"conundrums" poems
PART II: A GLASS CEILING DRIPPING WITH BLOOD
Mohanad Younis, of Gaza City;
Where the sand is stained with blood
As the world feigns pity.
Broken families, unspoken tragedies –
The order of everyday life.
He was born amidst chaos and strife,
To a divorcing husband and wife.
If life were lived in peace,
This dissolution would’ve been a release.
Not much more, not much less –
A family’s lore, a decision to digress.
In war-ravaged land, however,
One needs every helping hand,
Especially a soul that was so clever.
Such a curious, voracious mind needed to understand;
A furious, rapacious search,
Unexplained conundrums to unravel and unwind.
Why do we exist?
Why do we fight and resist?
Is it worth living with all these scars on my wrists?
Does anybody outside Palestine care?
Will they keep on watching?
Or will they be unable to bear?
Of this and much more Mohanad must’ve thought,
As he sat at the Marna House Hotel,
Smoking cigarettes, freshly bought.
A student at al-Azhar, a mild-mannered pharmacist,
A prudent man who would have gotten far.
An admirer of Bassel al-Araj, another victim of oppression –
An inspirer, a brother who alleviated his depression.
Hunted down and killed by the IDF,
Another pacifist murdered for being an activist.
One figure of many who died;
One of those who did not want to hide.
Mohanad wasn’t a resistance fighter –
He felt that such persistence did not make their burdens lighter.
Instead, he wished to make his mind brighter,
And perhaps have family of his own.
He was in love, and wanted to get married,
But life was rough, and warranted a future far more harried.
The final twist of horror?
Having the intellect to apply for University,
And deserving the respect needed to obtain a reply,
Yet not being allowed to leave the city.
That is the news Mohanad had received,
Hopes and dreams suddenly deceived.
Denied a right to education
Because he was born on the wrong end of a cruel fabrication.
The glass ceiling, dripping with blood,
Swallowed his hopes whole like a flood.
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 10:04 AM UTC
I sit there and know
That I could never
Engage myself in conversations
With these conundrums.
Those who are both human, and
Badly wrapped paper packages,
Filled with so much experience,
Brimming with knowledge which
Is rapidly fleeing through
The holes in the brown paper
Worn by time.
How can I speak to those
Who cannot hear my words in full
So that they must be talked to
Slowly, like
They are children
But that have been through so much
More than I
At the tender age of seventeen
Could even imagine.
How can I speak to these enigmas
Who keep asking me the same questions
But which I cannot talk to
Without being
Disrespectful
Not only towards them
But towards my future
Aged self, who will one day
Be in their position
And who I cannot imagine
Will want to be treated
Like a five year old
At the age of eighty five.
Mar 3, 2014
Mar 3, 2014 at 11:47 AM UTC
Things happen, moments are created, faces are remembered and feelings are tightly grasped within the dry skin of our cracked hands,
Cracked hearts too maybe?
Where do we go but forward,
Remembering absent friends, lost loves, broken dreams and a hope to bury it all in that dark backyard behind our weathered but sturdy home,
We will move on, forge new paths, break new barriers, repeat a thing or two,
but oh well,
We all have some familiar cycles in our life right?
We are resilience built on the foundation of faith and belief,
We are unwritten pages, with past chapters that can fill a library, a library that none might visit,
And we will still go ahead and do everything that we want to, regardless of what anyone else ever said,
We are beings with a field of uncertainty surrounded by determination at the most unexpected moments,
Love and let go, love and cherish, love and be broken, love and not expect anything in return, love and be loved back a 1000 times,
We are the sum of billions of atoms,
We are the moments we create and the things that happen,
We are the beliefs of more than thousands of faiths in this world,
We are the tragedies of past, the conundrums of the present and the triumphs of tomorrow,
We are able,
We are capable of all of them,
We are capable and able.
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 4:30 AM UTC
Where goes the time when it flies?
Simplified by expression, and stained by clarity.
Smudge by lucidity
smeared by simplicity
tainted by intelligibility.
Tempus fugit as in time flies.
Sharply distressing with painful feelings
to the point of mental instability
morning or night
we become possessed with its mystic dealings.
Where goes the time when it runs?
Not a solitary explanation is found.
It happens and it won’t stop
until life terminates as well
without cause.
Derived of rationalisation
lacking understanding
short of justification
bursting with vindication
persistently and with conviction.
Where goes the time when it sails?
