backseat,
Dead on your feet is
No excuse.
c. Triada Samaras 2009
Going Home
Follow the river of tears
the brook of your loneliness
to find home
Wander along the countryside
on your road
to smell a flower or two,
Speak often to yourself
ask the highways of your mind
about your fingers and toes
Follow the hairs on the back of your neck
to the braised images, sweet and sour
to the oven in your belly
c. Triada Samaras 2015
The Civic Association
The room read her while smirking
their eyes fixed upon her face
Heard hokum while she delayed
Studied the breakdown in her
Speech to find the truth missing
a chance to redeem itself
She read the room while sneering
Eyes blazed with honest fake facts
Lies spilled through her grinning teeth
Her body moved a little
less than a liar would shift
if she was not straightforward.
c. Triada Samaras 2012
For Patrick Daly, Principal
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Drip drop Drip drop
Rain and pain will never stop
Drip drop Drip drop
Pain and rain will always stop
High in the half-lit sky
the Maker opens Her wings
and the water flows down
Down it falls on tan, painted bricks
and on red, baked ones and
on sprawling graffiti
and torn-up sidewalks
On umbrellas old and withered
and on stolen cars
with gold, spindly hubcaps
and elevated rear-ends
pounding with rhythm,
On fading murals
and on the Spot
Headlights gleam
and make their way
through the dull shower
But the spot
is still a hallowed place
A silvery ghost or
an aura that marks the blot
Where the Principal, Patrick Daly,
died in vain
or in heroism
or simply in the gentle rain
The postwoman makes her way
across the spot
Children run and skip
through it
Baby strollers glide
over it
And dogs dive
on top of it
A tree is planted
on the spot
And all the water
from the vast and cloudy sky
Fills the hole in the earth
where the tree stands
with water and more pain
Up sprout weeds of all kinds
Those that strangle sidewalks
and those with purple flowers
and those that stink
and in the middle
Sprouts a single tulip
with lips so red
and a center so bright
that it glows in the rain
and lights up the sky
Blooming and standing so tall
in a sea of grey
'til a frolicking, foolish child
picks it for Mama
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Drip drop Drip drop
Rain and pain will never stop
Drip drop Drip drop
Rain and pain will always stop.
Patrick Daly, beloved school principal, P.S. 15 in Redhook, Brooklyn, was accidentally killed in 1992 by gunfire during a drug dispute at a housing complex, as he searched for one of his students who had been missing from school. I was assigned to work as an Artist in Residence at PS 15 after his death and subsequent departure of fully one third of all the teachers at the then traumatized site. I remained there for the next 7 years. TS
c. Triada Samaras 1996-1997 (revised 2025)
Snowstorm
Light flakes drift downward,
burying the past beneath new softness--
yesterday’s pain
in silence fades
Straight down, then sideways,
they soar,
catapulted by gusts,
before mounting the breeze
back to earth with its frozen secrets
Through my cold window,
steaming with outbreath,
I touch them in memory,
tingling on an outstretched tongue
Muscles exert in my mind,
though I stir not from the chair--
my eager eyes
try to capture a single flake in my cinematic view--
I cannot.
How deep down
might sorrow and regret burrow
into the ground
covered in cool white?
My heart is a blank, my fingers stiff,
from half-truths typed
in the noise before the snowstorm--
pain heavy in my limbs
Endless as the snow,
I trudge the deep white day in search of clues,
snowshoes crunching--
the world outdoors snores, pausing
But my fatigue
lingers too long.
c. Triada Samaras 2025
Pissing Air
Reds, yellows, smoky bits
of fumed land--
too few clouds landing in your mind.
No hideaways. No escape
from brick monotone,
stifling cry,
insect wings beating
concrete windshields.
Fading lines, red accents
call the blue lights
down the walls.
Nothingness of automobile
against pavement.
Evening rush—less than spectacular.
The way it’s pissing air,
waves hissing,
sound the rumble through tires--
another day drifting,
on tomorrow,
stuck in yesterday--
and the day before that.
c. Triada samaras 2016 (revised 2025)
Spiraling Down
My love for you falls down--
spiraling--
the drain--
words drifting away with tears,
descending deeply into a churning vessel
to anywhere but here,
of downward flight,
of permanent disposal--
Pop! You emerge from another drain,
charm and irresponsibility,
vacant steel eyes that will not meet mine.
But oh—how you sparkle and dance,
promise the sun for a brief moment,
Mediterranean rooftops,
children’s laughter,
dinner simmering--
garlic and tomato in the air.
