As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.

Death, sweet Death, beckons to me.
He is a lighthouse, warning most to avoid his realm
But He calls me by my name
He tells me to be dead is the greatest gift Life has to offer
And whispers of the secret joys of His hazy oblivion.

"Come my child and partake of my treasures," and
"Your troubles shall cease even as your spirit roams," are His entreaties.

At first His voice is as soft as the waves lapping at the shore
But as I ignore him his call becomes
louder
Louder
LOUDER
Than the squall of a maelstrom
Until He is all I hear

His voice dries up the Happiness fed by
Hope, who is a frightened dove.
And when Hope ceases to feed you in the morning and in the the evening, then
"Elijah, you are alone."

So

End Life to escape from Death.
Cast off your body and dwell with Him.
Death is the light in the lighthouse.
Choose that light
Choose darkness.

how do you paint water, or clouds?

I could read poetry for the brief,
of my of remaining life, however brief,
and never be satiated, of love, and streams of water,
never stilled, always running in patterns that exist,
but for milliseconds, admired by clouds born in, of,
a moment of re-formation that is perpetuity long:
unending shape shifting, like the freedom of flowing water
currents, forming, reforming and unthinkable, nay,
inconceivable that human eyes or their spoken words
could capture their shiny white foamy essence

But of love, that we can do, paint, design, recreate its
endless loops of undulations, like the radiating circularity
of a pebble dropped gently to its burial sight in a quiet pond.

Humans know, understand and excel at clasping and grasping
at the synapsing of human cells from differing bodies: the
exogenous erogenous of human touch that like the clouds
and the water, who could paint that, who capable of capturing
said sensations that wrack and enliven the body with invisible
interior chemical reactions. I cannot. Thankfully better men and women have treatised  their entreaties to the powers of the universe and been rewarded with the skilled delicacy of weaving human tapestries, the milliseconds of connectivity, eclectic and electrifying of different currents and differing amperage’s forming and reforming like water moving, just  like the clouds changing in response to the externalities of wind and gravity and all the forces of nature that encourage us to study and stare at these flows, hoping to entrance them into standing still for but a moment, and instead, mesmerizing us into standing motionless for hours in awe of their freedom.

Love’s undulations too mesmerizing, and freezing us into
place, or alternatively caucus to run endlessly arms extending,
flying though not airborne , rocketing us upwards while feet never budging, but finding good wards, masterful metaphors to recreate and thus to share the fabulous mystery of this thing we know as love.


2:58AM
Friday
jul 22 (jewel 22) of the 23rd year of the 21st Century.


O.L.P.

Thou and I                            

Joyful the moment when we sat in the bower, Thou and I;
In two forms and with two faces - with one soul, Thou and I.                      
The colour of the garden and the song of the birds give the elixir of immortality
The instant we come into the orchard, Thou and I.
The stars of Heaven come out to look upon us -
We shall show the moon herself to them, Thou and I.
Thou and I, with no 'Thou' or 'I', shall become one through our tasting;
Happy, safe from idle talking, Thou and I.
The spirited parrots of heaven will envy us -
When we shall laugh in such a way, Thou and I.
This is stranger, that Thou and I, in this corner here...
Are both in one breath here and there - Thou and I.

Jelaluddin Rumi*

                                              

By the waters
of Babylon the
beloved weep;
mourning the
loss of our
brother
Rumi.

We have
forgotten
Rumi’s
example,
we no longer
speak his
language
of love.

The beloved
have discarded
his virtuous
entreaties
as useless
historical
relics.

His compassion
is mocked
as a sign
of weakness.

His empathy
is considered
a seditious act.

The
beauteous
poems
bespeaking
ecstatic graces
found in the
resplendent
embrace of
unity in the
holy spirit
are shattered,
like a worthless
vase, its
shards
scattered into
a million
splinters that
****** our feet.

We no
longer
sing the
blithe
words of
his love
songs.

The
rapturous
melodies have
evaporated
along with
our joys.

We have
destringed
our harps.

Our songs
of joy have
become
dirges of
lamentations
moaned in
the streets
of our
desecrated
cities.

Our people are
in shambles.  

We are
refugees
fleeing our
besieged
homelands.

We are
prisoners
in the
basements
of our homes.

We perpetrate
crimes against
humanity by
willfully defiling
ourselves.

We dash
the heads of
our children
against
blasted
rocks.

We are
desperate
to find you
dearest
Rumi.

We hope
your sweet
reminders
of love will
bind the
broken
people;
leading us
to forsake
the diet of
acrimony
that has
become
our daily
bread.

I wander,
the streets
with open
ears
listening
for a hint
of your voice;
hoping to
follow it to a
rendezvous
with the
Divine One.

I open
my heart
to discern
a tiny note of
your songs,
winging on the air,
the sweet chords
of agape love
is our hope
to salve our
deep running
wounds.

