"imperiled" poems
This Distant Light
by Walid Khazindar
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Bitterly cold,
winter clings to the naked trees.
If only you would free
the bright sparrows
from your fingertips
and release a smile―that shy, tentative smile―
from the imprisoned anguish I see.
Sing! Can we not sing
as if we were warm, hand-in-hand,
sheltered by shade from a sweltering sun?
Can you not always remain this way,
stoking the fire: more beautiful than expected, in reverie?
Darkness increases and we must remain vigilant
since this distant light is our sole consolation ...
this imperiled flame, which from the beginning
has constantly flickered,
in danger of going out.
Come to me, closer and closer.
I don't want to be able to tell my hand from yours.
And let's stay awake, lest the snow smother us.
Walid Khazindar was born in Gaza City. He is considered to be one of the very best Palestinian poets; his poetry has been said to be "characterized by metaphoric originality and a novel thematic approach unprecedented in Arabic poetry." He was awarded the first Palestine Prize for Poetry in 1997. Keywords/Tags: Arabic, translation, Arab, Palestine, Palestinian, Gaza, distant, light, flame, fire, autumn, winter, trees, birds, sparrows, fingertips, smile, sing, shade, sun, fire, darkness, hand, hands, snow
May 29, 2020
May 29, 2020 at 4:24 AM UTC
You came to me a morning star
You offered me infinity
I, bedazzled,
took your hand
We revolved around the sun
You ushered me to
an endless sea of possibilities
That was how you called it
That was how you used to tell me
You held me,
playing careful defense
A paladin
A sparrow to her nest
I, affected with great wonder
Mindlessly bathed the silken water
Drowned myself in the soft
bubbles of the crashing waves
Not bedeviled by troubles
nor disturbance, nor distress
You walked ahead of me
As if protecting me
from the swelling crests
or from the cold, or
from the salt that filled my chest
I, spellbind
influenced by your charms
and your incantations
Moved rakishly along
your convivial course
Unto your heavens
Unto your hell
Into your fire
Into your soul
that was what you said
That was how you used to tell me
I believed
I accepted in veracity
And I watched, a sentinel
As you moved in rhythmic steps
and playful gestures
Until I was confounded by
your intricate motion
I, caught in a whirling sensation
Imperiled by a tendency to fall
Was carried into your
nauseous complexity
I, paralyzed by my perplexity
You venerated me, you said
Or that was how you used to tell me
Yet, I was disconnected and
I, an amazed audience,
stood enthralled
Or was I merely standing in stunned silence?
Stupefied
Yet disconnected?
Jan 11, 2013
Jan 11, 2013 at 12:49 AM UTC
Tilts and toughenings.
A fort under siege,
A surge upon itself,
Embattled. Imperiled
Within.
What days have past
With some peace,
In nothing but a song?
Fortified with mud,
And fools penetrate.
A break.
The breaking of late,
Warts entwined with blood.
Their stems growing long
And won't cease,
Given their past
Within.
In battle, in peril,
The reach of the self
Can't fashion a bridge.
Toughenings are tilting.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 3:28 AM UTC
Cherokee Prayer
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
As I walk life's trails
imperiled by the raging wind and rain,
grant, O Great Spirit,
that yet I may always
walk like a man.
This prayer makes me think of Native Americans walking the Trail of Tears with far more courage and dignity than their “civilized” abusers.
Feb 22, 2020
Feb 22, 2020 at 12:35 AM UTC
Detach the mournful profile from youthful embittered emotions ..
Sad , dark hours preceding death are merely curtain calls , rivers that peek inquiry from birth to ocean swept , delta epilogue ..
Reborn of Spring storms , the memoires of blackberry Winter ,
gray day maritime gales , thundershowers of September , yellow daffodils of March foretell the onset of today , gleam in the abiding sunlight of their anticipated hereafter ..
Behold the cliffs whom covet the turquoise exposure of the sea , imperiled flowers that belay their certain capitulation amongst the sharpened bottom .. Gulls shriek in suspend animation , black shorelines echo their resignation , carried across thick ocean breezes ...