The touch of your body--
so cold, so magnetic,
my imagination soars
over both of us, over the house,
like a drone seeing down--
everything in its frame
perfectly in place--
But inside,
nothing is.
c. Triada Samaras, 2025
The End of the Day
Luscious lines
curl across the sky
twisting
like ribbons of light
The canal’s waves
wobble toward sunset
A bridge
cradles patient travelers
its iron lace
aglow in fading light
Try to sketch the day
the hollow spaces
between smokestacks
and steel girders
and you will always fail
Time
is made of spaces
you can occupy
only one at a time
Try to seize the feel
of your tires
on the road’s sudden bumps
and you cannot
Try to stop
the red and blue lights
from piercing the dark
and you cannot
Try to stop
the car ahead
from tearing into concrete
and you cannot
Try to catch
a baby
plunging through an open window
and you cannot
And they pass
slipping
unheld
Time
is a series
of infinite spaces
sliding past
like echoes
moving always--
and always slowly
In the end
swifter than your grasp
gone--
dissolving
like light from the sky
c. Triada Samaras 2016 (revised 2025)
For Bob G/Activist (Gowanus)
All the things
that have no easy words
is what you left
All the rest
is what you left
All the real
and not the rest
is what was left
The thing is not the art
is what it meant
Too late to tell you now
The rest is gone
The rest
was what I had hoped
to tell you
about our need for rest...
c. Triada Samaras 2011 (edited 2025)
The Liars and Their Lips
What are the liars thinking
When they are moving their lips?
Do their words get jammed
Stuck on their salted roofs
Of the parked jaws,
Or does it get easier
To lob them ever?
Naturally, after a good match like
Mercury in a tennis ball lightning profile,
For your messenger to leave its tongue,
Your referee to signal
The passage of a cure time --
A sigh, maybe; you just need
To take another good deep breath,
A nap before your turn
To play again.
Let it out --
The lies, and all the rest,
Then try to teach your children
To distinguish
Between the white lines you made
Before the lies --
And - and all the rest
You said,
You never said.
c. Triada Samaras 2008 (revised 2025)
Light Land Looming
Land in limitless light
Looms level with heaven,
Rewards us with reason--
Sprawling and safe.
A mountain emerges,
Spoiling serenity.,
Pointed lines draw our spellbound
Eyes uphill
To a cold place where
The wind blows without logic,
Up and down the peak
In excessive screams.
We do not resist,
But are lifted willingly
Toward the summit--
And our nightmares
Hypnotized, we grasp the
Needing automatically,
Perceiving the peril
As our own.
c. 2009 Triada Samaras (revised 2025)
The Conundrum
The artist groped through the paint
trying to see
With her fingertips the things she could not say
The more she could see
The less she could say so
She spoke in whispers
Even to her secret self
Asking, where does the paint
Want to go?
The more she could say
The less she could see so
She stopped the brush
To catch her breath often
The paint drifted about the canvas
Like waves on a lazy boat
Lapping here
Landing there
Landing nowhere
In particular
The artist played
The game she learned long ago, pretending
Her brush was deaf
Her fingers mute
And the game of smiling
When it was not called for
She stopped the brush
To catch her breath often
The more she could say
The less she could see
Asking where does the paint
Want to be?
She spoke in whispers
Blaming paint
Even to her secret self.
c. 2007 Triada Samaras (revised 2025)
Luminous Pine
The sun rises
behind a towering pine
my home
my strength
my goddess
my courage
to rise above the rest
But I wonder
will she fall
and when
The sun ignites her body
highlights her spine
her limbs
the wind pressing
against her back
her trunk dissolving
into empty blue space
I sketched her once,
on my summer deck
her shadow stretching long
against the bones
of my house
Charcoal dust on my fingertips
I pressed her lips
I felt her shape
onto waiting paper
She can fall
like snowflakes
I heard
softly upon your page
Her towering height
resists capture
yet I refuse to shrink her
I need to see her
as she is
to learn her wisdom
There is so much in me
that is fragile
so much
I must outgrow
And still I wonder
will she fall
and when
I think she will tell me
But honestly
I think
she already did
c. Triada Samaras 2025
I heard a train
I heard a train today in the bathtub, and
The mold on the ceiling bloomed into a
purple flower garden
The paint chips, all the dancing people,
My job: Summon the poet.
I once saw clouds on the Jersey turnpike
Paint Swiss Alps over Lake Geneva
My job: Remember the fluffy pink vision and
Leave my love of dreaming alone.
In the tub I heard the Hudson River
Lie beneath me rushing and cleansing and
I prayed upon the Palisades
To cliffs westward and soaring
My job: Wander from the pain
Just long enough
To glimpse it by any means
Seize images
In its momentary absence.
