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Not any character of the jungle,
At the time power was kept by the single
Lion kind, risked jumping into the lions’ jaws,
Against their rapacity raising paws:
The hares and hyenas they could strangle
And devour; in their minds best were their laws
Providing rights of the mighty
As common and full sovereignty.

The era was worsened by men-hunting,
Whose guns were used the wildlife menacing.
The weak of the forest saw that succumbed
The lions, who were the first shot at, welcomed
The hunters and their faces showed, smiling.
They were deceived when the first seen were harmed
Like the lions by the same haughty
Men set against their sovereignty.

Some lions who survived called the animals
For a meeting, and the men-criminals
Were the main topic of their discussion.
The lions warned, “Will wipe us away those men
If can’t stand together as animals,
Fight them and save lion, hypo, hare and wren…”
Mocked and heckled the assembly
That ne’er had enjoyed sovereignty.

Each one’s motion was that there was no need
Of obeying on the lions, who to feed
Their cubs with their flesh used to take pleasure.
They thought their forest had become seizure
Of the men for lack of unity; freed
It’d be with or ‘thout a lion as major:
They’d trust who would bring unity
And help them enjoy sovereignty.

There came a time and there came protectors
Of the animals to stop the hunters
From destroying on the environment.
They showed in killing there’s no contentment.
So the hunters ceased to be predators,
And the fauna had no more sentiment
Of hating the humanity
That brought them peace and sovereignty.

Some of them were kept in zoo
And the kingship of the lions they did boo.
Cows, rabbits, goats - were domesticated,
And more than ever they were protected.
Such treatment them gave of humans new view:
The protectors or authors of the deed
Looked like who’d brought brutality,
But in their hearts reigned sovereignty.

Later on the lions found that in the strong
Claws dwelt no good power, but can be for long
Which is applied to all comfort giving,
That a king marching in front of trembling
Souls, as if to hell angels would belong,
One day will see his strength brought to nothing,
But where freedom ain’t scarcity
Kings and subjects share sovereignty.

What the beasts failed to know was the keepers
Of the zoo were children of the poachers,
Who’d found unfair deed what their fathers did,
To take good care of them had decided
And did not want to be called game-seekers’
Generation. In the action could read
Great kindness and humanity
The beasts savoring sovereignty.

A former foe may become a good friend,
Who breaks off with the past and turns his hand
Into protector, support provider –
Like Human Rights Activists. No wonder
Where they are from, people’s torn hearts they mend.
A protector has ne’er been intruder
As long as for tranquility
He works and preserves sovereignty.

A sovereign nation is not like a house
With its closed doors, and inside, like a mouse,
A wife is beaten and loses her life
Without neighbours’ intervention as if
Not hearkening the victim, and the louse
Of man not stopping is to save the life.
Is a land where people’s safety
Is denied full of sovereignty?

If at The Hague someone is indicted,
It means not people he has protected,
Nor that he has well governed Liberia,
But ‘cause people’s hearts he has filled with fear
And a lot of trouble he’s invited.
After shedding blood there and here,
The lions who’ve made their claws *****
Should be there washed for sovereignty.

Wherever the lions rage it’s no matter:
Matters the will to keep the world better.
Some Devil’s advocates would call nations
Not in Syria to find indications
Of crimes as if is found a wife-beater
At Holy Land or brothels it opens.
In a place where reigns sanctity
Won’t dwell breakers of sovereignty.


A rot of conception of sovereignty
Reeks when gangrene holds sway o’er a country,
In which Democracy swings at cannons;
Debates are feared that aim ruling with brains;
Wear noose as necklace who would change carry,
And the song “Independence” is hangmen’s.
Where lions and lambs live with loyalty,
There is unshaken sovereignty.
This poem aims to think of what sovereignty is and especially of its true concept.
http://www.amazon.com/author/bonim007
jose large Jun 2012
sweet Kali stands before us
an offering she holds
while all the skulls around her neck
sleep in a child's repose

there are many souls in limbo
they wander through our sight
seekers for salvation
seeking for the light

a universe lies waiting
a red planet full of stars
just beneath the lingham
that rests in Kali's arms

the dogs lie waiting patiently
while Ganesh begins to writhe
turning to a serpent
that writhes before our eyes

here's the minotaur from Jambu Dweep
wrapped in a golden fleece
telling stories in my head
the tales of ancient Greece

then Kali holds a severed head
cradled gently in her hand
while beneath the Shiva Lingham
someone lies upon the sand.....
this poem was inspired by the tryptich of my artist friend Druvinka
Blue Nile echo from shore to shore,
"Poverty in Ethiopia is no more!"

