#journalist
Morning drops like a parachute,
circumnavigating
the irrational things within her.
She drew the grim cartwheel
--crayoned images of kids in closets,
and blackens them into
illustrations of war.
She sleeps on bleak days
with young cameras,
Lucy under the tongue,
rosaries at the border
feel like pins and needles
to an adrenaline sorceress
in giallo approach,
her eye in a labyrinth,
the eye she lost in the Crusades,
filming streets below
the color of dark Roman wine.
It's a staring contest,
waiting on rooftops
in stages of collapse,
there she lives or dies
at the dividing line with the grave.
Jan 20, 2024
Jan 20, 2024 at 5:51 PM UTC
Where are the pens that
Feed our ancestors? The ink out. Or seized
Are they? The cats stand by our soups and
Mother looked on - with perched gob.
This land, what the hell befalls you?
I ask father again - where the voice dwells
Ours is a nation of eaters, no leftovers for
The wandering souls. We cry for a roof to call home.
Where are the pens that
Feed our ancestors? The ink out. Or seized
Are they? The cats stand by our soups and
Mother looked on - with perched gob.
To the grumbling minors, arrows are thrown.
Our dreams now roam in the street like the
Rome of Demons. A dome of doom.
Abiola. Giwa. Strike with your papers.
May 30, 2022
May 30, 2022 at 9:47 AM UTC
Maria Ressa, ano'ng problema?
Ba't hanggang ngayon, mukha pa ring lamanlupa?
Nagkakalat-lagim sa mga balita
Mayro'ng yayari sa'yo.
Ito'y kuwento ng....
....isang BULATE,
TUKMOL sa umaga,
TUOD sa gabi,
Pisngi man niya'y punuin ng kolorete
Mukhang BANGAW pa rin, walang silbi
Ibaon na ang IMPAKTA.
Maria Ressa, ano'ng problema?
Bakit mukha pa ring nayuping pugita
Mga galamay mo panggulo sa media
Mayro'ng yayari sa'yo.
Ito'y kuwento ng....
....mga payaso
fake news sa umaga,
fact-check sa gabi,
mukha nila ay sintigas ng adobe
bungo naman laman ay kamote
Ututin pa ang bunganga
Maria Ressa, ikaw ang problema
Hilig **** magkalat ng maling balita
at kapag sinita biglang magpapaawa
#DefendPressFreedom kuno?!
Ito'y kuwento ng....
....mga bulate
walang voter's I.D.
banyaga kasi
bida-bida, sumasama pa sa rally
wala namang bilang, hindi noypi
i-deport na sa kangkungan
Maria Ressa, walang problema
kahit maglaho pa tulad mo sa media
Marami pang ibang magbibigay ng balita
Walang manghihinayang sa'yo
Ito'y kuwento ng....
....mga bulate!
Jul 17, 2020
Jul 17, 2020 at 10:50 PM UTC
You, like Nabokov, are also a polyglot!
An intellectual with French roots, and how nice
That “Pozner’ programme’s again truly lot,
And which year you’ve been on the screen with us.
You’re as an ideal for ladies:
You’re Alain Delon’s Russian pattern.
Your youth’s fuse can’t be extinguished nowadays.
And the audience welcomes in you a hero then!
If only Nabokov were living!
Then you would play chess together with him,
And in welcome and again coming spring,
You would collect butterflies just for him!
But the epoch’s consciences are passing away
In silence—who’s the next, we don’t know, will leave,
It looks as if we were in war every day,
Unfortunately, we’re losing someone coming to grief.
How many outstanding people have died,
How few outstanding people have remained,
So prosper to the envious out of spite,
Live long—bringing us happiness being great.
{04.03.2020}
Владимиру Владимировичу Познеру
Вы – как Набоков: тоже полиглот!
Интеллигент с французскими корнями.
Как хорошо, что Вы (который год!)
В Программе «Познер» на экране - с нами!
Для многих женщин Вы как идеал:
Ален Делон российского покроя!
Неугасим в Вас юности запал,
И зритель в Вас приветствует Героя!
Эх, если бы Набоков был живой!
Вы с ним тогда бы в шахматы сыграли!
И вместе – наступающей весной –
Ему бы новых бабочек собрали!
Но совести Эпохи в тишине
Уходят. И кто следующий – не знаем…
Мы каждый день как будто на войне:
Кого-то, к сожалению, теряем:
Так много выдающихся ушло,
Так мало выдающихся осталось.
Так здравствуйте завистникам на зло!
Живите долго – в этом наша радость!