Quick! Arrange dreams of gold dust,
In swirls around my sparkling mind
Wallow wade just long enough
To make a few words
Before taking the downward plunge again.
I am constitutionally incapable
Of sitting still
Very long
c. Triada Samaras 2013 (revised 2025)
Home
Home is hearth
Home is window
Home is doors
Home is walls
Home is skin
Home is sin
Home is talk
Home is silence
Home is sanctuary
Home is prison
Home is spirit
Home is space
Home is secret
Home is caution
Home is red flag
Home is darkness
Home is light
Home is love
Home is safe
Home is not
Home is refrigerator
Home is enclosure
Home is endearing
Home is entrapment
Home is form
Home is shape
Home is reflection
Home is deflection
Home is life
Home is dysfunction
Home is terror
Home is light
Home is cinnamon
Home is apples
Home is mold
Home is dust
Home is collected
Home is connected
Home is disarming
Home is alarming
Home is love
Home is war
Home is hope
Home is continent
Home is cake
Home is shouting
Home is money
Home is overrated
Home is underestimated
Home is total
Home is cigarettes
Home is the last puff
Home is the last word
c Triada Samaras 2015 (edited 2025)
By the Sink
I wish I could hug you by the sink,
where the broken window leaks cold air
upon your shoulders as you wash the dishes.
You pretend prettiness,
but you’re rusting more than ever
In the murky room near the exit
my ruminations turn inward
Outside the window, a flock of grey geese
disappears into the empty sky,
Later, in my soft sheets,
I long to hear a loving voice
emerge from your empty mouth.
c. Triada Samaras 2024
Broken
Recycled cans lie crumpled in the dust bin,
shading colors from a warm afternoon sun
that glides to another side of the house
passing faux gold poinsettias
sparkling with light rays
peeking through tiny holes,
surrounded by gold dust,
while they sleep on white windowsills.
The sun falls
onto a clock face ticking
toward a time that never comes,
vaguely recalling years one after another.
Round and round,
to the melancholy rhythm in my heart
and an empty pen trying
to write a love poem in my lap.
It starts:
The sun might miss your lies,
but, trust,
the sun, the house, the window-
do not--
ever mend my broken, piercing heart.
c Triada Samaras 2025
The Witness
Yes you did
Hit her.
I saw what I saw.
No she did not
Deserve it and,
Too bad you were bushed.
Though she was too boisterous
In the backseat,
Dead on your feet is
No excuse.
c. Triada Samaras 2009
Going Home
Follow the river of tears
the brook of your loneliness
to find home
Wander along the countryside
on your road
to smell a flower or two,
Speak often to yourself
ask the highways of your mind
about your fingers and toes
Follow the hairs on the back of your neck
to the braised images, sweet and sour
to the oven in your belly
c. Triada Samaras 2015
The Civic Association
The room read her while smirking
their eyes fixed upon her face
Heard hokum while she delayed
Studied the breakdown in her
Speech to find the truth missing
a chance to redeem itself
She read the room while sneering
Eyes blazed with honest fake facts
Lies spilled through her grinning teeth
Her body moved a little
less than a liar would shift
if she was not straightforward.
c. Triada Samaras 2012
For Patrick Daly, Principal
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Drip drop Drip drop
Rain and pain will never stop
Drip drop Drip drop
Pain and rain will always stop
High in the half-lit sky
the Maker opens Her wings
and the water flows down
Down it falls on tan, painted bricks
and on red, baked ones and
on sprawling graffiti
and torn-up sidewalks
On umbrellas old and withered
and on stolen cars
with gold, spindly hubcaps
and elevated rear-ends
pounding with rhythm,
On fading murals
and on the Spot
Headlights gleam
and make their way
through the dull shower
But the spot
is still a hallowed place
A silvery ghost or
an aura that marks the blot
Where the Principal, Patrick Daly,
died in vain
or in heroism
or simply in the gentle rain
The postwoman makes her way
across the spot
Children run and skip
through it
Baby strollers glide
over it
And dogs dive
on top of it
A tree is planted
on the spot
And all the water
from the vast and cloudy sky
Fills the hole in the earth
where the tree stands
with water and more pain
Up sprout weeds of all kinds
Those that strangle sidewalks
and those with purple flowers
and those that stink
and in the middle
Sprouts a single tulip
with lips so red
and a center so bright
that it glows in the rain
and lights up the sky
Blooming and standing so tall
in a sea of grey
'til a frolicking, foolish child
picks it for Mama
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Listen to the rain
Wash away the pain
Drip drop Drip drop
Rain and pain will never stop
Drip drop Drip drop
Rain and pain will always stop.
