"interred" 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
I am the Poet, hear my siren’s song
My woven whispers ****** ways and words
Mesmerizing, you will feel you belong
Be part of an inner circle and be heard
Write with me, no lines will be false or blurred
Together we will create and be strong
There’s no need for pleasure to be deferred
I am the Poet, hear my siren’s song
I have been sad and alone way too long
Belonging together is most preferred
Creating brings joy, won’t you come along?
My woven whispers ****** ways and words
Take a chance and your senses will be stirred
Part of our circle, not lost in the throng
We are more together, grace is conferred
Mesmerizing, you will feel you belong
All ideas are welcomed, no thought is wrong
Just know this; your spirit won’t be interred
May our venture be successful and long
Be part of an inner circle and be heard
I am the Poet
krs
July 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 6:34 PM UTC
Viking chiefs Valhalla bound,
at death, were not interred I've found.
On a fire ship they 'd place their chief
and cremate him per their belief.
Was it an obsequious grief
that gave rise to this strange belief?
For seafaring folk it scarce seems mete
to lose a captain, then burn the fleet.
With Dragon heads fixed fore and aft
Those ships brought terror, sword and shaft.
Irish Monks would think its fine
to burn one to the water line.
The ship of death was burning bright
as it sank within the fjord that night
carrying the Viking chiefs cremains
to his Viking gods' domains.
Was it conspicuous consumption
that drove the Vikings to this junction?
Perhaps after a life , ****** and gory,
they craved going out in a blaze of glory.
May 26, 2012
May 26, 2012 at 8:17 AM UTC
A Poem in 3 Parts by Sara L Russell, 4/6/15; 00:51am
I
There is a grey area between
this world and the next.
People can be foolish; they dabble in ouija, in
dowsing, in automatic writing;
and - wittingly or unwittingly,
they may open a portal
to the other side.
That is how they enter.
Beware of inviting them in.
Shadow people are there
where needle pierces skin; where the ******
sits, glassy-eyed, on the precipice of oblivion;
they lurk in unholy places where godless
politicians declare themselves to be
speaking for God;
they haunt the dreams of drunkards,
schizophrenics, junkies
and the paranoid.
But they are not spun out of dreams,
they are real.
Shadow people were there
when the ancient pharaohs of Egypt
were interred, with all their gold;
they took them to Hades
for also burying their wives
and servants, alive.
They were there
in **** concentration camps,
sitting on the left shoulders
of those who blindly carried out
orders of death and torture.
They subsist in underworlds of catacombs,
they lurk in the spaces between
our conscious and unconscious minds;
In blackened mirrors they seek out a vortex,
My friends, be the light that
keeps out the darkness,
Do not seek to question the dear and foregone,
No matter how much they are missed;
for there are others lurking in the shadows.
Be not the portal inviting them in.
II
Did I see you in Bohemian Grove,
smiling at the Cremation of the Care?
Were you there,
and did you have more than one shadow?
Did I see you in that Great Hall
with chequered floors,
where the Eye of Horus
watched over a pyramid of gold?
Did you lift a cup of
the good red wine,
did blood brothers drink each other's health,
gazing through a glass darkly?
Did we toast the Cremation of the Care,
and how many others were there?
III
Sometimes we visit Hell in our dreams,
though we may fervently pray before sleep.
There is no shame in sleeping with the light on.
Wear a cross, if you think that it will help.
Sometimes the citizens of Hell visit us,
in that stasis between sleep and wakefulnes;
they are only ever seen at the outer periphery of our vision.
It's never a good idea to look at them directly.
Sometimes they venture a little closer than the rules allow.
Sometimes the line between their domain and ours is blurred.
Occasionally, the breeze seems to whisper your name -
only, it's not the breeze.
Be vigilant.
Always try to see them first.