From the second that we’re born.
Where were we existing?
We cannot be so sure
Cannot recollect the past
Not for the first five of our years
Memory so blur, so shadowy
Hazy with distortions
obscure and confusing
Unit our mind starts slowly to recollect.
Where goes the time when it escapes?
The chronology of life so mysterious.
Nothing can solve its ambiguity
for time is a complex case
with an infinity of secrets.
What’s the obsession when we have so many setbacks
drawbacks and obstacles
obstructions and conundrums
to take care of before time perishes away
and leaves us stranded in oblivion.
Oh time, you magnificent of all mysteries,
the high and mighty of ambiguities.
Show us mercy and explain
we are not detectives of secrecies
your spell with us reflects on the whodunits.
Oh time of things past and yet to come
give us a clue as to what is to derive!
“Remember”
it softly replies “Make most of your lives”
“Once I fly away no one can have a replay”.
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 6:11 AM UTC
*A river flowing against its course
As if to floss
Its rare peculiar uncanny ingenuity
A notable case study of ambiguity.
An estranged lover unceremoniously
Literally butchering his offspring mercilessly
In cold blood
For having been dragged through the mud.
The undercurrents of change overriding
Entrenched seemingly myopic tendencies which aren’t binding
Causing irrevocably reversible state of affairs
Care not to be caught in the crosshairs.
A hopelessly optimistic romantic
Head over heel in love with the mystique
Aura of eccentricity effortlessly effused by
Her, she indeed worth a try.
Myriad circumstantial conundrums
That is cause of the inevitable humdrum
So characteristic of life
Answers a trifle few and the lackluster enthusiasm rife.*
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 2:21 AM UTC
I tried to feed the pigeons with seed
at the end of the driveway,
not even a modicum was eat
unlike my friends 5 cultivated visitors.
Only tonight he is watering his Dahlias
and Sunflowers.
I casually forgot to water my tub of potatoes .
Energy and priority
burns with this capricious summer.
and as good as we think we are
its Brendan who
manages to surpass the conundrums
forever your plantsman and allotment stake- holder
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 4:47 PM UTC
T'was little fun
T'was a little town,
No virulent delirious runs
No irking sounds
As t'was a little dangling town
All t'was a feasible brew
No meanders to sought
No conundrums of anew
just wired timely things to rot
When all t'was a portent upcoming
For t'was clad and veneered
In a amicable sun-daze groaning
T'was a peaceful loop of mono-gradient seasons
and all to do was ponder
For t'was guzzled with reasons
T'was yesterdays jigsaw puzzle
T'was a nightmare in sun-light
But for now, let's retch our unknown dazzle
As t'was,
A flippant fuss
For what shan't be
A beguiling me
Feb 6, 2015
Feb 6, 2015 at 5:21 AM UTC
i will write simply
like a snow melt in the spring
water brings music
and our feet are washed clean
remind the stars that we named them
even if they take our souls
we will forge them again in the fireplace
and breathe life back into them
soon we can rest in the music
but first let us use them
just like we were meant to
now is the space
to give your heart its grace
so we feed the lakes
their icy beverage
and make the songs that melt the frost
i arrived like fire
when rain was your only hope
our souls washed in the burning sun
the conundrums of love
somebody escaped with our watermelons
sundrops upon the lake
feelings we can never shake
our ecstasy is awake
and we have outgrown our shallows
swallowed by the hand of fate
our lives we did partake in
yes we have reached further
into the thick of it
into the blackest night
i walked into my own dismay
and displayed upon the sky
was the light that caught your eye
like threads of shredded rope
as darkness could never
cope with the worst of it
i sold all of our hope
for you should never
have to ***** for emptiness
send me the wisdom
to unleash you from this prison
so please give me another kiss
and fill me with your stories
for now we will forever know
that dreams are only allegories
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 2:37 PM UTC
Basquiat brushes
dribbles bulbous breakdance blues
gilding hip hop walls
Dolphy ****** white jazz
welling crank pipe smoked black lungs
on poppin stickmen
Lorca be mute, vexed
with syllabic conundrums
mal haiku riddles
Eric Dolphy:
God Bless the Child
Federico Garcia Lorca
The Little Mute Boy
Oakland
3/6/13
jbm
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 6:11 PM UTC
A deluge of earthly sins,
A waterspout on green leaves,
A hurricane among lull seas,
An equanimity of autumnal eves.
A dilated tale of mundane me.