Above all,
From a precipice
To a valley when you majestically fall,
Thunderous over
The damp dell, mountain gorge when you roll,
As usual
With green, yellow and red
Rainbow arched,
Tell Ethiopia loud-
"You children thee very much adore,
A lip service they now abhor!
‘Blue Nile has no lodging,
Yet it loafs a log hauling.' "

Blue Nile, about your deeds to talk
Breathtaking, you served well
The industry without smoke,
But now you have an extra work!
Far
   And
       Wide
Ethiopia will be electrified,
With Blue Nile,
               Gebe,
                    Tekeze... at hand!
Every nook and cranny will get light,
When efforts Ethiopians unite!

The future will be bright,
When a tamed Blue Nile ceases
Unchecked to roar past
Without a respite.

No energy source runs waste
Nor any Plant will suffer a blackout!

Lo and behold Blue Nile will be subdued
For riparian countries' good!

To contribute a brick,
Ethiopians twice you shouldn't think.
Farmers have mounted on a peaceful battle,
To cover the catchment with a green mantle,
To make terrace
On each mountain
Take every pain.
To afforest the depleted f o r e s t!
Thus washing on its sway,
Blue Nile conspires no more
To carry alluvial soil away.

Here of course it is good to recall
The message of Emperor Twedrose.
"Dear guests you are
Amidst people hospitable
Welcome, welcome
Feel at home!
Roam throughout
Abyssinia you might,
On its grandeur your eyes
You can feast.
The vast array of
Mouthwatering dish,
The country parades
You could relish.

In case you wish
For an adventure,
Still Ethiopia
Is a mosaic of culture!

Of course
It will grab your attention,
Ethiopia's being
A cradle of mankind
And ancient civilization.

You will see
To its music titillating,
Comes close nothing!
Moreover fails not
To draw your attention,
The affection
Among people hailing from
Different ethnic groups and religion.
But you can't transport a speck of dust,
Alighted or pasted on your shoe by accident!
So to get an exit,
Shake off your shoe and wash your feet!"

Giving to every dust attention
It is possible to ward off
The problem of siltation.
Besides don't you think
The forests serve a carbon sink?

Blue Nile echo from shore to shore
"Poverty in Ethiopia is no more!"

As though Abyssinia,
Africa's water tower
Is a weakling with no power,
On every news hour,
Portraying Ethiopia
A development backwater,
Also scornfully on a dictionary
Painting its people thirsty and hungry
Have no grounds any!
From a rain fed agriculture
Head on
Making a paradigm shift,
Irrigation when Ethiopia further adopt,
The vicious cycle of drought,
Which poses a threat
To its development,
Will give way to a bumper harvest,
Once more rendering Ethiopia
A cornucopia.

Ethiopians be not cool,
Be not cool
Resources to pool!

Lo and behold Blue Nile will be subdued
For riparian countries' good!

Yet, yet hanging up together
Be high on the alert
Any aggressor to deter!
Many are
Who wear a frowning face,
When development
In Ethiopia picks pace!

Keep open your eyes,
Keep open your eyes
At all time, all space
Where infrastructures
Are put in place.

To the helm of development
Ethiopia will soon catapult,
When its children
In full harness their resources put.
So cognizant of this fact,
Ethiopians allow not
The grass to grow under your feet.
Don't wait
Behind the campaign
To throw your full weight!