Patrick Daly, beloved school principal, P.S. 15 in Redhook, Brooklyn, was accidentally killed in 1992 by gunfire during a drug dispute at a housing complex, as he searched for one of his students who had been missing from school. I was assigned to work as an Artist in Residence at PS 15 after his death and subsequent departure of fully one third of all the teachers at the then traumatized site. I remained there for the next 7 years. TS
c. Triada Samaras 1996-1997 (revised 2025)
Snowstorm
Light flakes drift downward,
burying the past beneath new softness--
yesterday’s pain
in silence fades
Straight down, then sideways,
they soar,
catapulted by gusts,
before mounting the breeze
back to earth with its frozen secrets
Through my cold window,
steaming with outbreath,
I touch them in memory,
tingling on an outstretched tongue
Muscles exert in my mind,
though I stir not from the chair--
my eager eyes
try to capture a single flake in my cinematic view--
I cannot.
How deep down
might sorrow and regret burrow
into the ground
covered in cool white?
My heart is a blank, my fingers stiff,
from half-truths typed
in the noise before the snowstorm--
pain heavy in my limbs
Endless as the snow,
I trudge the deep white day in search of clues,
snowshoes crunching--
the world outdoors snores, pausing
But my fatigue
lingers too long.
c. Triada Samaras 2025
Pissing Air
Reds, yellows, smoky bits
of fumed land--
too few clouds landing in your mind.
No hideaways. No escape
from brick monotone,
stifling cry,
insect wings beating
concrete windshields.
Fading lines, red accents
call the blue lights
down the walls.
Nothingness of automobile
against pavement.
Evening rush—less than spectacular.
The way it’s pissing air,
waves hissing,
sound the rumble through tires--
another day drifting,
on tomorrow,
stuck in yesterday--
and the day before that.
c. Triada samaras 2016 (revised 2025)
Spiraling Down
My love for you falls down--
spiraling--
the drain--
words drifting away with tears,
descending deeply into a churning vessel
to anywhere but here,
of downward flight,
of permanent disposal--
Pop! You emerge from another drain,
charm and irresponsibility,
vacant steel eyes that will not meet mine.
But oh—how you sparkle and dance,
promise the sun for a brief moment,
Mediterranean rooftops,
children’s laughter,
dinner simmering--
garlic and tomato in the air.
The touch of your body--
so cold, so magnetic,
my imagination soars
over both of us, over the house,
like a drone seeing down--
everything in its frame
perfectly in place--
But inside,
nothing is.
c. Triada Samaras, 2025
The End of the Day
Luscious lines
curl across the sky
twisting
like ribbons of light
The canal’s waves
wobble toward sunset
A bridge
cradles patient travelers
its iron lace
aglow in fading light
Try to sketch the day
the hollow spaces
between smokestacks
and steel girders
and you will always fail
Time
is made of spaces
you can occupy
only one at a time
Try to seize the feel
of your tires
on the road’s sudden bumps
and you cannot
Try to stop
the red and blue lights
from piercing the dark
and you cannot
Try to stop
the car ahead
from tearing into concrete
and you cannot
Try to catch
a baby
plunging through an open window
and you cannot
And they pass
slipping
unheld
Time
is a series
of infinite spaces
sliding past
like echoes
moving always--
and always slowly
In the end
swifter than your grasp
gone--
dissolving
like light from the sky
c. Triada Samaras 2016 (revised 2025)
For Bob G/Activist (Gowanus)
All the things
that have no easy words
is what you left
All the rest
is what you left
All the real
and not the rest
is what was left
The thing is not the art
is what it meant
Too late to tell you now
The rest is gone
The rest
was what I had hoped
to tell you
about our need for rest...
c. Triada Samaras 2011 (edited 2025)
The Liars and Their Lips
What are the liars thinking
When they are moving their lips?
Do their words get jammed
Stuck on their salted roofs
Of the parked jaws,
Or does it get easier
To lob them ever?
Naturally, after a good match like
Mercury in a tennis ball lightning profile,
For your messenger to leave its tongue,
Your referee to signal
The passage of a cure time --
A sigh, maybe; you just need
To take another good deep breath,
A nap before your turn
To play again.
Let it out --
The lies, and all the rest,
Then try to teach your children
To distinguish
Between the white lines you made
Before the lies --
And - and all the rest
You said,
You never said.
c. Triada Samaras 2008 (revised 2025)