A million abstruse blocks of C of Co²
A walker among you and me.
A wanderer lost in blue.
Attired by crimson lust of artistry.
A masquerade brew of red wine and dark coffee,
A stark blithe of sanguine comatose,
All drunk and clinging to the thin threads of this unstaged life,
All murdered by the sinical overdose.
The seascape choirs of ocean waves,
Embracing the narcoleptic yellow shorelines,
And evanescent castles
And sail headwind with a mystical concubine.
The iced conundrums of this lost forsaken echoes of winter breeze,
The insanity measured in ones & zeroes,
We're the kings of this deadbeat time,
And praised victories of unsung heroes.
The wanderlust sailors drank the skies,
In mixed cocktails,
And thy heavens sang to this night,
As a melodic madness of wild gales.
Her pale white body declares some love due,
As our lips bled rapture,
And rose a melodramatic cue,
Like words of a closing chapter.
Charged with the flow of adrenal enzymes,
A surrogate from affinity to serendipity,
For in flashback of these forlorn events,
I write this epiphany.
And though these letters are on fire,
And bestowed the bullets over armored heart,
For life exists in the heartache symphonies,
Like a stratagem cliché of painted art.
Call your unfurled knots of wrecked sanity.
A wildfire has gone wild within,
The eloquence thirst of your red lips,
Inked the words of love on this skin.
An audacious lover of seafaring,
Beside the starry onset of a beautiful dawn,
A tide of marvelous mystery,
Whose side are you on?
Its all fiction served with tea,
And through warm sips of this worthy minute,
Change is tempted to render seeds,
That swam through wind, till it escapes and wanders the infinite.
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 3:05 PM UTC
It had been almost a week now, waiting
Patiently for the generosity
Of some stranger. A sign in front stating
Her case, gazed at with curiosity.
Desperation and hunger setting in,
Her eyes began to wander to store front
Windows across the street, girls not as thin.
Moral conundrums were now not as blunt.
It would be easy, to take a few things;
Nothing extra, only what is needed.
She’d pay it all back once she got her wings,
So she crossed the street, conscious unheeded.
“I have no choice, it’ll just be this once”
She told herself for the twentieth time.
Sep 12, 2013
Sep 12, 2013 at 10:42 AM UTC
It slips,
this new surrender,
past the rusted locks
and caution signs
and crumbling roads
of cul-de-sacs
and vacant lots
and open tracks
to freedom;
where conundrums play
and secrets huddle
and bodies lie
and youth decays,
retired past expired days
Engraved in time,
cocoons and shells
and nests are hung
and quartered for a chance at love;
the way ahead,
receding,
half behind
and part enslaved
(a mask of promise worn from birth to lucid grave)
And,
like an avalanche,
it falls in quick pursuit,
this multiverse of
filthy guise
– of liquid paths and dangerous eyes –
and ruby coloured blushing cheeks;
where every lover’s
heart of sponge or stone
descends to meet . . .
heating,
for another touch
beneath the fraying sheets
And all the while
in rush and glory,
time,
********** moments
as it passes, flies away –
manifest instead as flesh,
(again)
with wings that only beat
to re-transcend
and scar
and mend in
pounding,
swollen,
rhythms,
c
l
a
w
i
n
g
for the warmth of smothered distance:
roaring
for a welcome end
So,
spaced between
the tics
and tocs
of darting pain
and thrusting *****
of ***** aroused, abused, and shamed,
a silence, near, deploys again
the ever caged
and emptied song
and lusting shame
of mouths and tongues,
inclining, fast at last
to go
from whence it came
to soak the mind
and strip the soul
and blur the lines
of time and toll,
buried,
in surrender, whole
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 11:04 AM UTC
May the furnace burn us
So that we might rise from crash's ashes
Like the Phoenix as Felix
Pounds out a bravado sonata
Something brash and passionate
Like abstract fashion it
Causes conundrums among tongues
Flapping, rolling, lapping, growing
Synaptic tactics mapping spastic
Canals through the fungal jungles
Of minds melting from psilosybin I been
Growing dendrites as my pen writes
Reaching Zen heights while the men fight.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 5:06 PM UTC
I took a class in psychology,
But who could ever hope to know
The inner wanderings of a lost soul,
The mechanisms making you tick,
You, conflicting conundrums and
Cautious contradictions...
You have classically conditioned my mind
To fumble over your chapter,
With your classical ways..