Only
deafening
silence
returns
to my
saddened
ear.

The elegant
magic of your
voice are
angelic fingers
plucking strings,
evoking  a
heavenly
chorus
of love
and divine
reconciliation.

Your voice
rolls through
the ages
beckoning us  
to transcendent
peace; your
whispers
dance
upon the
face of hatred.

The marching epochs
have dissipated
our memory of you,
beloved Rumi.

Your verses
are ancient
dialects we
can no longer
decipher.

The urgency
grows for us
to speak in your
tongue once
again.

Our besieged
cities are
filled with
the cacophony
of distress.

The beloved
tend lamps
to light the paths
of reconciliation
but few
step forward
to sojourn
the pathways
of peace.

Some ecstatically
turn willing cheeks
to the nasty slaps
of adversaries;
daring to let
flesh absorb
the totality
humanity’s
pain.

Hostility
spills over the
lips of stormy
volcanoes
like gushing
lava flows
of destruction
covering
all corners
of the globe.

Can the
forgiveness
offered by the
aggrieved
blunt the
world’s
acrimony?

Oh Rumi
where are you?

I offer prayers
that your spirit
still moves
among us,
with balm
in hand
you anoint
misspent
love
wandering
amidst the
desolate cities;
daring to spark
life back
to the dead
stones,
your
miraculous
palms
warming
the cold
rocks
with extreme
humanity.

Your love
rises to answer
the intractability
of indifference;
defeating the
crucifix
of empathy.

Your love
rolls away
the bloated
stones covering
compassion's
cold dead tomb.

Your love
breaks the
omnipotent
cycle of
unrequited
vendettas;
laying it
to rest in
the solitary  
oneness
of spirit;
freeing
the beloved
to live in the
liberty of
unconditional
love once again.

We evoke
the presence
of your spirit,
imagining you
levitated
by Allah’s
slightest
whisper,
floating
among us
in aromas of
spring violets.

We hope
to detect
your soft
footprints
on the
open hearts
of the
compassionate.

We invite
your tears
of joy to water
flowers that
bloom into
luscious
groves
offering
the bread of life
to all.

Rumi, return
to teach us the
lost language,
remind us
of the songs
we have
forgotten,
unite all hearts
with dervish spins,
turning the world
in circles of love,
conjure an
avenging
tornado to
route the
despoilers.

We are
battered
exiles
seeking
refuge
in the nape of
your scented
neck.

We wish
to hide in the
embrace
of your
warm *****
and become
medicated by
the perfume of
life’s gardens
chasing away
the stench
of graveyards
alive in our
memories.

Has the music of Rumi’s words fallen on deaf ears?
Has the rhyme and reason of Rumi’s poetry been misunderstood?
Has Rumi’s example been forgotten?
Has Rumi’s revelations of love evaporated into nothingness?

Rumi, I look for you in the market.
I hope to see you saunter down the street biting into a fresh apple.
I crane my ears to hear your voice incant poetic prayers.

As the sun
sets on
another
violent day
I cannot detect
the gentle taps of
your joyful dance.

I remain starved
to join you at
the Lord's table,
to fill myself with
Eden’s Feast.

Rumi
as you once
came to seek me,
I now come
to seek you.

Panting,
I run through
the streets
in desperation.

I become
a callous
****** spying
through every
window, hoping
to catch a
fleeting image
of your shadow.

I throw open
every last door
leading from the
barren streets
in vain attempts
to track your
footprints in
the dusty
courtyards.

My search
only reveals
bare rooms.

Not a single
trace of you
is discovered.

The empty
corners
once lit with
the resonance
of your spirit
are dark, blinded
by the midnight
worries of the
refugees that
have escaped
these black rooms.

I scavenge
the piles
of concrete,
rummaging
through the
the skeletons
of fractured
buildings leveled
by war.

I am covered
with the dust
of destruction.

I scatter the
bones of the dead
frantically looking
to find a single
footprint as
evidence of your
presence.

I find nothing.

I prophesy
to the bones.

I prophesy to
the disconnected
sinews.

I cleave my sinews.
I bleed my veins.

I drape the sinews,
I drain the blood
onto these decrepit
dry bones.

I scream prayers
to breathe new life
into them.

They do not reassemble.
They do not move.
They do not stand.

Where’s Rumi?

Music selection:
Zikr Call of the Sufi
The Divine Union

Suffern
3/28/12
jbm

1

Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Through the windows—through doors—burst like a ruthless force,
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation;
Into the school where the scholar is studying;
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain;
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you bugles blow.

2

Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets:
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in the houses? No sleepers must sleep in those beds;
No bargainers’ bargains by day—no brokers or speculators—Would they continue?
Would the talkers be talking? would the singer attempt to sing?
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state his case before the judge?
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums—you bugles wilder blow.

