"rushdie" poems
You lived alone in the solititude
Of pure hundred years in Colombia
Roaming in Amacondo with a Spanish tongue
Carrying the bones of your grandmother in a sisal sag
On your poverty written Colombian back,
Gadabouting to make love in times of cholera,
On none other than your bitter-sweet memories
Of your melancholic ***** the daughter of Castro,
Your cowardice made you to fear your momentous life
In this glorious and poetic time of April 2014,
Only to succumb to untimely black death
That similarly dimunitized your cultural ancestor;
Miguel de Cervantes, a quixotic Spaniard,
You were to write to the colonel for your life,
Before eating the cockerel you had ear-marked
For Olympic cockfight, the hope of the oppressed,
Come back from death, you dear Marquez
To tell me more stories fanaticism to surrealism,
From Tarzanic Africa the fabulous land
An avatar of evil gods that are impish propre
Only Vitian Naipaul and Salman Rushdie are not enough,
For both of them are so naïve to tell the African stories,
I will miss you a lot the rest of my life, my dear Garbo,
But I will ever carry your living soul, my dear Garcia,
Soul of your literature and poetry in a Maasai kioondo
On my broad African shoulders during my journey of art,
When coming to America to look for your culture
That gave you versatile tongue and quill of a pen,
Both I will take as your memento and crystallize them
Into my future thespic umbrella of orature and literature.
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 4:57 AM UTC
Some people write, but rarely read,
That seems to me most strange indeed,
They've read less than a hundred books,
Yet think they imitate the looks,
Of Sassoon, Cummings, Keats and Pound,
Or think they imitate the sound,
Of Lennon, Dylan, or Shakur,
And sometimes think they've offered more,
Than Chaucer, Wilde or Shakespeare could,
And claim they're more misunderstood,
Than even Salman Rushdie was,
Which really ticks me off because,
After having read such wondrous works,
A sense of failure always lurks,
Inside me whenever I write,
Yet they think they've done well tonight!
I hate them all! That's it - I've said it!
But they won't know until they've read it,
Which is quite doubtful, I'd attest,
Who'd read my work and skip the best?
Dec 29, 2015
Dec 29, 2015 at 1:55 AM UTC
Remember when bullets bounced off our chests;
when a goose steppin hoard o' mad men held no sway,
thick eyebrowed men plotted plans hunkered in bunkers,
But we could lick the likes of Adolf
-- any day
Remember when bullets bounced off our chests;
when the Ayatollah lobbed fatwas at our ****
we could raise a middle digit - to the Eejit.
coz Rushdie was quite cusdie
-- what a farce.
Remember when bullets bounced off our chests;
Al Qaeda n the cowards planted bombs.
bin laden poked the eye of big bald eagle
was it legal; when he brought it home
-- to moms.
Remember when bullets bounced off our chests???
Sep 12, 2010
Sep 12, 2010 at 8:29 AM UTC
. *and today's prime concern of the day? i can't access the recipe site for Australia's master-chef... maybe it's Australia, and their restrictions, or it's the ******* E.U... but... come to mind... last year i could access Eliza's triple-fried tamarind chicken... my god! they're going after restricting access to food recipes!*
could i ever think any woman as being, "ugly",
neglected, yes,
but... "ugly"?
please...
all manner of things become beautiful
around the mandible zenith upon
the grinding wheel of the big O...
nothing quiet like deathly screaming
in the hollow of the night,
but some drunkard loser -
speaking in tongues and recollecting
a myth of a patriarch
akin to Abraham...
'it's just the moon, you shit-face!'
'yeah, and my grandmother sees
a Herr Tvardovsky in it from
time to time, riding a ******* cockerel!'
which equates to a banality of
two things (well, three):
1. she shouldn't have been given
opiates during WWII to shut
the **** up, as a baby, so my great-grandparents
could hide in the Polish countryside,
i.e war zone....
2. i shouldn't be drinking and reading
religious text /
listening to Finnish folk songs...
3. about that Hollywood thing...
how movies are getting ******** and
******** by the day...
see... in philosophy there's this point,
not a Hegelian dialectic crap,
a Kantian coordinate,
a starting point,
zee: res per se...
a thing in itself...
blah blah... noumenon...
i hardly think t.v. shows will reach this
level of "self-consciousness"...
i.e. will be making t.v. shows about
making t.v. shows...