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 7:55 PM UTC
lord
they say
of that home overhead
is beauty rapturous
but the interred
holler a song
showing gold to be lead
for his might is rancorous
thought that allure captures still
for when have the greedy had their fill
not in this life
not in the next
for the fearful are still afraid
and will be still, when down they're laid
despite their fight
the sickly go too
for all their bated breaths
could not help in their deaths
that fed the soil what hungered so
going silently
into that goodnight
Jul 1, 2021
Jul 1, 2021 at 2:00 PM UTC
the curling smoke
from warming fires
rise into the slate
gray sky of the
Beqaa Valley
sheaves of
rising prayers
expire in twisted plumes
dissipating into the
gloom of an ever
looming winter
overcast
refugees from
the Arab Spring's
uncivil wars
gather for warmth
around waning embers,
smoldering in the underbelly
of the lowliest bottom of rusted
steel drums, tended
with scavenged debris
some thought better
suited to fortify the
faltering hovels of
last resort
the fires
join us in
communal rings
straining the
tenuous links of
brotherhood, the
politics of men
assiduously tear
asunder
we count ourselves
among the fortunate,
blessed exiles recused
from the acrimony
of desecrated cities,
welcoming the
residencies of
bewailing lullabies
of colic infants, the
searing hunger of
stunted children and the
incomprehensible babble
the elderly eloquently
speak in tongues
of a desperate
exasperation
our nagging impotence
swaddle us in ambivalent
inabilities to master circumstances
profanely denigrating our humanity
privation is
our daily bread
the bitter manna
feasting on the
animosity the banquet
of rancor generously
prepares for
peace starved
pilgrims
in these
refugee camps
the cold cuts deeper
hunger pangs
grow sharper
our blighted dignity,
vanished livelihoods,
and the presence of
recently interred
loved ones trudge
through our mean
encampment as
fully enfranchised
citizens in our
distressed
kingdom
what was lost can
never be recovered
our homeland leveled
yet doors still stand open
silently pleading all
to cross a new
threshold
the full restoration
of our hope,
the reconstitution
of our flagging
humanity, the
spark of the
holy spirit
willfully uniting us
in the salvation
of reconciliation
is nigh
we are
the divine children
stoking the embers
tending the fire
that light pathways
through the cold
darkness of a
broken world
Oh come
Emmanuel,
dwell among us
Oh come
Emmanuel
ransom once
again the
poor captives
of Israel….
Selah
Music Selection:
L'Accorche-Choeur, Ensemble vocal Fribourg
Veni Veni Emmanuel
Everywhere
Christmas
2013
jbm
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 10:48 AM UTC
A-Artifacts of long ago they're ever searching out
R-Relics in the Earth's soil layers interred deep
C-Curios from cultures past they're excavating out
H-History is alive in the things buried so deep
A-Abroad and at home their trowels seeking out
E-Enlightening the world with fragments of the deep
O-Open our eyes to the objects they shovel out
L-Lasting stories of past societies entombed down deep
O-Ongoing discoveries made with what they dig out
G-Great civilizations lie in quietness beneath the deep
I-Interesting journals and facts these specialists put out
S-Saving the ken of ancestries which are lodged deep
T-Times way back in eons past to-day bought out
S-Surfacing from the ground out of a sleep most deep
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 9:06 PM UTC
I know this foreign method
made my throbbing veins its home
'cuz the familiar's not familiar
and I'm not fine
lest I'm messed up on
wine.
And 9/10 of all the times
I've tried to crack a smile
since I lost you have
turned out as half-assed lies.
I wander streets, worn out,
while I wonder where you are
and what you're thinking about while
you drive down Henderson...
I'll try to dry out
from time to time
but fall back into bouts
internal I'm interred in
eternally--and I'll never win them.
I'll. Never. Win them.
Not without...
Sorry...
I meander through months while
you walk through my mind
--and I'm glad if you're happy?--
but you were quite angry
with me that night I took
and torched our collection
of 5 years' shared memories
QUITE ANGRY
with me.
And the things you said were mean
but you meant them.
And you were right
About how wrong I was
how bad I am,
and how I taste
like lemon lies
on the tongue.
You were right.
And I'm drunk.
And sad and sorry and selfish
and stupid and absorbed by a
salted skyline of cold, purple steel
every night.
It *****
You teach kids for a living,
about the age of 9.
Me? I try to dry out
now and then, time to time,
but it's hard.
And you're far.
And I'd still come if I could,
but it's hard
following this heart
when it's buried
at the confluence
of the Red and Assiniboine
Rivers.