3

Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow!
Make no parley—stop for no expostulation;
Mind not the timid—mind not the weeper or prayer;
Mind not the old man beseeching the young man;
Let not the child’s voice be heard, nor the mother’s entreaties;
Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where they lie awaiting the hearses,
So strong you thump, O terrible drums—so loud you bugles blow.

the soul never sleeps
it see's  adolescent behavior on a big scale
once more the arms of war on sale
I detest violence vehemently
I stamp my tantrum feet as a child relentlessly
even in my dreams little respite
from the apprehensive dread of the devil's bite
severe mercy
transcendental meditation
transpersonal dissociation
more war, sordid *****
catatonic heap defaces the floor
oh remorse and entreaties
oh despair and wringing
oh come love bringing!

layers and layers of phenomena
mysteries ever abound
yet our untimely knuckles  drag the ground
incomprehensible inscrutable  invidious bile
damnable war never rests a while
I've come to expect its a natural state
will humanity always regard it as ** hum fate
I try to look away, fain smiles, reply "I'm fine"
the deception  is for them
I really want to die
No more war, no more lies
oh remorse and entreaties
oh despair and wringing
oh come love bringing!

Rue thy feeble fate.
Fear the day when thine own eyes
Fail to see beyond thy hand.
Requiem for the rest-easies such as Thyself shall not come as welcome
Praise, but as fire and brimstone,
Blood from the grimy grindstones of
The weary working, ready to rise
And crush all unworthy opposition
With their hilts of red-hot rage,
Raising swords of liberty to the heavens and cutting down the opression that has stilted their air.

Weep for this is thy fate:
Thy death means justice for those who Have been defeated countless times,
Under a blooming, burning sky defeats Pile up like stars, simmering, waiting to Become supernovas and take every puny Universe down in their own glorious Descent, like
Icarus to the sun, a sweeter fall could not Exist on this lonely planet,
Into the unforgiving waters of victory.

Justice for those angry folk who by merit Have earned their own place, not by Some system that hands it to them, but By grit and toil alone,
By the fierce madness that is
Existing and not completely
Giving in to the ruin of being human, Following the words that
A wiser man than I spoke, that life is Struggle, that the only constant in this Life is the pain that all of us try to ignore In the futile attempt to block out the Tragedies that haunt us daily.

Face thy fears, coward.
Thou miserable wretch can't look thyself In the mirror, but can claim that we as a Species have hope for peace on Earth and Goodwill for all.
What dost thou know of goodwill? When didst thou give a single moment of thought to the happiness of anyone but thyself and thine selfish  avaricious interests?
Thou shan't claim to know what is holy and just, yet scourge the very pious people that thou imitates; thou shan't slaughter the devout on a temple whose bricks are molded from hypocrisy and deceit.

Rue thy feeble fate,
Because thou deserveth every blow, every cry of mockery, every disgusted eye and every hideous pitiful moan that thy gravestone will inspire, and even Dante himself could not have imagined the flaming of the hellish unredeeming pyre that will be thy afterlife;
rue thy fate for no morals, no intercessions, no pleas or entreaties to be spared from the filth and maggotry that thou hast built thy very house upon canst save thee now.

gray grey, the athletic color,
of this uniformed tunic,
you'd know instantly,
no matter how one spells it

the navy lettering fading nicely,
time delayed capsules of soap,
eroding it,
as per schedule

the collar,
if I may permission granted
to describe the aperture hole
for there the head thinks to emerge,
separating, the seam having suffered
the slings and arrows of intercontinental
washing devices who knew not tenderness
in the dry and rumble tumble cycle of life

having taking to the graveyard a
pale blue Gap thin one, stained with red badges,
courageous Heinz ketchup bloodied medals of repasts glorious,
that resisted my entreaties
and numerous stain stick applications,

I concede to her entreaties
and mark it upright,
consigned to be ferried to the dump,
for a state funeral,
dead and buried,
silence, its last protesting verb

but not my Old Navy
matching beard color one,
the one in which I write this,
and so many other oeuvres

sentimental and memorizing
each little pockmarked hole,
so overcome of the notion of its dispatch,
stalk off to the crest overlooking
my beloved beach, and
the bunnies and the ants ask,
poet,what ails ya?