Our physical days quite aware of the future at each subtle turn , the payment of debit with every expensive hour ...
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 4:27 PM UTC
Photographs
by Michael R. Burch
Here are the effects of a life
and they might tell us a tale
(if only we had time to listen)
of how each imperiled tear would glisten,
remembered as brightness in her eyes,
and how each dawn’s dramatic skies
could never match such pale azure.
Like dreams of her, these ghosts endure
and they tell us a tale of impatient glory . . .
till a line appears—a trace of worry?—
or the wayward track of a wandering smile
which even now can charm, beguile?
We might find good cause to wonder
as we see her pause (to frown?, to ponder?):
what vexed her in her loveliness . . .
what weight, what crushing heaviness
turned her auburn hair a frazzled gray,
and stole her youth before her day?
We might ask ourselves: did Time devour
the passion with the ravaged flower?
But here and there a smile will bloom
to light the leaden, shadowed gloom
that always seems to linger near . . .
And here we find a single tear:
it shimmers like translucent dew
and tells us Anguish touched her too,
and did not spare her for her hair's
burnt copper, or her eyes' soft hue.
Published in Tucumcari Literary Review (the first poem in its issue). Keywords/Tags: photos, photographs, pictures, album, keepsakes, mementos, ghosts, phantoms, past, memories, recollections, tears, grief, anguish, glory
Apr 11, 2020
Apr 11, 2020 at 1:34 AM UTC
At noontime, it is severed,
just like in any other time. The walls no longer flounder but
crucify the ground or vice versa. Sunlight floods
bodies of rocks. At the height of illumination, there is no process
adequate to describe. The bramble of illusions swerves to allure.
Drunk in the surprise of the founding: the rusting roof from the nearby
school still there. Solid as entity, fluid as trance. Deep with the phantom
pain of it, I feel its drone marauding with even-inflicted sharpness of memory.
This is how far you’ve already gone, towards the invisible charm of falling apart.
There is an opening that is left behind. I found it here,
in the chasms suspended in an open field drawn together
in the alternative. This is all that you’ve ever lost.
Reclamation is a sure defeat. Retreat, you said but didn’t.
Straining towards this ruined object.
This will not wait you out. It casts its weight over my hands
struggling to take picture of, imperiled as if these unsolicited quakes contain
the image within a broken frame. Strife deep within a sense of responsibility
is to show you what was left – everything but wasted origin, demeaned by
the disintegration of, to suffer the penalty of decision.
To face the wall than each other, revealed in some place known.
All the junk of this requiem reused as deficiency.
Elsewhere it could be another thing, but to me nothing but a net
to falling, limbless creature, or a basin to the water of surrender.
It aspires to be something, to be another story of, to be a room of disappearance
is what it is to me – across the kitchen sink mapped out near the cupboard,
or the tiny, mincing steps to your room, the posters scattered everywhere like
avatars. The partitions still exist dividing real from illusory, far from near,
a luminescence or opacity – still dragging along the detritus, strophe by strophe,
rearing the intensity of artifacts but none found.
How does this breathe with no life? How do these ghosts ambulate
in the bare and naked space when horrors wish to be unseen? How this wishes to be
unperturbed in media res, and how it dissolves to be now, infinite, is substantial
to tragedy. To be consoled by nothing but the pure sight of a once dwelling.
Hang a picture of you in the wall. The wall the bears no foundation. This recall.
May 18, 2016
May 18, 2016 at 12:30 AM UTC
Premises:
1. Identity (or virtue if one wants to be an old-fashioned stoic) takes primacy in questions of morality and judgment. Concept is highlighted by Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy, ca 534. "She (Lady Philosophy) contends that happiness comes from within, and that one's virtue is all that one truly has, because it is not imperiled by the vicissitudes of fortune."
2. If this supposition is true, then it stands to reason that, as the struggle for identity has been one of the overriding conflicts in my life, all decisions made must be deferred to my own concept of right and wrong.
3. Why? Because to compromise one's beliefs is to compromise one's self. In doing so, one betrays that which defines them.
