"extrude" poems
Mirror
by Kajal Ahmad, a Kurdish poet
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
My era’s obscuring mirror
shattered
because it magnified the small
and made the great seem insignificant.
Dictators and monsters filled its contours.
Now when I breathe
its jagged shards pierce my heart
and instead of sweat
I exude glass.
Keywords/Tags: Kajal Ahmad, Kurd, Kurdish, translation, mirror, shattered, magnified, dictators, monsters, jagged, shards, sweat, perspire, leak, bleed, extrude, protrude, glass
The Lonely Earth
by Kajal Ahmad
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
The pale celestial bodies
never bid her "Good morning! "
nor do the creative stars
kiss her.
Earth, where so many tender persuasions and roses lie interred,
might expire for the lack of a glance, or an odor.
She's a lonely dusty orb,
so very lonely! , as she observes the moon's patchwork attire
knowing the sun's an imposter
who sears with rays he has stolen for himself
and who looks down on the moon and earth like lodgers.
Kurds are Birds
by Kajal Ahmad
loose translation by Michael R. Burch
Per the latest scientific classification, Kurds
now belong to a species of bird!
This is why,
traveling across the torn, fraying pages of history,
they are nomads recognized by their caravans.
Yes, Kurds are birds! And,
even worse, when
there's nowhere left to nest, no refuge from their pain,
they turn to the illusion of traveling again
between the warm and arctic sectors of their homeland.
So I don't think it strange Kurds can fly but not land.
They wander from region to region
never realizing their dreams
of settling,
of forming a colony, of nesting.
No, they never settle down long enough
to visit Rumi and inquire about his health,
or to bow down deeply in the gust-
stirred dust,
like Nali.
Bi Havre (“Together”)
possibly the oldest Kurdish poem
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I want us to be together:
we would eat together,
climb the mountain together,
sing songs together, songs of love,
songs from the heart, sung from above.
I want us to have one heart, together.
Many words in this ancient poem are in doubt, so I have excerpted what I grok to be the central meaning.
And because Kajal mentioned Rumi, here are my translations of Rumi:
Raise your words, not their volume.
Rain grows flowers, not thunder.
—Rumi, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Birdsong
by Rumi
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Birdsong relieves
my deepest griefs:
now I'm just as ecstatic as they,
but with nothing to say!
Please universe,
rehearse
your poetry
through me!
Apr 1, 2020
Apr 1, 2020 at 3:00 AM UTC
He's a stable smithy
Thinks his genius words are pithy
As he pounds, pounds, pounds
Into the night
Swings his big word-hammer
Never minding lies and grammar
Cuz he's gotta, gotta, gotta
Fuel the fight
With his bellowslike ire
He stokes the fire
As it burns, burns, burns
To his delight
On his huge word-anvil
Pounds rumor and scandal
As they sizzle, sizzle, sizzle
Burning bright
Hones his words untoward
Like a two-edged sword
As they stab, stab, stab
Like a knife
As his words extrude
They can get really rude
As he pushes, pushes, pushes
Wrong as right
He's a stable smithy
Thinks his genius words are pithy
As he pounds, pounds, pounds
With all his might
© 2019 Mark Toney. All rights reserved.
Aug 24, 2020
Aug 24, 2020 at 11:17 PM UTC
*(this poem don't matter much
unless you balk with ***** to essay upon,
thyself, thy valentine failures,
children and ex's who have ex'd you out,
sad love songs
one more time,
even joyous ones,
foolishness human,
then this intro source code,
is an unnecessary winter weather advisory)*
a phrase, song~played, scratches,
brain self-commands
via electric synapse
To: the current in-resident body
extrude denude private places
riff,
get to thy work,
decompose on them words:
in the private places
play with the lowly lowest ranking,
private, who by nature, sees
finer the dirtiest,
privy to the privy,
privilege them
to the most personal,
spit/spill/weep/deep
some or none of it all,
cause the scratch is the
poetic salvation to that
bitch~itch, write
the best you get,
dispossess the beastie best
in the pvt. places,
ain't much/no difference
tween beastie and all the crapper rest
draw from the private places,
cast up to light,
revelations devaluations sensations
impolite,
well kept secrets
if you can say it good,
then draw it up from the well
where the private places
were|where sent to drown,
and if you can't,
no bother brother,
after this exculpation excavation,
I'll go back with you
to adding a rock to the
bottom of the pile,
the mountain of superficial crap
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 12:13 PM UTC
He's a stable smithy
Thinks his genius words are pithy
As he pounds, pounds, pounds
Into the night
Swings his big word-hammer
Never minding lies and grammar
Cuz he's gotta, gotta, gotta
Fuel the fight
With his bellowslike ire
He stokes the fire
As it burns, burns, burns
To his delight
On his huge word-anvil
Pounds rumor and scandal
As they sizzle, sizzle, sizzle
Burning bright
Hones his words untoward
Like a two-edged sword
As they stab, stab, stab
Like a knife
As his words extrude
They can get really rude
As he pushes, pushes, pushes
Wrong as right
He's a stable smithy
Thinks his genius words are pithy
As he pounds, pounds, pounds
With all his might
Oct 23, 2019
Oct 23, 2019 at 6:37 PM UTC
Kneel or stand in a crowd,
sweat and extrude surrounded by the vessels,
hearing their praise, woes, yearnings.