{04.03.2020}
Translator - I. Toporov
May 10, 2020
May 10, 2020 at 11:27 AM UTC
Writing a story on a topic,
Hazing away at the microsoapics,
I write stories that aren’t meant to be fun,
Just the basic humdrum.
Reality is my Inspiration,
No matter the mood I’m in.
Dragons and Wizards are to be left on the bookshelves,
As I run to work,
And meet my colleagues for a day of writing reality.
We walk the world in actuality,
And see people with all different vitality.
People of all different ideas of reality.
They speak,
I listen,
I ask,
And they answer,
And we both learn about reality together.
I then write what I heard,
Tell what I saw,
And let the ideas fly like birds.
I've seen all people of life,
I've heard many of there trifes.
I laughed at their victories,
I cry at their lost,
And I hear all their vivid histories.
I write all types of reality,
From the memories of all different types of vitalities.
And as I write about how reality unfurls,
I write about the greatest dreams of this world
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 11:07 PM UTC
My aunt is a journalist on TV,
She conveys messages to millions of people.
She's been to Afghanistan and around the world;
Providing a voice to those with none.
She is successful, intelligent, kind.
My grandma and I sit down to watch her show this afternoon--
My grandma wants to know what my aunt is wearing,
She tells me "she looks fat"
I say nothing.
Because we're women.
How many people ignored her message about the Syrian refugees? How many people thought about her hair or her body instead?
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 2:21 PM UTC
Jeffery Brown, reporting the news every night
Looks at the world through multiple lens, and writes
Poetry from a layer of glass glued to a layer of glass
Which has separated slightly. Magnifications at last
Divided and shared as divvied-out treats.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365488825/
May 25, 2015
May 25, 2015 at 5:24 PM UTC
We live in a world with so much hatred
When will true peace be won?
Why are we judged by our own skin?
Will love ever conquer the world over money?
I am afraid of the thoughts of others
I'm not lost in who I am because I know who I am
I'm lost in other people's view
Because somehow I feel like my views don't matter
But I'm wrong when I say I don't matter
Because my views matter,
Just as much as others
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 10:50 AM UTC
I heard we
ran out of papers
so you ran up
around the walls
of this house-
thoughts scribbling
on them like the paint
we could not decide upon;
like a troubled mentalist
looking for solace
the sound of your pen
against the walls-
how they went from
flowing to screeching-
hands now bleeding
blue
heart; you reached the
porch where you underlined
your first steps and her last;
the bedroom a serenade
between the sheets some-
times a lie tucked away
underneath;
there are fractured stories
in the woodwork finally
seeping out.
You are making the
ceiling cry in the eulogic living room; the kitchen
is a mess of lonely dinners.
You left the library for the last.
This was where you began a
passion never ending
fantasy; open up
the curtains.
The world will one day
listen to the way
a little scribble went
to a house
and came back
a masterpiece.
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 12:26 AM UTC
Look in the camera with the colgate smile
sound concerned even when you aren't.
Tell them that someone famous just died.
Don't fumble, you're LIVE.
Get the story before anyone else
or wave your career a goodbye.
Two minute break
Sip that water and put that make up on.
Manipulate the public
and your legacy shall live on.
Humiliate the politicians till they
can stand no more.
Sound vaguely interested
when you're bored.
Display the public ranting,
the promotion is yours.
Get your sources lined up
take down the unimportant notes.
Write about the bodies which were blown up
but your boss wants more.
Shove the mic in their face.
Demand reasons behind this failure we embrace.
Exaggerate the words said by a famous mind.
In place of truth fill it with lies.
You dared to step in the public's misery.
You were just another journalist desperate for a story.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 4:26 PM UTC
1
*In the masquerade of a poet
he acquires secret wings,
becomes equal parts real and unreal,
treading the twilight zone.
He still is an apprentice
with the conjurer,
incomparable wizard
who never stops amazing
being the anarch of slight of hand,
the illusionist grand,
we in the flow who swim or drown
in the river, known as life
that none ever defined the way it really is.
2
Inside his cubicle
transformed to a scribe by a curse
when he coveted it, was a boon
he is real, all his magical powers robbed
by the day light, realities of life
he is grappling with news
that make his heart grow weak.
He is now a sobbing poet within,
firmly handcuffed to a pact strict,
only to write reports, that's his might
anything of beauty he couldn't escape,
its all pain in forms unimaginable
most of it man made, even famine.
A life swinging between a hope
to come in terms with
the uncertainties of the ebb and flow
that breaks his heart bit by bit,
and facing realities stark that drives a knife
has become the rut, he wouldn't escape.
Dawn peeps through the window blind
he has lost meaning for day and night long time back
when this double life, has trapped him in this pen*
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 7:01 PM UTC