For work, roll up your sleeve
Ready for ‘The Renaissance Dam'
Your sweat
B
L
O
O
D
And life to give.
March out for prosperity
In Ethiopia to thrive,
What we need have
Is a bond-cohesive
A

B-O-N-Decisive.
Go all out, go all out,
Us, lucky we have to count
For seizing such a ripe moment.

Blue Nile echo from shore
"Poverty in Ethiopia is no more!"

Come-on let us not beg to differ,
Of course we could concur,
For all of us will agree,
Our pet dream is to see,
Ethiopia industrialized
Completely transformed!

Laying the foundation,
Where on takes off
The future generation,
Is what begs for
Central attention.

Why, Why and Why,
With our hands
Tucked in our pockets,
You and I
Remain standers by?
Also why
Simply watch the clouds
Glide across the sky?
Must we indeed,
Sowing a discord seed
Allow our rivers run wild,
Turning a blind eye to our need.

Wiseacres, though
You may not be on the same page,
Between stakeholders
Don't drive a wedge,
The government proves out
Out to fulfil its pledge.
In life it is not hard
To get sceptics,
Dear leaders talk your walk
Walking your talk!
Prove sceptics wrong
Letting them witness
The actualization
Of the dam agog.

Tax payers, if you have
A tax arrear
See it finds its ways to
The government's coffer.

Taxes being
A development backbone
Must be mysterious to none.

Target also rent seekers
That drive spokes
In to development wheels!
The environment smart Great Ethiopian Renaissance dam that holds promise for regional growth and green resilient economy.Ethiopians are constructing it by themselves with out any aid.
svdgrl Jan 2015
He hides his politics on the inside of his jacket,
wears two scarves and has a light British or Scandinavian accent.
I mean- he says poo-berty, for god's sake,
but the man is brilliant.
I never knew a person who can take
what an idiot exclaims in such fervor and falsity,
and let it become something of knowledge.
The concept of understanding
sits in the back of my tongue,
deep in my throat, and it rattles until he calls it out.
He knows what I'm saying when I don't.
And he knows I've got this solution
but I can't put it to words
that do it justice.
So he and that Greg kid- the philosophy major,
and the only other man I really know who speaks of feminism
more accurately than any woman I've ever come to listen to,
extrapolates my shaky speech
into substance.
And I've likened this learning into something like love
-a Platonic but true love,
of all those who know so much more than I,
and are willing to still take me seriously.
It's rare to see with these eyes,
true teachers, true seekers
truth-seekers
truth teachers
and they who learn infinitely,
inspiring me to be poo-pil.
Oh they pleaded,
women, men
young and old,
'let us pass through that sea'
to a place where we could start all over',
yet their voices fall into deaf ears
of their brothers and sisters
from another mother land,
hopeless they remain drifted
in the treacherous sea
feeling unwanted, unloved
forever rejected,
by the policies of the modern
migration...

the unworthy sea-going boat,
becomes their coffin
and the sea and the seafloor become
their graveyards,
the common fate of boat people - the asylum seekers.
Theodore Bird Apr 2015
Have I found God?
     Where is he?
He is in your hair.
Didi? Gogo? Anyone?
Lunar May 2017
why look for
true love
when true love'll
find you
take it easy
give yourself time
be free, not in chains,
when you love someone.

true love will always find its way to you
Dumisani Ndlovu Apr 2019
To millions, he was an intellectual guide
A source of unconditional love
Indeed Dr Cephas George Msipa was a cherished comrade
For the seekers, he was a treasurer
For those suffering, his words gave them solace and comfort
He was an inspiration
Gone but not forgotten
                                                       ­                                                                ­ ­        The nation learnt your departure with shock
  To Zimbabwean, you were a social economic and political guide
  Without you the nation is left poorer
                                                      
  H­e was a socioeconomic guru,
A source of unrestricted love
  For multitudes he was a dear friend
A friend  of unusual depth and innocence
  For academic seekers, he was a fortune
  For the suffering, he was compassionate
  His words gave solace and comfort to several humanitarian organizations