Beneath The Forks...
And that heart? Like the ground above it,
it's covered
with ****** commercial architecture
and the clothing of bureaucracy,
but ****
we had fun there.
Didn't we...?
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 1:47 PM UTC
I am not old, yet.
My skin is not powdery and white, see-through like a paper lantern.
But there is a part of me which
When I dare to reach for someone I love
Reaches with brittle ***** fingers, soft and cold and fluttering like white moths
That edge closer to a flame until they catch.
There is a part of me that feels old, and fragile.
And already even in the crest of my youth I’ve cursed this body
For its frailty, its needs.
It suffers and complains, always crying out for something,
Never sated, never still.
I’ve said it feels like living inside a porcelain doll
A look, and cracks can spider out along an arm,
A word and blood can bloom beneath the surface, seeping up into
Bruised pictures and symbols.
I must always be gentle,
I must always be
Watching.
Too passionate, and fissures form, marring the cheek, spreading like shadows thrown by a lace curtain.
I stare out, burning to touch everything,
And yet I pull back:
To dare is to risk, and I’ve seen
Both reward and loss.
I have seen a thousand shining colors spread across me like sunrise,
Warming my skin,
Calling to me like prayer until a bit of light escaped through the spaces between my atoms and reached another person’s palms,
But I have also seen the pale, flat shards of myself,
Sifted through white dust in dismay
For a salvageable portion.
Indeed, there are rooms in this world where sharp edges of me still linger
Waiting in obstructed corners and beneath heavy refrigerators
To gouge a foot or snag a hem,
Interred
In the dark and hollow places where they flew when I shattered and could not gather them all.
I have known
Intimately
My own fragility,
How maddeningly breakable I am
And how difficult to mend.
And there is a part of me now, always,
Which whispers to me when I would be bold,
“You are not old, yet.
But wouldn’t you just love
To live that long?”
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 10:36 PM UTC
It was at the stroke of midnight that the Earls took flight;
sailing from Lough Swilly, sheltered only by the night.
They headed for the continent fleeing from the Stuart King.
Better far a death in exile than let the English clip their wings.
They sailed to raise an army to reclaim their ancient rights,
Not admitting that Kinsdale had become their final fight.
They lost sight of Downpatrick as they sailed the storm swept sea.
The verdant hills of Ireland they nevermore would see.
The English and the Spanish had determined to make peace.
Tyrconnell died soon after, some say he died from grief.
James Stuart called them traitors; took their titles and estates.
The Gaelic order was broken and by Protestants replaced.
Tyrone would end his days in idleness; his corpse interred in Rome.
His spirit wanders restless still, a soul without a home.
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 10:31 AM UTC
he steps forward to bless us with song
benediction’s serenade
binder clips and clothespins weaken wind
as sheet music tries to take flight
with each strum he was fighting it
emoting with sad lips and blue eyebrows
taking deep breaths let out with heavy sighs
but holding steady
singing and crying come from the same place
as he sang the sun sneaked out
shadows surrendered their stronghold
a moment of warmth shown upon our gathering
near the pine tree at our father’s grave
Terence’s ashes to be interred with dad
a musician, an artist, a writer of songs and poems
a technician, an electrician, a wood worker
his many gifts now only spoken of in past tense
a son to two, a brother to eight
an uncle to many
a father to one daughter
his passion relived in his writings and works
his essence reflected in her eyes
Sep 6, 2010
Sep 6, 2010 at 10:59 AM UTC
He put a flint to the lantern once
They’d walked across the crest,
Were lost in a group of headstones that
Lay hidden from the rest,
And down in a slight depression he
Lit up a certain tomb,
Where the name of Elspeth Trelawney
Was reflected in the gloom.
Trelawney held up the lantern high
While Corby held the *****
And Gordon Bracks with an old pick-axe
Stood back, he was afraid.
‘I fear the spirits are out tonight
In this graveyard of the ******
‘Get on, and turn up the sod,’ he said,
Trelawney forced his hand.
The Squire was quiet and ashen-faced
As the two had bent their backs,
Corby tipping the earth aside
Then standing aside for Bracks,
‘The earth is solid, it’s packed right down,
We need to pick it loose,’
‘Just do whatever you have to do,
There’s little time to lose!’