English soap opera tide barrier...
but movies have certainly turned
to focus on this, "vantage" point...
the disaster artist for starters...
birdman?
eh...
and like any cascade of falling
down from an airplane akin
to the opening image from
Salman Rushdie's the satanic verse...
mighty fine looking up
and cackling while flapping your hands
in imitation of a Canadian goose.
ha ha ha... ah... **** never gets old.
Sep 29, 2018
Sep 29, 2018 at 10:29 AM UTC
Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;[email protected])
I love life, because in living you get all problems
I love eating because you can constipate if you eat a lot,
I love women because they reduce pocket giants to beggars,
I love children because they instill economic tension to parents,
I love trees because green snakes derive poison from them,
I love poor people because their life is pure experiment,
I love rich people because they snobbishly love themselves
I love motor vehicles because they depreciate in a decade,
I love Americans because they have drones for Gaddafi,
I love Americans because they know nothing beyond their borders,
I love the British because they have a monarch in their democracy,
I love Europeans because they were perfect in colonialism,
I love Africans because they are natural stooges, but very showy
I love the Chinese because they are all short, young and commutalists,
I love the Catholic Church because it has liberal piety,
I love Muslims because they are not intellectually tolerant to Rushdie,
I love young girls because they rarely sense danger,
I love Germans because they made a beetle car; Volkswagen,
I love the Japanese for honesty; they declared me Shinto of poetry,
I love my wife for her spendthrift culture
I love my son for his disgust of school and books,
I love myself for being a poetic rapscallion,
I love everything for in love you display your folly,
I love music, wine and money; they expose you to the robbers
I love short people for their mediocrous thought pattern
I love tall women; they are dull, honesty and rarely divorce,
I love English hunchbacks for they are famed for being erotically strong.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 6:50 AM UTC
sweat drips down my face,
the floor swims beneath me
and smoke ribbons out of my mouth and nose.
mid-summer in an Arabic bar
with some ******* touching the dancer all over
and saying ******* over and over again.
he stares at her hips.
the mirror is on one side of me,
and one half of a pair of speakers is beside
my ear.
it's gigantic.
it blares music that my friend tells
me is from some new Bollywood movie.
two hands grab mine and i'm up.
one link in a circle, dancing a
Middle-Eastern two-step that's only slightly
familiar.
faces come in and out of my line of sight.
i recognize none
and feel as if i'm in a Salman Rushdie novel.
maybe i'm Haroun, in a new place with a blue genie
saving a sea of stories, a princess, a land, and my father.
but then again, maybe not.
i would never save my father.
i spin, spin, spin
until i can't see straight.
i wake the next morning on the belly
dancers couch.
my friends are having coffee with her
and discussing whether or not to
take me to the hospital.
Nadia found some blow in my pocket
and flushed it down the toilet.
she found *** in the other and put it back.
they had decided to let me sleep
and from then on call me "American Dream."
Dec 19, 2010
Dec 19, 2010 at 12:37 PM UTC
Comes to pass my picture of the Middle East
(one minute and twenty one seconds of television news,
much less than I had thought)
is an inaccurate representation of people
and the individuality of their experience.
How does one measure the merit of
I am offended?
If all I know are snapshots, misdirecting
the issue, changing path to digest murdered cartoonists
killed with Allah in mind
(another misdirection)
and I am not outraged.
Sadness manifests as thick fog
blocking artificial light, splitting the rays,
opening up and flexing, the truth as is,
the sole truth we must attain;
we are slow, dying creatures.
Inborn freedoms dissolve.
Did Salman Rushdie beg forgiveness for
images of his head book-ending a spear,
or did he die a little in secret?
Suppose I am a rouser marching the streets of
New York City, a gold pendant of two
falling towers adorning
my chest-cave, Je Suis etched into my forehead
(black felt-tip).
Do you defend me?
Relish in your torment of words?
Will you bury the fire in your belly
for sake of freedom?