A genuine glimpse of his precious wisdom
  Is in the compilation of his academic assistance
  In his superlative wisdom was a fountain of guidance,
  In curbing violence, fear and anger
      Without him,Zimbabwe is left pooer
Our tears may go dry but our memories will never
He was the  Godfather of peace,
He is  sadly missed along life’s ways,
Quietly remembered every now and then
He is no longer in our life to share realities of life
But in our hearts he is always there
Yes, he is gone but not forgotten
st64 Oct 2013
bildings in roowins
I rite with brokin-hand


it is the year of the unlord-tyms 2085
and skool hadbin abolishd since fyv decades
evrything in disrepair -
                    no hospitills no parks
                    no creche no greens
all grey and dark

now here I lie amid the rubble
I see they took my legs for under-market
what else did they take?
**** *******!
belly rumbles
the last I'd eaten was 2 days on
a chunk of hard-bread whose colour would turn envy in its boots
with artifishal-milk whose curdled smile greeted the back of my arid existence

**** bastarrrrrrds! they put me under, sawed off my legs
left me hobbling with jagged wounds and smirk-pain like hot-rods searing my brand-new stubs
elementary-bandage of an old sheet torn into strips...

wait, I must use this anger as fuel to get me going
she told me so
many, many times..




(I can remember my mother reading to me
reciting from her memory
they had burnt evry-single-book Man had ever known
                My eyes have never been graced with a book
but
she tort me words with stick in sand
and counting with stones
and there were many stones
               she fed me poetry when there was little else to eat
with fainting-body and starving-belly
my mind took pleasure in her ultimate-care
               she told me of a time when childrin took poor-interest
in the blessings of a book.. wen their minds were swallowed wholemeal by what they called media, I think
when they were not saddled with the worry of their next meal's magical-appearance
                (I can spell 'their' at least, yes.. she made sure I knew the difference)
the only pictures I saw were the ones she drew for me
in the volcanic beach-sand when we ran away from the parasitic-city
                I knew nothing of the world but what I saw around me
                        - decay, decay, decay
until she brought me colour - rite into the hart of me -
                           blooms that hurt at first, so bright and giving
                           that it saturated every molecule in my parched-centre
                           and I became a rainbow-suffused capsule in a otherwise drab-society
such wonder she spoke with open-eyes and loving-tones

and I also remember.. the day they took her..
I remember.. too much)




I crawl forward like a snake in the .. wait, what was that expreshin again?
I'll think later when I find a place to harbour my broken-body
                     thought is a luxury here
thers a horrible smoke in the air
          stings me so
and I miss her so
I have nobody left
but I cannot feel forsaken, as so many do
and succumb to self-pity
she made sure my armour grew
                 from the inside.. first
yet.all.the.while.she.watered.my.hungry.mind
and I took it with disbelief painted on my face
the things she told me about..




                I cannot believe there once were -
green fields and trees with chirping birds
a blue sky
blue? not possible
I've never seen a blue sky
I think she was being kind to paint me portraits of psychedelia
   to entertain and distract me
   from the horror of our lives
I heard tales of things called flowers - daisies and things
like vegetables and fruit
it seemed funny to me - little beings in the ground,
                                       growing
                                       standing rooted, awaiting harvest-hands
               just for people??
uncredibill
waaaat???
no..  such depth of kindness I can hardly imagine
for we have had only *
hard
-earth.. most concreted
and drank only brack-water from collapsing pipes
no, an unforgiving-scene is all I know
yet
     she is so kind to feed me such fantasy-tales of deep-imaginashin
     pity she could not tell any others
     for any tenth-of-a-whisper of this to any wrong-ear
and her head would roll
in the gutter.. where we lived in contest with rats
she could only rally my mind and relay things which would die with her
things that she bequeaths
to me

what will I do with it? this legacy of forgotten-paradise..
what can I do?   this wonder-clad heresy..
                I now know thers a way out these city walls
                ther is a life beyond
with valleys and rivers and salty-seas
I must try to find a river
she told of oceans which live - which heave and swell and move!
she said these things too .. they exist
what quaint-things, indeed
oh, for dreems..