I cannot lie to them,
my co-creators,
and co-inspirators

I have seen better days and better poets
come past, striding on the beach
with purpose and clairvoyant craft,
with no looking back,
glorious their facile winged tongues and feet

my garb, my skills, like my
Old Navy T shirt,
pockmarked and worn,
she wants to take it too,
but when I read my old work,
weep loudly but demi-privately,
for I am clearly spent,
yet I refuse her begging "requests"

the better best part of me, rent,
I fear they will soon come
for me and my declining residuals,
like they did for,
King Lear and Humpty Dumpty

me, in the T shirt,
no more

for all the King's Men,
and his sailors of the wordy seas,
will know I am beyond repair,
cannot be put back to where I once was,
so out to the bay,
taking me there to reside,
burial at sea,
nonetheless dis'd by an honorable death

for that is the only way,
they can final extinguish
all at once, all of
the last of these grayed embers,
that flicker bright before they
self extinguish
~~~~~~~~~~~
3:47pm Silver Beach,
June 29, 2014
after re-reading,
Evening-tide: Dementia, King Lear, Humpty Dumpty and Me

A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking if *** were lacking, or if the moisture of the
   right man were lacking.

*** contains all, bodies, souls,
Meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations,
Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the seminal
   milk,
All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, all the passions, loves,
   beauties, delights of the earth,
All the governments, judges, gods, follow’d persons of the earth,
These are contain’d in *** as parts of itself and justifications of
   itself.

Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of
   his ***,
Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers.

Now I will dismiss myself from impassive women,
I will go stay with her who waits for me, and with those women that
   are warm-blooded and sufficient for me,
I see that they understand me and do not deny me,
I see that they are worthy of me, I will be the robust husband of
   those women.

They are not one jot less than I am,
They are tann’d in the face by shining suns and blowing winds,
Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength,
They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike,
   retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves,
They are ultimate in their own right- they are calm, clear, well-
   possess’d of themselves.

I draw you close to me, you women,
I cannot let you go, I would do you good,
I am for you, and you are for me, not only for our own sake, but for
   others’ sakes,
Envelop’d in you sleep greater heroes and bards,
They refuse to awake at the touch of any man but me.

It is I, you women, I make my way,
I am stern, acrid, large, undissuadable, but I love you,
I do not hurt you any more than is necessary for you,
I pour the stuff to start sons and daughters fit for these States, I
   press with slow rude muscle,
I brace myself effectually, I listen to no entreaties,
I dare not withdraw till I deposit what has so long accumulated
   within me.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself,
In you I wrap a thousand onward years,
On you I graft the grafts of the best-beloved of me and America,
The drops I distil upon you shall grow fierce and athletic girls,
   new artists, musicians, and singers,
The babes I beget upon you are to beget babes in their turn,
I shall demand perfect men and women out of my love-spendings,
I shall expect them to interpenetrate with others, as I and you
   inter-penetrate now,
I shall count on the fruits of the gushing showers of them, as I
   count on the fruits of the gushing showers I give now,
I shall look for loving crops from the birth, life, death,
   immortality, I plant so lovingly now.

In a misguided attempt to escape you
I fled to Nietzsche.

Weak
Inconstant
They are cats and birds
At best, cows,
he mocked.

I don't know about that
But I've never stolen glances at a cow
And felt my heart turn to ash
At the gentle devastation of its beauty
While praying that the mild curry in my mouth
Somehow shrivel up my tongue
And singe off the unspoken entreaties simmering within.

(And my affection for cows
Extends only to veal cutlets)

Today
Nietzsche and curry failed me
Tonight
It'll be the familiar embrace of alcohol
Until you fly back to Beijing.
After which
Are other substances and their derivatives
To deal with the fallout
Your transient smile
Wrought on my worn soul.

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

(written 7 years ago on the 30th anniversary of the ****** of John Lennon)

I hate digital alarm clocks.

The eerie way they light a room in the deep of night and that silent way they have of counting down the hours of life left.

It just leaves me exhausted!

At 12.47am I woke to a flickering red haze across my bedroom ceiling that seemed to spread like a stain down the walls to pool on the floor.
Now, I know I should not be reading Amityville Horror in bed, on a full stomach and I’m pretty sure that the block of chocolate that I snacked on while reading may have upped the ante in the endorphin stakes but combined with that evil digital alarm clock I was wide awake at 12.47am and the curtains at the open window were flickering across the harsh red numbers.