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 7:04 PM UTC
She,
voracious reader, nearly a book a day,
she loves Rushdie, Ishiguro, E. Stout,
and so many, many more, a daily add
to an ever growing list of auteurs, all
venerable and venerated, my little bits
pale, don’t even qualify to compare,
so what’s a poet to say, or feel, beside
tears in his eyes, so hereby withdraws his
awarded accolade, HGF,
His Greatest Fan
now that there is a vacancy, looking for
fufillment, now that there is a hollowed
hallow plus a clogged artery, side by side,
both within,
even
an officialized fossilized a
doctor declaration of “chronic heart failure”
who knew docs still diagnosed love sickness?
loss of love could manifest
itself so decisively physically,
and yet I blame her not, and
thank her for the inspiration,
for all the poems birthed in
her presence, and what swill
will /may follow will never be as good,
for memories inevitable yellowing,
discoloration infestation inevitable,
earn my pallor palest poverty
and like a used car, good enough
for daily trips to the office, but not
for cross country trips,
and perhaps
that means,
only smaller,
somewhat
used up,
and e v e n
not only,
only love poetry
open to direction
road trip to
Sweet Sorrow Land
Feb 15, 2025
Feb 15, 2025 at 2:54 PM UTC
On this cold November night
Salman Rushdie shook my hand.
An irate Ayatollah had
pronounced a fatwa on the
man
He seemed at peace, this hirsute fellow.
in his bespoke suit from Savile Row.
He signed some copies of his book
then his security man said he must go..
The lecture hall had been half full.
Perhaps some had been scared away.
I had come to hear him speak.
Freedom of speech must rule the day.
Outside Colden in the dark
an amphitheater is tucked away
A stage sunk in a bowl of grass
where Greek tragedies might be played.
Which tradition shall prevail?
I wondered to myself that day.
Will acolytes of a murderous cult
Sweep Euripides away?
A Moslem horde poured through the gates
when Rome fell for the second time.
The Divine Wisdom was defiled
and Constantine Palaeologus died.
I turn my collar against the damp
illumined by sodium vapor light
I think on Arnold's loss of faith
and ignorant armies that struggle in the
night
Jun 4, 2017
Jun 4, 2017 at 5:05 PM UTC
I met a guy named Adam,
said he was sick of being Jewish,
his parents flaunting all their wealth
& Peter wished he hadn’t been *******
by some of his brethren Christian fellows,
took him for everything he was worth.
Oh and Aashif told me he was tired
of playing pious Muslim, listening to all
those car bomb exploding on his city streets,
& Neelkamal wondered about Para Brahman,
why some of his kinsmen
treated the women
like cheap ******
So even if I have
to go underground
like Salmon Rushdie did,
I think I’ll keep my own religion,
thank the sun & the moon
& count my lucky stars
here on sacred-Earth
in blessed hiding.
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 6:33 AM UTC
Intrepid gadfly;
the voice of dissent.
Multiple times stricken,
multiple times resolved.
Though he bleeds,
still the pen that chides never bleeds,
nor is it obliterated.
For three decades and four,
death he evaded,
still, multiple times stricken,
evasive he remains.
Aug 19, 2022
Aug 19, 2022 at 3:34 PM UTC
We greet each other with apologies
Followed by instantaneous forgiveness
Silent, mutual
Screamed with half-smiles
Shy and sweet
We are polar in circumstance
From birth and forever imposed by this
Society
but we are connected by the meridian
of silent looks, obvious telepathy
but we are too rational for that
You are explicit with your shame
Your debt to me
You apologise twice more
“I’m sorry I cannot give you time”
“I’m sorry you are lonely”
A benediction,
“I hope you are not stressed”
We both know why you are sorry
You are the one
With the white picket fence
The obstacle
While I am free but kept wanting
You are sorry we only met now
I reply with my best grin
Feign confidence and
Reward you with my most beautiful laugh
Carefree; that would fool most people
But we are not most people
You know how I hurt
You are sharp
Like freshly clipped nails
I am not; I’m only beginning
But I am the loom that slowly weaves
The frays you’ve snagged
I am the carrier of your hopes
The executor of your will
So I write this poem
To keep me warm
in cold evening train rides and
The general banality
A fan-fic, of the thin pamphlet
That is our fleeting meet
I know you want to read me
Like the latest best-seller
You see clues, a blurb
My handwriting, erratic like yours
But more forceful
The authors, films
And tortured rock goddesses
I adore
My English Lit textbook
hidden in my drawer
dog-eared And scribbled
at Lessing, Rushdie and Joyce
I know you read it on Sunday
When no one was at work
Last night I covered my face
With a clean white sheet
And pretended to be your bride
I’d stand in front of headlights
Just to see your shadow
By my side
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 8:02 AM UTC
Salman Rushdie when ask decades ago
Why would you want to America zoom?
His wonderful answer:
awop bobba loo bop
a *** bam boom.
Alas, today,
the White House a corrupt sepulcher
America’s whitewashed Tomb.
Mar 10, 2019
Mar 10, 2019 at 7:49 PM UTC