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Indian Phoenix Apr 2012
Brown sugar sapotas
Blending with custard alfonso mangos
And bold sweet lime juice

Georgette saris
Pairing with uncut diamond necklaces
Mixed with peals and rubies

Gently sloping palm trees
Swaying in balmy sultry air
And hazy golden sunsets

Frenetic yellow autos
Competing with dusty zipping mopeds
Mixed with ambulating pedestrians

Aromas of cumin
Blending with the sewage
Other times with incense

Glows of brass oil lamps
Singing in hums of prayer
Added with turmeric's incantations

Brightly-patterned salwars
Accentuating gemstone bindis
Comfy fitted leggings

Savory masala dosas
Coupling coconut chutney
Meter-high filter coffee
Sheldon Dsouza Mar 2015
It’s the beginning of the monsoons and of the week,
A clouded chilly one with the clouds blanketing the sun.
I’m struggling to get out of bed and into my daily routine,
Running late as always, there’s never time for fun.

The first rains of the season were not welcomed with a smile,
Cars, Buses and mopeds splashing and spraying water all around.
People cursing the rains and others on the roads,
Racing to the office is not as easy as it may sound.

It’s a dark dull day with no sunshine to light my path,
And the rain to rob me of the dryness I had left.  
As a child I remember this being different in every way,
The rain bringing me cheer and happiness, never indulging in theft.

Stopping at a red light, all wet and soggy,
I see this small figure making way between the vehicles standing.
On every window and door she knocked with enthusiasm,
This little girl hopping around in every puddle landing.

Trying to sell the water lilies she had in her hand,
Not letting the frowns or the drops of rain her spirit lower.
She shines off all the hate and the disgust,
Through the muck and water walking to sell this pretty flower.

All of the dullness and gloom she got rid.
A smile on my face and in my heart she brought,
This little girl with those bright water lilies,
Like the flower she sold, all eyes and hearts she caught.

Bringing smiles and spreading fragrances in times so dull,
The water lily blooms in the muck and conditions degrading.
So did this little ******* this dark rainy day,
Returning cheer and happiness drained in the rain by blooming.
Jade Ivy Jun 2013
Mopeds, Mercedes
Dandelions and daisies
Churches
Mosques
Women masked
Exposed eyes
Revealing
More than the body
Ever could.
Lingerie
Sold openly on the street
Olives
By the kilogram
To fast-talking
Fast-walking
Men and women
Young and old.
Ancient ruins,
Ruined
The fall of one civilization
Destroyed
Merely to give rise
To one that will
Only hope to make men
Worth remembering.
Mystery lies
In the lives of artifacts
Bare finger tips
Graze over frescoes
Religion
Art
Expression
Litters every corner
Accompanied by waste
And poppies
Blood red
Amidst the gray haze
Of cigarette smoke
And pollution
Clouding the view
Of snowcapped mountains
Diamond lakes
Undisturbed
Surrounded by
Mopeds, Mercedes
Dandelions and Daisies
Don Bouchard Dec 2013
A great and sprawling land, China.
I flew halfway 'round the globe
To find a vast conundrum:
Cities burgeoning,
Young and old
Spires of glass
Pillars of steel,
Empty or filled,
Roads new and old:
New Bentleys and Buicks,
Two cylindered trucks,
Three-wheeled taxis,
Bell ringing bicycles,
Wheelbarrows laden,
Grandmothers pushing carriages,
A million mopeds...
And everyone busy.

Ships at Qingdao,
Lovers on the boardwalks,
Blue-green glass touching the sky,
Reflecting the ocean.

Sidewalk musicians
Strum Chinese songs
'Neath kite-filled skies
Beside the spiraled Winds of Change.

Beijing, capitol and dragon-city,
Towers beside the ancient Wall,
Hosts the world,
Puts on her civil face,
Bows greetings to the fawning planet,
Eager to earn industrial favors.
She shrouds herself in smog,
Hides her slithering tail
Snaking world-ward over distant mountains.

---------------------------

Uneven is the change;
Wealth beyond imagination
Fuels the work of towering cranes
Pivoting above a poorer crowd's starvation...
A jet set crowd whose growing never wanes...
Economic challenge of the oldest of all nations.