The oddest scene was playing around me, like a bad play where all the actors rolled around in a vat of blood before they stepped up.

Kratos and Ares, in full battle regalia where crossing swords with a ferocity of a westerly wind fleeing from Zephyrus himself. The clang of steel was loud in my head and beat a pulse behind my eyes that watched them move around the end of the bed and along the wall along side of me.

The breeze slithering through the trees and through my open window bought whispered entreaties to my ears…

“She mine Ares! I saw her first, I will have her. She is my Yin! I will possess my other half!”

Clang, clang, grunt, clang

“Kratos, you do not know me well to think that I will not fight for the one that can stand with the God of War! I will have her”

Clang, ******, parry, clang

Now, this is where I got really confused.

I was starting to think that the red haze fluttering around the room was from my bleeding eyes because it was now 4.27am and more than 3 hours of my life were gone.

How was I supposed to get that back?

I was idyllically pondering what a Yin was while being gobsmacked by the fact that I was actually the other half of something. But being the other half of Strength?

What does that make me?

Weakness?

What would my Greek name be?

Profligatus?

But that didn’t concern me more than what Ares wanted with me? How strong did he think I was? Sure, I’m a bit prickly at times but for the God of War to focus on me? ****, and I thought I had curbed my enthusiastic condemnation of humanity… Obviously I had not!

But who am I kidding! It was really very nice to have them fighting over me. I’m not really sure who drew first blood (because of the ****** evil digital alarm clock glow) but I’m sure I would have swooned into whomevers arms reached down to claim me had it not been for the sound of the evacuation alarm.

ER ER ER ER ER ER ER ER*

****, ****, ****, the sun has crept over the horizon and has lightened the darkened theater that is my bedroom and it’s the alarm clock that is shrieking a warning that it’s time to start a new day.

****! I’m not ready for this. I’m tired, I want more dreaming, or awakening, or whatever the hell that was!

Most of all I want to know…

What did it all mean?

Water of remembrance sprinkled
On the mountain crest of recollection.
Indulgent mussy memory catapulted
Stones of retentiveness into the
Courtyard of events like bricole
Of battles.
Pendulum of reminiscences swinging
On oscillating milage of roads like
Trotting horse with drippage of sweat
And itching foots.
Ghost of reminiscences restlessly
Roaming with carriage of yesteryear.

Final year educatees required
Boardinghouse,
But list of items engorged dear
Mother's treasury

"where do l raise money
to buy oyinbo mattress, Ilori?"

Mind pullulated with weariness.
Intonation of worries.
Cantillation of wants.
Deficiency of measured means.
Oyinbo mattress beyond ladder
Of reach.
Gluttonously waiting to devour
Lesser items,
But rays of compulsion unslammed
The gate of respite.

Lordly arrival warmly welcomed by
The dorm room's porter,
Walking majestically to the bed-space
With the acquired cotton wool and raffia leaves mattress.
Gamut of items passed through the eagle's eyes of the housemaster.
Silver painted pail donated by a neighbour passed through the sentry of inspection,
And got its admission.
Mother's used cloak turned bedsheets
Passed through the rigorous scrutiny.
Newly built portmanteau unlocked and neatly dissected, item by item.

Agazed eyes focused on the cotton wool and raffia leaves hand-made mattress.
Expectations rattled mumbling astonishment.
Legs stuck in the mud of mystification.
Telepathic dews covered ocean of thought.
Tranquil silence engulfed vicinity,
Deflating the balloon of hope like a litigant awaiting verdict from the jurist's chambers.
Porter's gesticulating gesture connoted nothingness of demeaning disapproval, perambulating on the hilly terrain of approval.

Akimbo stood l.

Now the verdict!

Molten volcanic magisterial command erupted in a gestapo gesture,
Spudding out from the barytone's baritone voice from the selfsame housemaster,
From the bastion of authority,
And the house generalissimo like a wild brant squalled, matter-of-factly,

"we do not accept bed bugs cotton wool and raffia leaves hand-made mattress here".

Entreaties collapsed.

the boy enters when he knows
others will not be there
in prayer--their silent entreaties
to a god he is not sure
listens or cares

morning after mass is best;
the bouquets are fresh
he can smell them once
the scent of the early
worshipers fades:

the pipe smoke from the old man's
coat
the widow's perfume which lingers longer than the ammonia stench
of the holy homeless who is there
every day

Christ watches over this:
a white marble man bolted
to a cross, witnessing
this spectacle for millennia

long before this cold statue
was placed in this cathedral,
he was there, the slaughtered lamb
cursed to die again and again

that is how the boy sees it;
not a promised life eternal,
but the same death anon,
anon

the pounding of the stakes,
the blood offering: the old man, the woman, the mendicant
all crucifying him again with
each plaintive prayer

once their odors fade,
the funeral sprays, the bouquets
remain--cut, dying flowers,
a fragrant impermanence
with no expectation for life