Problems which arise as a result of this perspective:
1. Openness to new experience and ideas is somewhat curtailed.
2. Tendency to stagnate.
3. Conflict with other pillars which make up my belief system, namely radical acceptance of loved ones.
In other words, I hold my identity to be the one inviolate thing that no one can take away from me. However, I've had to fight tooth and nail to figure that out, therefore I'm extremely reactive to perceived threats to my belief system. Source of Cognitive Dissonance > trying to reconcile absolute judgments on good vs. bad with acceptance.
Sep 23, 2014
Sep 23, 2014 at 5:53 PM UTC
1 Method:
Witness nothing but the body
hurtling at best, if not dilapidated.
Cusped in space, never held.
Behead the music,
if not the conductor.
It will happen when everything has
expired in the threshing.
Wring me pure, make me delicate,
chain me in the wrongness.
Embody this figurine pierce it with stem
break it gossamer as petals imperiled ad infinitum
sleek as a metaphor rising from rinsed perfume.
2 Chance Operation:
Say when she caresses / this mired setting:
it is of preparation.
Seize this mean when preparatory.
Turn you as inside-out cleared from veiling.
In a vitrine you wish to be freed from,
examined, never granted meaning;
Mundane the discovery.
A throb of fever gone from tepid bath
walking into space, abled.
Acute blunder is study, wash me with theory.
Sullen is the word for it, entitled to acute error.
Say when it ceases,
tranquilized. Never waking up, fastens to
3 Dreamwork:
Always still is the heart.
I envy the water midstream. Fingers partition
when infiltration is sure of. A conscious removal
merits the continual of lobotomies.
Augur this dim presence, make it raw again
infallibly, make it my body. Forge my skin out of
and listen to it. Feel the drone of this machine
making space less tolerable. This begins
an end, but of what pursuit is this here
always a vision Blinded by definition
away from here?
May 22, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 3:08 AM UTC
Walking on a street's path
A distance as far as I've been back
Lessons and retrospects carried in an heavy backpack
Streets lights off standing tall under the sky'
s dark
Dark as panther in a zoo or a park
O' peace of sight
Rare are you in my days
Endangered sanity at night's plight
The glory of day uplifted and dropped in an emigrant's flight
Walk on keep
A voice passes me by
In dark knowledge of my start
Not even enfants it has been
But grown exceedingly pass my reach
Still walking yet destination awaits me
Legs crumbling head unarmed
Growing older yet they passed me
Ha' you famous of sight haven't you grown
Said as they were inferior now superior
I am as they were before
Lights inplaced at my backpack
Never knew I these lights is a collection mindless to my knowing
The lights of conquest and triumph which beam is essential
Lightings of value and dignity exuding inevitable shine
Lights of blunder rays so repeat them not
All these lights never knew I
The inscrutability invades my mind
Evoked my soul to it's captivity
O' spirit of exigency,deceit, corruption and unpatriotism
Can't thy be exhumed
Control my mind ignore the lights pack
Walking through out the darkness you caused
Growing older moving backwards
Retrospects of who I was
Doctor now patient
Teacher now student
Long gone host now parasite
Too late to back
Extremely damaged to front
Can't just find a way through this darkness
Old lady of Africa
Treasured by history
Record as a routine I've broken
Adrift till I've broken my self
About to none
That's for the others impeccably
Imperiled by a spirit in mind
Collecting the strings yet I play not any
Evinced impetuosity mischief set in motion
Can't desorb in this modern solvent
Peter natural to be seen as such
I should be the star that parties with the moon
The zephyr that coaxes the tree leaves in mobility
Being not the sun that chases the moon away the sky
Nor the fire that burns the trees
This darkness drives away my delight
Impute backwardness
Lest I think those lights I ignored years long
This journey seems impervious
This dire adventure is far from the abyss of remedy
Dec 22, 2020
Dec 22, 2020 at 10:23 AM UTC
"Let it be red,
let it be ripe,
let it wield ruin..."
"Lick and taste the desire...for vengeance"
"The fire within, from the dragon's cradle,
lies and gives heat and pure breath, as spirit, wild.."
"Orb burned black,
Tender center attacked,
Pure blood refract,
See through pain
To the crack."