The Squire had buried his Elspeth back
In eighteen twenty-four,
For seven years he had held his grief
But he couldn’t take much more,
‘I have to see her again,’ he said,
To kiss her pale, dead lips,
To stroke the hair on my darling’s head
And caress her fingertips.’
She’d taken the coach and four one day
Way out in the countryside,
The coachman, used to a horse and dray,
Had begun to speed the ride,
He whipped the horses and lost the reins
As the coach began to slide,
Tipped the coach in the watercourse
Where Elspeth drowned and died.
He hadn’t looked at his lover’s face
Before she was interred,
But tried to avoid the loss of grace
In her face that was inferred.
‘I only want to remember her
As she was in the flush of life,
Not in the throes of death,’ he’d said
When talking about his wife.
They’d rushed to hurry the burial,
On the day that she was found,
Popped her into a coffin, then,
Planted her in the ground,
Trelawney later had agonised
That he hadn’t let her lie,
‘I couldn’t bear her to be around,’
He said, with a tearful eye.
But now he wanted to see her face,
They lifted the coffin lid,
While Gordon Bracks had turned his back
To see what Trelawney did,
The horror showed on the Squire’s face
As he gazed into her eyes,
For Elspeth lay in a bleak dismay
As her fate was realized.
Her hands were raised and they looked like claws
They’d scratched at the coffin lid,
The clumps of hair she had torn right out
Was the final thing she did,
And on the lid she had scratched his name
In the torment of the ******
‘Trelawney, may you be cursed by God!’
She’d scratched, with her dying hand.
David Lewis Paget
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 7:41 PM UTC
His remains were borne away to the cemetery
And were interred in a "G" marked grave finally,
Having led he a life of wine, women and
Song. He was therefore committed to the land
Of no returning more, who on this shore was
The philanderers' prince, using his john thomas
To make lucre off ladies libido--a ******
For he knew how to set their body whole aglow
And ensured their ****** playing the field as
A merchant of amour in the Sin City of Las
Vegas and had a great liking for cards--
When easing up his muscles--and for billiards.
He's a 6'4 and broad-chested feller; chunky
Enough for that **** business. A bloke beefy!
May 16, 2012
May 16, 2012 at 2:24 AM UTC
I
Didn't
Need any new
Friends in my full life
Yet you interred my life with
A furry and vigor that couldn't be denied
Turned my world up side down
Making it topsy-turvy
Thank you for
You and
I
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 2:06 PM UTC
swimming under lightning,
lighting our submergence flash allure:
smooth bodies, bright to glimpse and shadow-grin intent
collide and mingle folds of pleasure, firmly
bent to tangle, clasp and spurn the world above,
rely on one another's breath, stored for loving
long in bubbles gasping sweet melodics free
as with imagined merfolk passion-songs of lore, prescient
lapping dance of tidal fruits you loved before they came,
moonray columns stage us in our seashift wombs--again--
within a womb--like instant chrysalises blinking luminescent bursts
i am interred within the waves you ripple into me, blind
carnal pressures built from ancient shores become the sea again
the magnitude entrances on its own, that acrophobic thrill
celestial in our interthreaded eyes, open
to a color deeply in the dark of octopodal ink
a curtain phosphorescent armpit pulse,
caressing thumb and lip, billows, sways the dance anew,
to sonar drumbeat, pulmonary height
the spinal scream a surface ripple for the sky,
symphonic deep to barely whisper into air
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 9:06 AM UTC
I found you
lone brick, of a million, one part of a mortared whole
your brothers now buried by time, without benediction
progeny of clay, shale, you were born in a kiln as hot as all creation
dragged to this plain by spoked wheel and mule--sweat of the honest illiterate
long before the dusters blew the crops to hell, and Tom Joad's kin to the promised land
the mason who laid you in a proud straight row is now in the ground too
not a mile from you, where the county put him the hot Friday a man set foot on the moon
the bricklayer’s days with the trowel long past, his memories of you, your place in all weathers interred with him
I found you , and you are the man’s legacy, he yours
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 4:09 PM UTC
. . . . . . .