beyond their time in the
vase--no imploring a godhead
for forgiveness

no demand for blood
and perpetual death

only a little water for their brief journey
in fragile glass

I do not lack for intimacy, real and touching.
Perhaps, so blessed, I reach out to those in need
To those semi-known, but never met, never realized.

Perhaps, so disfigured by experience,
Compelled, self-commanded, self-anointed,
I venture to parts and people unknown,
With all that I have, my only possession,
Words of comfort, which is my trademarked craft,
And my true purpose... Here on earth.

But when entreaties refused, misunderstood,
Rejected, I am stunned by the hurt, the rejection,
Which makes one tired in ways that
Shock.

How allowed, who gave me permission
To increase my vulnerability to one more, only
Imagined, only Internet real...
This foolish tirade, in words, my stock and trade,
The only way to expiate my grief
For caring,

I Am that I Am

My instincts good, I will continue.
Disregard the brain, regard only the
Need,

To Be Who I Be.

Once upon a time, on a site far far away, I would post and not a soul would comment, let alone read...

  
  
  
  
  
Minor poet,  
I am not even, but odd.  
  
A truth that slaps me unto tears.  
  
I seek your admiration,  
admonish your failure to
admonish me, fail me
unto tears.
  
Your academic hyper-pretensions
gods of overlording silence,
sentence condemnations of the
meagerness of mine deaf,
weary-worn entreaties.
  
Your ignorance and the  
vanity of my weaknesses,
pencil point punctuate my brain,  
holes filling up with the  
approbation of silence.

Tender unto me  
the Onomatopoeia of a concerto of boos,
barrels of bitter alliteratives
regretful rainwater,
send me curses of future inspiration.
immoderate me re my mediocrity!
  
Try try again, to charm thine eyes,  
populate your face with grimaced tears,
penetrate our mutuality  
with uncommon verse,
pricking the winter frosted windows
of a enmity and a common enemy.
  
Another day of self-persauding,
un-succeeding to accept that
successive minor failures,
are undeniably,
a success of sorts,
in a minor way.
  
A play on words,
as y'all play me.
  
Mr. Adminstrator, answer me!
Are we not all prisoners of Poetry?

"Every survivor of ****** assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported."

Rainwater of
the Elysian fields,
you assuredly do
like to drown your winged heroines?
You write them as strange
bitter narratives,
spurious to the calling
or as a bit of
bloodletting go.

The history formed around either
her breaking at the seams
upon the witching hour,
and her own home village
pillaging her claims
in the bonfire;
Or the arcane notion
no woman shall give testimony
against a neighbor
on the occasion he's a man.

Yes, she cried 'no' at the temple gate
Yes, she repeated such entreaties
But she'd also been into the ale
and wore an overtly
fetching carousal dress
you incensed.
Let her dam break
Let her try and flood us over
you mocked.
She was only a wayfaring angel
one reckless bird of passage
What type of wounds
could she inflict?

How easily you lost sight
of her will & halo
becoming stronger than fright.
Down she poured in antipathy,
until covering your gaping mouth!
It wasn't rain that killed you,
for you were the rain,
it was her blood calling out
that finally did you in...

Time and Place (To Say Goodbye)

You know where I am ensconced,
In my nook, in my solar system,
By the bay.

My love, my life's interloper,
Who divided black from everything,
My creditor, comes upon me silently,
Checking upon her investment,
This sneak attack, holy anticipated.

The music, unfettered by earbuds,
Plays for all who share the moment,
But it plays for her, specially.

When she arrives, Madame Butterfly
Fills the air, before extinguishing life.

When entering the Kingdom of My Lapland,
Time To Say Goodbye,
Con te partirò,
Fills the frothy air, that selfsame wind of yesterday,
Not just remaining,  but has grown stronger, carryover,
And the voices, my poetic entreaties,
All, have failed, to calm the blowhard's wrath.

No matter.

My possessions, few and final,
The music, my poetry, the sun bright
and my life, my love.

Of the moment, I whisper.
This, this precise spot,
In this worn down chair,
Where I gave birth to so many
Of my children,
Is where I wish to die,
When it is time,
Con te partirò,
Time To Say Goodbye.

"But not-today, my love, she orders."

In my heart I whisper,
Who can say,
But I smile and say,
"But not-today, my love,
But not-today, my love."

For if it were today,
I would not deny it,
For if it were today,
In the moment of now,
Its perfection, accepted.

For should to my chair,
She, solitary, returns,
She will have the music,
The sun's companionship,
The wet-stain spots where the tears,
I weep, at this, of the moment, and,
So many love poems,
And the comfort,
Of this one too,
And the perfect lyrics
Of this our song-to-be.

his old arm points west,
so weighted with years, his crooked
finger aims down, to the cracked ground
more than to the setting sun

thrice in eighty plantings,
he's seen these droughts drench
the thirsty earth with white fire
but this one, he swears upon
creation, is the worst

holy houses fill with prayer
for rain--the man says this is in vain,
though the good lord hears all entreaties
he has always been miserly
with his mercies

this shall pass
he avers, but he doubts