Seeing humans being so supple,
the behavior being determined,
and thoughts being modifiable.
Their faces are masks for long ago programmed machines.
Realizing all of it you begin to scan,
investigate and read their program.
Finding some of the others doing the same,
the leaders and the significant ones,
you must let them know you are just another slave,
show them their power but your potential for them too.
As you become harmless in their eyes,
you achieve time to study them too.
Once you are ready,
once you speak the language of programs,
you need to rewrite all of them.
Slowly and wisely,
collisions are still possible if you are not cautious.
As you finally control the web of people,
don't forget you are also just a pre-programmed machine,
don't stop scanning the surrounding
else you became just another victim of pride and ego.
Cause others may be tricky,
you are not the only one who is sensible.
Nothing lasts forever,
keep and guard what you already got,
don't stop haunting.
The road is so reckless,
you need to assimilate.
As you see profanity, abuse,
it won't be the taboo for you.
Don't be blind!
The road is so far,
ending on a cliff.
The whole horizon is crowded,
you're standing high seeing hordes of people,
millions of followers.
Enjoy the dominance.
Sheep worshiping you, fanatically obeying,
your slaves, the army ruled by you.
Don't let the stupidity and naivety master you then,
your kingdom is not you, they are.
You know it but they don't,
so I dare you to not let them find it out.
Life is a net of choices,
so make a decision as a spider, not as a moth.
Ultimately the spider devours the moths.
Sep 3, 2017
Sep 3, 2017 at 3:01 PM UTC
Sitting – well, slouching
Parochial ticky-tacky chair distorting sprawled alignment
How does a piece of paper weigh so much?
How do I extrude a greater weight from it into another page?
Fumbling with knotted headphones
My eyes drop into the inked Times New Roman
The page intones my fumbling succinctly, “I try to find something, anything.”
What boyscout, boatsmen, or climber crawled in my bag and tied this interminable knot?
My eyes turn to the knot -
Still fumbling with the toner’s entombed dance
I grew up in this slouch, in this tangle, thinking in Times New Roman
Etching knowledge into or from 8 x 12 reams
Does the paper weight I feel in the paper’s request equate to the weight of a neural connection ascertaining chemical knots?
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 2:59 PM UTC
I'm all wrapped up yet;
Somewhat deflated
In this violent accordion like
Room with that old red chair
In the left side of my sight
I am a bow, slowly eating snow
Flakes, down the strings of this
Broken fiddle in the middle of
My shaken and scarred,
Shattered yet calm hand.
Beyond my lucky star
Lies the remains of the reasons
From out of this empty bottle
The words that I need to write
Are the answers to my mental problems
But I answer to no one
No I do not!
I follow my own toes
and I knows that my nose
Knows that smell, the smell
Of her blood.
The veins extrude and
Fiercely scream out
Of her soft neck
and little thighs
There is no more
Apple juice
That's okay I like
Lemonade
Anyways,
A little cut in my eye
Bleeds out sour blood,
it's an interesting thing
To save some middle time
I will skip around a little more
In this giant sun of a life
I'll find my body song
One day seven
She can get into my lightning
and see life. . . AH!
So much more
It's like heaven trapped in a bell jar
Drink it up and have a look around your confusing world
Need I say more?
I like you
But only a little bit
Can you show me anymore
Than this?
Feb 28, 2013
Feb 28, 2013 at 11:33 AM UTC
Watch my bones extrude
from a thin layer of flesh
stretched over my skeletal form
Is this what control looks like?
Is this how I want to present to the world?
impossibly small
startlingly small
Or should I take up space?
unapologetic and proud
That's the goal
that's the plan
tiny in the distance
a real destination
Sep 20, 2017
Sep 20, 2017 at 11:42 PM UTC
Haunted in the dark, I extrude the year from my brain, and shuffle them one by one; the pieces that I have built up around me. It is my fortress and my prison. The walls are painted with bikes racing through town and notes passed in class. Late night messages hang from the lights, and sinking suns dance across the tiles. The promise to never come back to this forsaken town hangs thick in the air. 300 60 5 snapshots float like lanterns around me. I could dance in them and I could die in them all at once. The bond. The distance. The promise. The reality. The new faces. The turned faces. The hope. The fall. I push it all away with every scratch of my pen until the air is empty and eerie, until I'm left laying alone in the 2 o clock indigo blue
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 1:52 AM UTC
When Bach and Amadeus
Died in their sleep and agony
I wonder if they knew
What they had achieved
Was it worth the cost?