Published today 14.12
I am interested in the aftermath of communist/socialist revolutionary societies. What I saw indicates that the rich grow richer and more powerful, while the poor remain poor and oppressed...not much different than what I witness in the United States in the 21st century. The wealthy enforce laws, excuse themselves from national policies such as health care, and work at leveling the poorer and middle classes, while they maintain their socio-economic superiority. Just last year, a Chinese businessman's son destroyed a Lamborghini because he was angry about the poor service he received at a repair shop...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytDotYaDYN0. The money from that car could have fed hundreds for weeks. How the world changes, but remains the same....
Quinn May 2011
and there is some beauty
in listening to mouths
speak a language
that you may not understand
but at the bottom of the screen
stream the words
that leave the lips

you begin to realize
all you've got to do is read
and that you haven't
forgotten how to
take it all in

and as boys fall in love
with girls in cafes
and ride around on mopeds
and ******* their bodies
to men who needn't the money,
but the ***
because they haven't touched
their wives since
they gave birth
to their second child

you begin to realize
how beautiful
french truly is
and that you haven't forgotten
what montmartre's graves
look like in the evening's fleeting light

and as a girl falls in love
with two men at once
and they discover
how sordid lovers can be
while painting their
stories for all artistic
eyes to drink in slowly
and they lay on their
brand new queen,
because there just isn't
room for three
on a twin

you begin to
remember that spanish
is full of passion
and that you haven't forgotten
everything you learned in tenth grade

words may be formed
with different movement
of our tongues
and you may not have the
slightest idea what i'm saying
as i scrawl down these lines,
but i'm certain
that we've all found beauty
in listening to someone
pour their heart out
on the page
©erinquinn2011
antipode Jul 2010
The fuselage must gleam
in a pink Pacific sunset
at 29000 feet
inside, I am brought puffed cellophane pouches of tamarind by attendant ladies and men
and a sanitary case wraps my pillow.

Bangkok’s taxis are driven by a man with bones for a neck on cracked
roads that vanish into blind ways.
Later a child – spying left – pulls me through a curtained door into an ante-room to
sell me cling-wrapped copies of Japanese slasher movies. “Cheap!”
Flies circle a mound of meat spiked to a vending cart -- “special for you.”
A sea of mopeds rumble up the road and chase me between parked cars
Tattered hunks of plastic bag blow past off the beach.

At night gut rot infects the air, and I walk in brown puddled streets.

The tar sky smothers above the neon and the barkers and the *** for $10.  This last part was in the guidebook.

A woman sits, cloaked in a shawl, selling women’s apparel, all arranged on pale and chalky mannequins, angled at attention.
They wear the rouge of the truth-telling jester.
Their mouths are gaping, smiling, lurid, laughing, howling.  Eyes wide, piercing and empty, excited.
They look like me. And I look away.
The woman’s throat moves.  Or does she chuckle?
“For you.”
Nigdaw Jun 2019
I lie here, supine
Listening to sirens
Heading out towards the motorway
Somewhere, someone's evening
Has turned bad,
In the streets outside the echo
Of teens on mopeds
Reverberates between the
Terraced houses, squeezing
All they can out of a 125 engine
While squeezing all the joy that is left
Out of everyone's sunday night,
Before we all head meekly to work
On monday morning
Weekend warriors, tamed by
The restraints of finances,
Needing to earn the freedom
Of another fix next friday.
I lie here on my side
A pillow blocking at least some
Of the cacophony,
More sirens head out towards
The motorway, someone's life
Has turned into a disaster
All I wanted was an early night.
SummertimeLace Mar 2015
Taking walks. Daydreaming. Stickers. School Spirit. My friends. Living in a small town. Japan. Singing. Painting my toenails. Pranks/ practical jokes. Painting. Stretch canvas. Costumes. Dipping my fingers in melted wax. Style. Soda. Spending an hour typing at a coffee shop. Musicals. Back to school season. Mopeds. Good hair days. Naps. Not walking up but looking at a beautiful staircase. being alone. My ankles. Playlists. Spending entire days in pajamas. Holidays. Telling stories. Spontaneity. Theme parks. Bookshelves. The word copacetic. Boxes. Empty journals. Surprises. Doing things in groups. Doing things alone. Getting real mail. Decorating. Small forks. A good hug. Gift cards. New Years Goals. Going out to dinner. When someone else remembers some great story about me/us that I’ve forgotten. Toy stores. Fireplaces. Breakfast foods. Journaling. Crying for a good reason. Doorbells. Pointless adventures. My birthday. Reasons to make wishes
Not really a poem but thought it would be fun to share and might bring another a glimmer of happiness. :b
Gillian Jun 2014
a phone call from a parked
toyota in hyde park
rings my desk in guadalajara
i have just settled an argument
about mopeds and fat girls
you're drunk, crying, hyperventilating and
i am booking a flight to chicago as soon as
i hear  your tenor

you begged me to come
charged me with childlike charm
that i was guilty of loving our sister
more than you, an outsider