. .
. . . . . . .
i would like a space marked out
wherein in silence i'd observe my sacral auguries,
and insularly divine
amid mid-dawning light contingencies,
to sweep a magic sweep for sunrise-
-tabula|_|rasa
and find, founded in a flout: a sect beyond sects
to section self sectionless~
inwrought helix interhelix nest~
and there reside attentively
()blinking() s l o w ...ly
in rainbow eyelash quiver flow,
arrows soaring ' ' ' ' ' 'centerly
to pin
each
whirl
of dream,
of sleep,
mneumonic residue,
prehensions right or wrong clear through --
symbological goo, too--
all too evidently called
from out an obvious deep
oblivion of plenum om,
or so it's said it's seen
in clear eidetic percept room
of alter overmInd of mindstuff's tomb [*]
and form of selfish altar drama gone and soon
for looking in or out or neither both
oblique, about aboutness-mirror zoom~
to which what spectionism halves
behaving in a twofold twining intro free: the finest of the fine:
insight-interred intuited sign
quiescently, albeit doubtfully at times, benign
.
.
.
.
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 4:32 PM UTC
My mind's like a seafaring vessel,
Ready to sink with an overload
Of volatile rhymes that scuffle and wrestle
And at any moment may explode
Heaven knows I've tried to stem the tide,
But every thought turns to poetry;
I fear, while interred on some peaceful hillside,
I'll be rhyming through eternity!
Oct 28, 2021
Oct 28, 2021 at 1:09 PM UTC
Jack ropes and merriopes
In solicitous rhyme in fer derilious velope
envy implicitous insectuaryan harridannous
Ensole brodequins forbearing to lace
Trace elements of that remaining empoisonous
For failure interred
Is succes disinterred? And if so, form where?
Where derinferred strands failure unerred
By error masked muscovado coloured Breadth
Pneumonic, perhaps caustically mate
Aerial’d on the glib side of acoustical elimination
Veritable under pooh stick discrimination
Matte clouds of drab depression ove in
An area of low pressure
According to yon hypothalamic forecaster. Core has ter
Fail lently viola lapidavitious stretch so she as
fer ter rousse fer ter kamuskova. An epic
Scribbled on der calen.
Sole of brevity then being approximately an inch and a
Bit minus that
Torrent all yendergelpin cleaving
The very schism wit! It cynicism
Be as may be a pea, no spelling bee entrusted
Where? In there? In that jumble of line?
Barely knows his lime from his rhyme, or indeed
Lime from lime.
He’s just trying to fill up that calendrous space
And make some sense of it.
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 3:19 PM UTC
“Sweet Kiss” was the horse and Frank Hayes was his rider,
Both destined this day to gain fame.
Frank was a stable boy on his first stake horse;
The horse too was a novice, but game.
This pairing went off at 20-1, but was well worth the risk of a “fiver”.
Sweet Kiss won the race and the bettors were stunned
for his jockey fell off, a cadaver.
Frank suffered a heart attack on the last turn
and the horse was the only survivor.
Frank Hayes, undefeated, was interred in his silks.
“Sweet Kiss”, undefeated, retired.
Jockeys are short but have memories long-
None were willing to be her next rider.
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 11:27 PM UTC
Death affirms and is the term of life;
flesh and firmness, egg and ***** the means.
Breath interred within a Word and light,
deftly perched perpetually in-between:
born to discontinuous distraction,
borne through a contemptuous nadir;
but in a moment, all's destroyed,
and in the black and empty of the void,
a helix (and a hollow core) appears.
Baphomet the emblem of Its power,
sacrament the reverence revealing
devilment to Wisdom yet to flower,
absent comprehension of Its meaning.
Pan personifies the All unbounded,
flouts the misconceptions of the seeing:
Hermes the unmaskèd death,
Aphrodite's basking cleft,
the androgyne transcends within its being.
O - not called "the little death" in jest,
Gnosis vaunted in the ebb of Lust,
though is Not, the know'r of Life and Death:
know that All It Is is what thou Wast,
Its continuity the end thou seekest
in contemplation, *** and wist for death:
Thanatos, eternal sleep,
Eros, infinitely deep,
Generation poised to manifest.