Heuristics never applied to you,
You are Freudian; hopelessly undefinable
And impossibly right
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 4:43 PM UTC
The Baker's Tale
They roused him with muffins--they roused him with ice--
They roused him with mustard and cress--
They roused him with jam and judicious advice--
They set him conundrums to guess.
When at length he sat up and was able to speak,
His sad story he offered to tell;
And the Bellman cried "Silence! Not even a shriek!"
And excitedly tingled his bell.
There was silence supreme! Not a shriek, not a scream,
Scarcely even a howl or a groan,
As the man they called ** told his story of woe
In an antediluvian tone.
"My father and mother were honest, though poor--"
"Skip all that!" cried the Bellman in haste.
"If it once becomes dark, there's no chance of a Snark--
We have hardly a minute to waste!"
"I skip forty years," said the Baker in tears,
"And proceed without further remark
To the day when you took me aboard of your ship
To help you in hunting the Snark.
"A dear uncle of mine (after whom I was named)
Remarked, when I bade him farewell--"
"Oh, skip your dear uncle!" the Bellman exclaimed,
As he angrily tingled his bell.
"He remarked to me then," said that mildest of men,
"'If your Snark be a Snark, that is right:
Fetch it home by all means--you may serve it with greens
And it's handy for striking a light.
"'You may seek it with thimbles--and seek it with care--
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap--'"
("That's exactly the method," the Bellman bold
In a hasty parenthesis cried,
"That's exactly the way I have always been told
That the capture of Snarks should be tried!")
"'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!"
"It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul,
When I think of my uncle's last words:
And my heart is like nothing so much as a bowl
Brimming over with quivering curds!
"It is this, it is this--" "We have had that before!"
The Bellman indignantly said.
And the Baker replied "Let me say it once more.
It is this, it is this that I dread!
"I engage with the Snark--every night after dark--
In a dreamy delirious fight:
I serve it with greens in those shadowy scenes,
And I use it for striking a light:
"But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day,
In a moment (of this I am sure),
I shall softly and suddenly vanish away--
And the notion I cannot endure!"
1.5k
*Ever since time immemorial
Even before the existence of now defunct phenomenon
Society’s had a stranglehold on “goodness”, a fact not entirely circumstantial.
On the high pedestal of “moral high ground” it’s stood, a loose canon
At the behest of “moralists” and “immoralists” alike
Malleable to all manner of situational conundrums
Rubber-stamping all manner of questionable theatrics with lord like
Patronage, this artistic fashioned manner of duplicity detailed in compendiums
Of information passed down from generation to generation
“For posterity’s own good”
Rhetoric construed
To imply the wellbeing of every individual born.
Subject to the above I implore society to effective immediately
File for moral bankruptcy in the court of public opinion, humbly.*
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 4:34 AM UTC
i speak love in
conundrums, map
my innuendo into
casual conversation,
drench my words in
a pool of duality to bait
raw instinct—all in hopes
of catching that double-time
flicker of the eyelid over
dilating pupils: the mark
of a fatal blow, the lightning strike
of confusion, the green light
signal that the games may begin.
Jul 25, 2015
Jul 25, 2015 at 5:28 AM UTC
it's not plagiarism,
rather, a collectivist
coincidence -
i can't believe people
in the former days would
reduce themselves
to plagiarism -
they'd sooner die than
relieve themselves
of an original idea -
working with a mythology -
how could such
differentiated people
achieve copernican
globalist relativistic /
globalist impetus,
and yet, somehow succumb
to an ethnocentric -
genesis of unoriginality...
yes, unfathomable,
the concept of polyphony,
synchronicity inter-people...
plagiarism is a modern
phenomenon,
it doesn't exists in
collectivism of inter-ethnic
conundrums of
segregating categorization...
just like evolution is god's
take on the thrill of gambling...
an original idea...
allowing an in group focus...
it could never be a plagiarism -
the segregating process of
techno. advancement...
toward a...
less cultural appropriation...
and more?
cultural loaning...
"plagiarism"...
perhaps i should "read" into
solving crossword puzzles...
now plagiarism is easy...
any son of sam
is not an arsonist...
but as my continued fascination
continues with
andrei chikatilo...
and batman, the dark knight rises
scene on the plane:
why would you shoot a man,
before taking him into a prison cell?!
ah... christine chubbuck...
this fascination... will not, die...
such a solemn,
vernacular death...
worthy of a Vatican pawn-ship
of preceding the scourge of death.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 9:39 PM UTC
The ancestral diet of Stars, being Other Stars
has left no scars, save open black and yawning vast.