never one to be alone, you
brought me home,
showed me Chicago

that hole in you filled now
you wish i was far away
so you could call in
every unsunny now and then
Michael T Chase Mar 2021
I lay here and stare at the stitching in my new hat made in Bangladesh.
There are few other things I know about this country.
I imagine the sewing machines and brown fingers and faces working to get by.
Some, I imagine, with mopeds.
I imagine the teams of fabric.
The spools of thread.
Sewing on a tag that they may not be able to read.
Amongst the tropic-like weather.
Annual income less than what I make in a month.
That's about what my paper route paid: $600/year.
Reflections
Ken Pepiton Sep 2019
Old notes, from before

what they did was imagine a future
the future using a memory (meme) locken in their DNA to cognize

sameness

Defragmenting your mind
disassociate certain ideas from mis conceptions

cost of living, reap what you sow

Lost and know it, is there a way

What if the show (the trial) is a series of phone calls--
listener hears both sides

--- but never speaks--
When is the reward for not doing ever as great as
the reward for done?

A riddle for the robber jailed for doing?
A query for the poet who never wrote?
The singer who never sang, an audition in silence?

Eaking, painful words that say see, soundlessly

and fifteen years passed by
I must say
I know the answer there
I must say
I see farther now than then

Suffer it to be so now. See the music
sing
Sufficient unto the day (no more)

Sop with me, come and dine.

-- Ask the guest to say grace

gracefully, the guest rises to full height,

tears the heel from the loaf,
slowly sops it in the cup of Mogen David,
provisioned by the host,
slowly lifts the soppy bread to lips open
for a bite,

taken, then chewed gently, and swallowed,

Amen. The guest sits and tucks
and gracefully scoops his portion of
a side of beef and three old hens who ceased to lay.

Grace for grace, he mutters, in his own gluttonous way.
as all the tucker's tucked into him.

Smallest child asks, who invited that?

Oh, that.
That's a metaphor. A parable. You see as if that hapt,

you remember it oh so well,
then the story ended and you woke here with memories of never beens.

Not every efforting word makes ineffable sense, some must be heard
to be spoken, other wise they lie

idle, idling like dragons spewing ashes in micro bits of death,
in their slumber atop the horded
answer to all things,

money. the real thing. the idea from which it formed.

A time trading scheme.
Back in the day, we were paid for our attention to reality, then

something changed at the DNA level, down in the core of where we come from,
effortlessly, until

air, whoosh squeeze that back outa me
breathe, old man,

old notes, like we should
honest-account the smell of Dehli
diesel idling in clogs of mopeds and vespas and honda fifties
like Saigon outside Than Son Nhut when the Americans were there

such idle words as these, left lying asif believed
now as when they flowed from a steel nib pen in some era of errors past
parsing sensibly

like old photos in a family album, with no recognizable faces or places

longer lasting than our carbon foot print,
longer than the thread to Silicon Beach sewing stiches before the skein
ripped with the receding tide of couldabeens,

before there was a fast lane, a 56 K modem was a rocket ship, too slow

here come ol' Flattop, Junior, **** Tracey's cutting edge hacker,
Flatop Jones, Junior,
cruisin' Route 66, in 1956, while the Hungarian Freedom Fighter was
grasping at
a dream,

The Yanks are coming, but
they didn't.
Seeya.
I found my personal task spiral binder from the expansion of the silicon bubble into the internet through to the MyTechPeople rollout after the IPO that never hapt. A historical note.
Jackie Mead May 2018
Winding down, getting ready for fun
Another day at work, almost done

Off soon for a vacation
A short visit to our second favourite nation
First stop Marseille
This is our first stay
Weve been told, a train ride to the top
Views of the Port, your breath will stop

Then further South, we will go
To a familiar place that works itself into your soul
Ramatuelle, St Tropez
One of our most favourite places to stay

From across the bay the Orange Dome is clear, signalling you are near
Luxury yachts in the bay, moored for a week or maybe just the day

The sun beats down on the water, which is glistening
St Tropez has a special sound, if your listening
It's a crazy sound of Mopeds and Smart cars, Moko Jeeps, ambulance noises, people playing on the beach
The noise is not deafening but is truly unique.

During our stay we will relax and unwind, good food, good wine, good sand, good sea
Just unwinding in the sun, me and my loved one
Good friends inviting us into their home, it simply is the best
I can't wait to get there and to truly rest
Not long now, mini road trip starts tomorrow, first stop Twickenham for the Rugby Finals and then a hop over on the Channel tunnel, night stop in Valence Sunday evening , Marseille for two nights and st tropez for 4 nights staying with friends who live there, cant wait over the years it has become home from home
Ilya Krivonosov Mar 2019
The hour will return,
Bad things will disappear over the threshold.
Tobacco smoke curls warmer
And more melodic punk rock.