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 12:47 AM UTC
-
i look up at my feet and
understand what it is like
to be buried underneath
the entirety of the Earth—
maybe Atlas was
simply interred
after all...
s jones
2021
.
Jun 12, 2021
Jun 12, 2021 at 9:30 AM UTC
i am a survivor, i am a scavenger, i am a man with
no shame. i am an artist, i am a writer, i am an
iconoclast. i am a lover, i am a creator, i am a
destroyer. i am quality, i am worthless, i am absence.
i am man, i am conqueror, i am world-ender. i am an
addict, i am old, i am wizened. i am free, i am
young, i am unnurtured. i am secret, i am becoming,
i am a wreck. i am a shadow, i am oblivious, i am
obvious. i am obscene, i am abhorrent, i am hidden. i
am a seeker, i abstain – i am a liar. i am a deceiver, i am
an actor, i am unknowable. i am entirety, i am
citizen, i am insolence. i am thought, i am concept, i
am revoked. i am wanderer, i am thoughtless, i am
lost. i am undying, i am inured, i am fleeting. i am
alive, i am mythologized, i am end. i am a thief, i am
a monster, i am alive. i am a philosopher, i am a
thinker, i am superfluous. i am good, i am evil, i am
unaligned. i am pragmastic, i am irrational, i am
common sanity. i am emotional, i am withheld, i am
interred. i am new, i am ruined, i am interregna. i am
proper, i am erased, i am discrection. i am sought, i
am not, i am simple. i am somnolent, i am erratic, i
am errancy. i am abstinence, i am uncontrolled, i am
the world. i am fraught, i am emptiness, i am
humanity. i am dandelion, i am magnolia, i am an
albatross. i am talent, i am intelligence, i am
fettered. i am here and now, i am then and when,
i am done.
i am malice, i am harm, i am self-destruction.
i am a fighter, i am encephalic, i am lost.
i am alone, i am alive, i am free.
Jan 27, 2013
Jan 27, 2013 at 2:46 AM UTC
A lonesome threshold,
yesterday was light as confetti / from a wedding that
bled in thirty litres of martyred roses / How long are
three hundred steps from a church, to stucco walls
the colour of sorrow?
Soil, the tint of blood,
ichor of mountain Gods, deveined for lost embrace
of roots / Wind whistling away regrets in the dust of
liberated souls / Would it sing for her, embalmed
in the bowels of earth’s sanguine hum?
April heat, weighted with a dirge
of tears salted in ocean / rusting the trumpet
and violin strings / Who will tune the piano for mass,
now that those musical men sailed before her,
in paper boat memoirs?
The Goliath tree rooted in bones,
a giant on such sustenance / gatekeeper of souls
tethered to fleshy sinews in beds of solitude /
Will she be interred in fruit, as he suppers
on her animated putrefaction?
Suffering, twice a child,
once a lady, she didn’t stay long to be swaddled
in linens of pity, cottons of commiserations /
Where will I store the enameled chamber *** for
when I grow up to be her likeness?
Nightshades, funneling viscous memories,
trumpeting in a pastel wilderness, alkaloid racket
waiting to sound in the poisons of prayerful echoes /
When will they bloom, toxic with grief of a swelling past,
so I may sleep as soundly as her?
Apr 5, 2021
Apr 5, 2021 at 6:18 PM UTC
Her two golden lamps made me pause,
As she spread her liquid gaze upon my flesh,
And slowly blinked
When she discovered that I stared back.
The dry valleys of age ran crazily over her face,
Deepening as she squinted in the sun,
A sun whose weakening hold on life
Put forth its meager attempt at warming her.
Her tattered, faded scarf was wrapped demurely
About her head; I am sure they had lived together long
And seen and watched many like me pass
On the graying pavement.
When she approached, she was like an old cart
With as many creaks, the difference being that
There was no one to pull her, help her along;
Certainly not I, who was mesmerized by her limping stride.
She cast her golden lamps into mine, lifting the shade;
I could see where her pride had been interred,
Left for dead, yet a shred of dignity still tried to dance,
As she plaintively asked,
“Could I, perhaps, have but a cent?”
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 12:06 AM UTC