No retrograde Oblivion... only galactic swirls
and elastic Space between worlds. that never last.
and Eternity.
my modernity nips and pleats my yellow teeth
after long whitening by paste and bristle. i chew the gristle
of the dead sow
and club the weaning pups of Cerberus
with an eyelash and a long blink.
i tread the narrows, flatly -
and conquer the quizzical conundrums
by simply asking.
My Rocket Science... laughing
at your grecian urn
to paint the herrings red.
i'm out of my depth.
but yes means 'yes' and we ' no' it.
if Nothing else.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 10:32 PM UTC
This crazy conundrum has been conspicuously contrived quite cordially. Of course, one could concede this cordially contrived conundrum could carelessly conflate the countless quandaries causing quintessential quantities to question the conspicuously questionable conspiracy. Conversely, carelessly questioning conspicuously contrived conspiracies as cordially quantitative quandaries could create considerably confusing claims countering the critically acclaimed crazy conundrum so callously clarified as to continue to count as cordial. Consequently, with careless acquiescence, I must confess that the conceptually contrived conspiracy, so inconspicuously inconsistent, conflated considerably contrary quandaries quite questionably and continues to confuse the crazy quite cordially. To conclude, the crazed conspicuous conundrum confuses the cordially questionable quantities of conceptually countless claims clearly clarified as conflated quandaries continuously contradicting a considerable count of conspiracies.
11/2/16 11:59 p
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 11:21 PM UTC
Graphic holographic photographic
useless plastic blacklights
that sit
popping balloons ***** spilling
everywhere, at least partial
it comes and goes
sitting, comparing mustaches, reminiscing
woodland conundrums meaningless exchanges of time
passed
squished in a sober automobile
full of drunks meaningless squabbles
squished seven in where seven belong
belligerent drunk, joyously sober
drunkenly sober?
either way i am
am i
i am
here for now, although we all know the impermanence of time, the moment
stupid words thrown on a page
to serve what purpose?
what good does any of it do?
words connect emotions
sorrowful stories of serene sounds
uneffecting interacting with all
endless expanses of open feet walk without
soles? souls? either way the have no base?
sitting on couches watching beaten cats dogs children
the night is getting late it's clear now
and i sit thinking thoughts that never leave my mind
and smile
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 1:36 AM UTC
our
myriad
loves -
very
uniquely
human
conundrums,
hardly
ever
humdrum
how
then
exists
boredom?
- Vijayalakshmi Harish
19.01.2013
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Jan 19, 2013
Jan 19, 2013 at 12:03 PM UTC
When I go back,
will you wrap your arms around me,
even though I smell differently,
speak foreignly, think a little too liberally,
will you, will you still love me?
When I go back,
will you re-teach me my language,
re-connect me with my roots,
re-live the years I missed, re-kindle my innocent bliss,
will you, will you still call me yours?
When I go back,
will you provide me with friends,
not “childhood friends’, but the ones
that are ready to make new memories,
and appreciate my multiple identities,
and will they, will they accept me?
When I go back,
will you guarantee me a relevant nationality,
a place I can belong, a culture I can call on,
to answer these confusions, these conundrums
these clashes of who I am and where I’ve been,
of when I changed and why I’m me,
Will you cure me, finally,
of these anxieties?
Or will I
forever be a splinter
that doesn’t quite fit in right
a thin piece in society
that jabs at its veins,
remain unwanted and, ultimately, a pain,
but can never be uprooted?
Only there,
slowly growing
insane?
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 6:08 PM UTC
why must i be so angry at you
your quiet heart sang to me
the sweet exotic flutes
humming through my eardrums
relieving me of a curse that cannot be broken
you are never a page in my mind
conundrums collapse like a tower
sphinx's are black and gold
shape shifters fail to safe
everything is a disgrace
like puzzle pieces we fall in place
silver treasures
gold the most
plain and simple hurts so close
the hoax is coaxed in cellophane
truth is a pain
better symptoms for the name
blaming is the game
shakes in my brain
thorns in my side
may love go insane?
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 8:43 PM UTC
Word conundrums
Vertical Horizontal
O Arthur Wynne!
Dec 21, 2013
Dec 21, 2013 at 10:58 AM UTC