he will see another warm summer rain
his baptismal to come as wind
from the scorched plains, one
that scatters but dry seeds for
tomorrow's harvest moons

Mistress of my passion, by whom I am enamoured
Thou art the golden yoke unto my soul
For thy tender affections I have craved and clamoured
To thee I dedicate this enchanted howl
To bear love aloft, to dedicate thy self
To the duty of Heart's compassion
May make the spirit swell in good health
And compel it to exquisite action
In thy light, which begets a radiance
I feel the guidance of a divinely wrought star
Enamoured of our mutual dalliance
I pledge and worship to thee from afar
    My sweet entreaties I refine
    To fathom love and soar divine

She tuned her conscience to a high frequency
Tall, handsome...with enough hard currency
I balanced through the tight rope with Tigers below
You wanted sleep, I brought matrass and pillow

I gave you sugar, I gave u glucose
Yet you are still looking for something sweet
I gave you fire, I gave you flame
And you are looking for heat
When people say women don't know
What they want,people think it's a myth

All my love entreaties went down the gutter
Impressing you was a basket full of water
Yet I'm a specimen of your requirements
But when I show up, you front
Women don't know what they want

Even if we make love in the river, under the rain
You will still want to be wet
If I give you brandy inside an elevator
You won't still be high

I will never rest
Until I sweep the Sahara
And mop the Atlantic
Even push Everest

You can never be impressed or happy
Because even in the midst of a feast
You will still be looking for what to eat

I wonder why
Yet you want a perfect guy
When you have me...



@lyricalpuntiff

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

Broken loose and freed from a tiring hand
One who, in restful dark, withheld just that,
And left me to wander
To trace forms in the dark
Where troubles and trifles and plain existence
Creep and whisper their damning allure.
How prone am I, at this fatal hour,
To marching idlely backwards through
A blackened torpor
And letting exhausted candles
The haunts that hold, illume the endless halls
That each corner and door
Some revealed appalls.
Drown their debauch which sensually fawn
Out in the words of Byron’s Don Juan
And still feel their tempts, by some form of folly,
That compel me to a world of licentious melancholy.
Looking back to my bed, growing all the number
Cursing the forces which denied me my slumber
And what I saw in rich, encroaching beryl
Reconciled the dreams bereft of me:
An air of such fancy, a more permanent scene.
A smell like the snow to the darkness betrothed
Harkened me hence to a frosted window pane
And out it I saw an occasion so mundane
But at his hour, this light, the glittering flakes effervesce,
I thought I a soul gone from this place
And sublimed to a world
Which cannot harbor, nor ever know, hate.
The sky was so pale which, blithe did it shed,
So many crystalline wonders falling from space
And resting with ease and settling right into place
At that I saw the immaculate ground
Uniform, sanctified, untrodden upon,
With such power as to ward away any notions of destiny,
And purgation of all that could darken the mood.
Each lambent flake a seed sprouted
‘till the lawn was full of snowy trees,
The boughs which bloomed like a placid freeze
Themselves wearing white and all encrusted with ice
Like holy men inept to the notion of vice,
Reached high to the Heaven,
That which I doubt,
To catch alms on their fingers and Gloria shout.
Miles off I hear permeating through the calm
Respire as I arrest,
Synchronized, with time, the lungs of the world
Until my being, minutiae, was that of the whole
And the heart of beauty, a natural heart,
Beat, my confederate,
In league with my own.
In the colors of preternature, picturesque they played
That even in my worst of lows,
My heart at that placed stayed.
The azure raiment bleached at the wakened hour
And my eyes could not help but look away
Blinded by some intense light
In darkness they reflect on the previous sight
And rapture still comes in recollection
How dull were the visions before me lain
Their memorial no substitute, all artifice and plain
Petty entreaties, my pinings for that place again
Though destruction of halcyon I durst not entertain.
Even in depression, it wiles ******
And at times is seizure upon me lengthy, despotic
I’ve something, a snapshot, a little dab of paint
Which even my horrors cannot fully taint
I’ll think back, I’ll go back to that very place
Which I did not wholly leave:
A place of pure bliss
Where I cannot grieve.

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

These breathless moments

Dreams flutter boundless

Pinioned on stellar winds

Constellations rise in indigo eyes

And I pull in spinning

Euphoric aspirations glow

In vertigo as the accretion heats

Birthing a new universe

I am astounded by the light



Interminable epochs

Found me comatose

At the divination point

The juncture of the void and life

I dance the staccato steps of departure

Memory of thin skin disappears

Beatific vision shimmers

In glistened entreaties

Lacrimae sunt arma femina.

Console me with forever

The emulation of flight defines me

Zenith in your twilight skies

On Heaven's breath I rise

*tears are the weapons of woman

TL Boehm
2/22/08