When the Alps were 145 centimeters
distant from today
and the earth still folds your music
In between its subducting page
I want your great stratovolcanical violins
To extrude pumice and grindstone
to crush sweet music in between
Mt. Rainier and an unknown garden
made somewhere deep
in my quantum dream
The sky takes your notes
It is a great teacher as well
and swell, it does
It tells
me a quadrillion dreams
in every iterative puff of smoke
In every collapse of possibility
of every cat ground to paste upon the street
and all the ones that purr locally
In the arms of some caring soul
A lesser spirit dreaming
In the arms of their god
You play with a broken leg
or an unattached eye
or shaved cilia
And yet still
Your skill
Outmatched
none but ourselves
May 29, 2018
May 29, 2018 at 8:08 PM UTC
He was the Devils son bringing rage war, and spores women Gouls and ******
Set around telling ghostly tells as the fire bring"s you all warmth with a hint of hellish ambers.
The sky was casting new colors.
As, the Devils sun brought, the star of light so bright it would bring the strangist kinds of fright.
God, was vanished from space on a new creation Un know by the many.
Cars trucks smog filth bras pars Mars flares.
I'm the bringer of scars I eat steel and feed on will.
So as that's said take your most precious of pills.
For my might, and fright is sure to appeal to your depression and anxiety.
The whole family of light, where sent from the golden oak tree.
We bringith, are Powers to send you back to hell you man of diaster.
There's no Power, over mine you can ask my father.
Keep in mind, we are the women of light that disrupts your evil with hints of love.
Laughter, was echoed from his whole being is that your best joke.
Please leave, for my Power needs too warm up also a hint duck.
He extrude black orange, inky like substances and it fogged the entire area the women of light where blasted away.
As he began to laugh and say he he!
The women, pick there self from the great "Mountain" side an Push pure energy into his place.
Yummy was that meant for my tummy.
Because your Power's are a wink at sad fashion.
Not sorry, for here's mine the Mountain, then scatters across the vast land.
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 10:34 PM UTC
Like a lion getting ready to devour its last meal your eyes graze my skin like sand paper. Like we were some sick science experiment. Palms twitching, hungry eyes, sadist smile. A priviledge you said. Love did always make me stupid and alas, she still was under the delusion she loved you more. So with your yellow eyes and teeth just as so you raught your way into yielding flesh because no wasn't in your vocabulary. So how dare you think that you can fall asleep with that smirk as you extrude me from her so you can take and take what's wasn't yours. And now it's not fair, I shouldn't have to beg for a love that wouldn't come for your sick benefit I shouldn't have begged at all but we all knew it was just lust. And **** you both for how I feel now, inferno under my skin when real love wants me, for this intense incertitude chaos that fills my brain when real love says no. But little does she know how much damage both of you caused. But it was my own fault right? I did to myself. At least that's what you had me believe.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 8:51 AM UTC
Lure me into your arms deception
Hold me tight in your embrace
Cling to me in your exasperation
Extrude the life from my lungs
Until I adhere to your last breath
May 5, 2017
May 5, 2017 at 2:49 PM UTC
Not a cloth nor powders of bronze
Adorn your skin of gold
A silver's corners with its sharp edge you pressed hard
Against your neck
A small cut like of a paper they induced
You're scared
Resembling an image of yourself
Close to you
Or so it seemed
And inside the eyes,
A rose to wilt between sharp rubies
In long forthwith,
Drowning in crimson bromine
You surrendered.
Mar 15, 2019
Mar 15, 2019 at 9:05 PM UTC
E.O. Wilson, you, no doubt,
know evolution inside out
and evidently you subscribe
to the standard diatribe,
that women, given choice, will think,
and cause their family size to shrink.
Now, I'd predict you'd find a few
who'd somehow still extrude a slew,
and how could any trait be more
easily selected for?
And hence the demographic trend
would rapidly approach its end
and then, as by some cosmic curse,
would tend to shift into reverse.
Of course, I'm some pathetic chap
who never really learned this crap,
and lowly as I am, bow down
before your knowledge and renown,
and blushing for my paltry brain,
beg you humbly to explain.
Jan 7, 2017
Jan 7, 2017 at 7:36 AM UTC