The natives wear sneakers,
Indians make tea.
Democratic mopeds
Mass-stamped China.

He laughs and cries,
It is a parody of singers.
All itching to **** him,
Tease other people's fathers.
Zywa Mar 2021
It is dark
a wall at the left side
the ditch at the right
and far away
I hear mopeds looming up
at the end of the path
catching me
in their light
the sound becomes loud

my pounding heart presses itself
close against the wall
a minute and it will be over

They stop
1973 – Delft

Collection "Life line"
Donall Dempsey May 2023
DEARLY BELOVED WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY

The death has been announced
of Dónall Dempsey

after he had fallen
into an anagram machine.

Our hearts go out
to all the poems he left behind

and to those poems
he had yet to write.

It is claimed that his last words
were "Wow...the surreal is so real!"

Now that he has shock off
his mortal coil

he has become a nice man
and beloved by all

despite this not being
the situation when

he was amongst
the living.

Strange what
a little death can do.

He has said from
beyond the grave

that he intends to
continue to write

using an anagram
as his nom de plume

And so the poet
Desmond Palely

was born to
the world of words.

Critics have complained
that his more recent work

smacks of Dadaism
and has a strong Surrealist streak

not obvious in
his previous work.

Dempsey's debt to
Addy Nell poems -obvious.

This is his first
dead poem.

DAMPENED LYSOL

by Desmond Paley
( the artist formerly known
as  Dónall Dempsey)

Deny molds leap!
Deny mold pleas!
Deny.... old sample.

Dolmens played
"Do!" Emlyn pleads.

Addy Nell poems
MODELLED *****

Del madly opens
"Almonds deeply...almonds... yelped!

"EMPLOYED LANDS
- dense Lloyd map

LEMONY PADDLES
Demons LP  -Delay!

Doll Mandy...pees.
Many dolls... peed.

Doll's ependyma
dopa end smelly.

Monday spelled -
medleys Poland

"**** Polly seed!"
DNA mopeds yell.

Doped man yells
"Many doped ells!"

Famous poet and critic Ray Pool
observes candidly

"This new nonsense makes
utter nonsense of his old nonsense!"

Heather Moulson is quick
to point out

"Now that he is dead, Dempsey's
interest in a doll's neuroregeneration

may result in many dolls
coming to life and enjoying

normal humans pastimes
like peeing and buying

the Demons long awaited
long playing 45."

But wait...breaking news!
Dempsey has been spat out

of the fatal
anagram machine.

And is now as alive
as he ever was!

We now take back
all the nice things we said

about him
in his obit.
Donall Dempsey May 2020
DEARLY BELOVED WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY...

The death has been announced
of  Dónall Dempsey

after he had fallen
into an anagram machine.

Our hearts go out
to all the poems he left behind

and to those poems
he had yet to write.

It is claimed that his last words
were "Wow...the surreal is so real!"

Now that he has shock off
his mortal coil

he has become a nice man
and beloved by all

despite this not being
the situation when

he was amongst
the living.

Strange what
a little death can do.

He has said from
beyond the grave

that he intends to
continue to write

using an anagram
as his nom de plume

And so the poet
Desmond Palely

was born to
the world of words.

Critics have complained
that his more recent work

smacks of Dadaism
and has a strong Surrealist streak

not obvious in
his previous work.

Dempsey's debt to
Addy Nell poems -obvious.

This is his first
dead poem.

DAMPENED LYSOL

by Desmond Paley
( the artist formerly known
as  Dónall Dempsey)

Deny molds leap!
Deny mold pleas!
Deny.... old sample.

Dolmens played
"Do!" Emlyn pleads.

Addy Nell poems
MODELLED *****

Del madly opens
"Almonds deeply...almonds... yelped!

"EMPLOYED LANDS
- dense Lloyd map

LEMONY PADDLES
Demons LP  -Delay!

Doll Mandy...pees.
Many dolls... peed.

Doll's ependyma
dopa end smelly.

Monday spelled -
medleys Poland

"**** Polly seed!"
DNA mopeds yell.

Doped man yells
"Many doped ells!"

Famous poet and critic Ray Pool
observes candidly

"This new nonsense makes
utter nonsense of his old nonsense!"

Heather Moulson is quick
to point out

"Now that he is dead, Dempsey's
interest in a doll's neuroregeneration

may result in many dolls
coming to life and enjoying

normal humans pastimes
like peeing and buying

the Demons long awaited
long playing 45."

But wait...breaking news!
Dempsey has been spat out

of the fatal
anagram machine.

And is now as alive
as he ever was!

We now take back
all the nice things we said

about him
in his obit.

— The End —