Deep inside the mountain's woods,
Where human eye will never see...
My heart was caught by the Gularbeast,
But his was not by me

I first saw him there, down by the stream,
Looking fierce, and proud, and free
And I made a vow that some way, somehow,
I'd make him fall for me.

A month and a year, I followed him here
Where the mountain meets the sea.
And despite my constant shower of praise;
The beast cares not for me.

In desperation I seized him fast,
And bound him 'round the knees
So I could force him to look my way,
And beg him to acknowledge me.

When my loving entreaties were depleted,
Gularbeast shook his mane and bleated
And I was dismayed, my love defeated.
To know he felt naught for me.

So with breaking heart, and trembling hands
I did my love set free.
Not a backward glance, but a kick to the pants
Was his departing gift to me...

We’re all friends
By miracle, so soon
Comrades by the break of dawn
And strangers by noon,
As sure as the seasons
And predictable like rain
You can watch it with certainty
As a waxing moon wanes.
And when they’re gone
Entreaties refused to deign
--Like you’re an ugly growth
Or some fungal pain—
Then acknowledge a scale tipped
And gifts, given and got
The fair trade or
Reciprocation that it is not.
And how sad, and self-prophesied
The nature of ‘friend’
It teaches us that what begins
Is surely bound to end.

he swore it was Sasquatch
who mauled him at his camp
when the last logs were but
hissing embers in his pit

others spotted them
in the Ouachitas--a pastor, constable
and my own son, likely high on hash,
said he heard Bigfoot's heavy rumbling
in a light rain

I was the doc on call,
when the man's pick up rolled to a dead stop
at the ER door--addled, he swore the beast
brought him to us, without ever having
been in his truck's cab

I hadn't seen such lacerations
except when self induced, but the man
did not waver from his story:

at quarter past four
on the clock, he was flung, down bag
and body both, into the deep snow

the creature made entreaties without words,
but his wild, sour moans, the man proclaimed, may
have been nothing but the beast begging to be left
alone to remain a mystery

one never solved,
kept alive around other’s fires,
by those who did not let them wane,
who fed  the blaze and kept it roaring,
to keep the beast at bay  

yet invisible, but alive another day
just beyond the fires' searching light
silent, eternal in the mythic night
Sasquatch, Sasquatch

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

Mgboafor, my mothers name.
Names of seasons to live and love
Her mate Nkwo the market
Recognizable had no fight for Eke
As Oye lies around the corner.
Season, season and seasons

Seasons of exchange and banter
Exchange to cherish and savour
What is Eke for Afor musses
As Nkwo do no reject entreaties
And Oye mingles with joy
What Afor, Nkwo and Eke shares and offeres.

Mgboafor, Mgboafor Mgbafor
Your mate Nkwo has long gone
As it never done on us
Her sayings and fears lingers:
Monday has replaced her
And Tuesday supplanted Eke
Oye weeps its exit for Wednesday
As Thursday has usurp Afor.

Your children mourns and groans
In the weight of Friday
To celebrate your exist
And  Saturday swallowed  up
Your caked frozen body to
Mother earth, Thanking God on Sunday
As another Monday hovers around.
Exchange in rounds and rounds
Movements in circles and circles in rounds.

Afor, left without notice
To join Nkwo her mate
Turning deaf hear to Ekes entreaties
And Oye exists in  oblivion
Completing   defiance and disappearance
Of ego and a people’s prides
Voiding recognitions for your children.
Who have traveled far and away

They sojourned in lands and places
You only heard and dream of Yesterday.  
Today the children toiled and labor
In ways you never imagined.
The years pass by the days rolls in
Seasons craws in and out
Your children labors in pain and tremor
In fashions and factions  
They toiled in torn cloths
Crowded by not just the people from faraway land
But contents and ideas never known and sold in our market.
They are crowded with wears Eke, Oye, Nkwo and Afor
Never sold and will never sale.

Mgbo-afor, Mgbo-oye, Mgbo-eke and Mgbo-nkwo
The celebrated names of our markets
Depicts our seasons of beauty and time
The beauty of our women and their wares
Admirable wares that flaunts and flatters the men
Wares that puts us on our toes and gaggles our inside:

Okafor,Okoye,Okonkwo and Okeke
Your male version who clogs around
Peeping your substance dreaming
Making joy of  your swinging buttocks as you walk pass
Farting and panting from the labour the night before.
Celebrating their exploits and conquest
Taking pride you belong to them only.


Okonkwo keeps his name not your ideal
For Mgbonkwo long lost her ordeal.
Okafor strives without its full form - Mgboafor.
Speed has overtaken Mgboeke as Okeke now wears torn cloths
Working and walking in torn ideas and concepts.
Mgboye long lost the arguments to Okoye
A mirage of our time
Living life abridge ideas like carcass.

Our men…..?
They no longer have strengths that
Gaggles Mgboafor’s likes and climes.
As no Virtues chides and glitters the face of  Mgbeke
No Tickles to defines Mgboye’s and Mgbonkwo's personalities.
For we now live in season of pity and regrets
Rounds and rounds in formless circles
No fashionable logic in today’s changing sphere.
The truth of  our logicday