"Queeny damsel feigning need imperiled,
She whimpers sweetly, like a pixie's herald.
I spring to service, with comedic tripping,
All the while, behind that mask, her ruse is dripping."
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 3:34 PM UTC
Handy dandy blues clues plain
all purpose favorite refrain
i.e. "impossible mission"
courtesy complimentary doppelganger
G.I. ("Government Issue", "General Issue",
or "Ground Infantry") Jane
in tandem with Alyson Chain
comes to the rescue attempting
to describe entrenched nonproductive
crippling psychological mindset ascertain
most any reader would consider insane
embedded deep within
genetic code possibly
inherited maternal grandfather,
who emigrated nineteenth century Ukraine,
he (purportedly tailor by trade)
only spoke Yiddish,
language used by Jews
in central and eastern Europe
before the Holocaust.
Originally German dialect with
words from Hebrew, and
several modern languages and
today spoken mainly in US, Israel, and Russia.
Mental illness, (or predisposition thereof)
linkedin courtesy heredity,
supposition nuts so crazy nor insane,
yet nothing further about biology
Iberia lee kant hex Spain
emotional status concomitantly
intertwined with possible causes
such as: Autoimmune, Behavioral,
Cognitive, Neurological,
Environmental - inextricably lodged
within cerebral domain
manifesting as countless
fixations, I disdain
(in retrospect) precious time forsaken,
and absolute zero benefits to gain,
and inflicted severe strain
father and mother felt helpless,
especially when anorexia nervosa
nearly imperiled life source villain
rent asunder body electric drivetrain
brought corporeal standstill
loosed maniac running
rampant within brain
emaciation delivered me
at death's door
prescribed medications Mellaril and Elavil
nsync with psychiatric intervention plus
mother as licensed practical nurse wayne
wright me malnourished body
nutrient fortified drinks,
I passively did abstain
eventually grudgingly gained weight
buffering scrawny skeletal
skein knee membrane
definitely stunted growth plus chain
reaction impacted livingsocial
courtesy thank you me private Charlemagne
promoted cultural revival known
as Matthew Scott Harris'
Carolingian Renaissance.
Nov 11, 2019
Nov 11, 2019 at 2:58 PM UTC
Through those elected
deceptive meets collective
tearing down monuments erected
to deny dominance projected
but the counterculture
hounds and vultures
shroud the souls hurt
with shouts of sulfur.
The goblin fray
waddling parade
ballista barricade
sends us on the path of the dodo
dipping cheese in the snow cone
as we freeze for our photo
of an apocalypse in slow-mo.
We break by blade
so we brake by day
they break like they're paid
to brake in the way
which adds thirty minutes to my drive
because two cars collide
on the median's other side.
Battling babble
rattling rattles
adding addles
to paddling paddles
fighting against the current
of the unobservant
dumb obscurants.
They only want to confabulate
to **********
the master state
and master race
obfuscating the rhetoric
using anger to redden it
once you get ahead of it
they ask you to take a sedative.
I'd like to live in a grassy township
instead of this trash heap brown ****
but I'm massively bounded
to the ones who found it
from the other side of the bath
they brought their wrath
to set our path.
The blasted puppeteers
laughed for ******* years
now collapse in sudden tears
projecting their own worst fears
on their imperiled peers
who are scared to steer
near the flying spears.
They want to annex the city
of the loving and living
for their own selfish bidding
using obstruction for corruption
like injunctions against inductions
for interruption dysfunction
at our most pivotal junction.
Assaulting offense
halting progress
absolving nonsense
as purely God sent
is fought with reason and logic
so we bring them their audit
but they use thick ink to blot it.
We found the virus
but we can't cure it
until we've silenced
the obscurants.
Mar 11, 2021
Mar 11, 2021 at 6:49 AM UTC
The Genie is now out of the bottle,
and referred to as ‘The Net’
Where hackers are countries unto themselves,
empowered worldwide—great threats
Able to intrude and disrupt at will,
weaving a new kind of hell
With privacy ***** and freedom attacked,
—barraged, our future imperiled
(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2017)
Mar 15, 2017
Mar 15, 2017 at 11:38 AM UTC