but now, I must off the streets
for a double-darkness has begun to fall
when red-eyes will scour the streets for scraps of flesh
        anything is worth a barter
        even a dead-man in a lane whose eyeballs are gone
        harshly-hacked out living - by a previous-visitor
becomes a piece of currency for seekers of the dark

I don't know what they've done to her.. or where she is now..
yet, she always said - keep moving
                                   keep searching
for blue-sky and flowing-rivers and yellow-flowers..
(I wonder if it's real
I do believ her - I must)*




now I scrape on in haste into a darkening-alley
towards a derelict-bilding
whose sinister-interior is the only welcome it can afford me
             I have little choice
             no time for sentiment
plus, I feel a fever coming (perhaps this is all the dreem.. and she is the only-flower I know)
the night-Rats will come out soon
and I hate their stink
it doesn't help I leave a trail of blood..




now
only hoap lives
on
in hobbled-soul

as I rite on with brokin-hand
onto the back-pages.. of my mind





S T -  5 octoblah
awoke with a feeling of piece of broken-building teetering and wanting to fall on me..
with legs gone,
junk, junk feeling :(

(anyway, it's just a nightmare.. I thought I'd plug that energy into this poem)

hoap.. hold on, alright? please :)



sub: thanks be

to the grey of skies I never see
to the squalor of the seas no-one can smell
to decay in every nook you can't tell

thanks be to the beauty of our times
and where none of such deep-calamity
touches our lives

(yet)




(where love-tryst equals getting tangled..
in the stars)
Jerry Desbrow Nov 2013
OLD HOUSE

They retain precious memories,
intimate feelings of inhabitants
passing through its sagging doors.

Romantic are seekers of forgotten times
memories encased in hard wood floors;
as lath plastered walls ooze remnants of a
history while we; when inclined listen.

We don't go very often, to abandon houses,
perhaps on a dare, or at Halloween.
Are we passed enjoying extremes into this
another world, musty energy a curious child.

That was the yesterday
which now waits behind
musty, dusty, derelict halls.

I stand I stand at paint chipped banister,
a faded worn carpet once carried dancing feet,
children playing before they sleep. The
broken coat tree on the floor.

From the third floor murmuring,
a wind storm jars
loose fears, of time
once lost to dreams.

Echos billow from
each room, curtains hanging
yellowed by a sun where
dancing light through holes in damask lace.

Mice gremlin's artful droppings,
tracks of nature on dirt strewn floor.
Broken shards from window
panes, confetti after New Years day.

Branches scratched
etched paths, tracks like graffiti
on sill its unread words, a glif
eerily cast shadows trigger echos from the past.

Jagged memories protrude from every corner
mixing with new, enriching our fantasies
bringing us closer renewed;
these musty memories long forgotten.

Like waves rushing back;
flooding a mind like broken
dikes they crash into our world,
Rembrandt's paintings on canvas fading.

Silent footsteps outside a door,
we hear laughter from bedroom walls;
a smell a whiff of hot butter ***, silent
conversation coming our way.

Old Doc Masters listened at my chest, as
I read all by candle light, Sherlock detective stories
or the Tell Tale Heart of Poe or
Othello; all masters in the past.

A Grandfather clock
stands silent, keeping time,
lost its tick yet still striking,
it stands tall, upon a clueless floor.

Knowledge lost to a past
in a house so worn,
births, deaths, wars, wrapped
forgotten, encased by neglect,

I visited a house besotted,
neglected waiting to be
remodeled into another century
moving it to present times.

Ajerry
Archival Jan 5, 2011
Edited and rewritten Nov 1 2013 / ajanon/ Jerry
Harriet Shea Mar 2018
Wondrous captives travel, seekers
of the universe, mind travelers, wisdom
found, new pages open, laced with
freedom, new age enchantment.

Gaze, listen, sounds surround each
thought, new visions, new worlds
found in the enchanted universe, old
vision now memories, a start, a new
beginning for travel seekers.

Time! what shall that be! wisdom
conquers, answers now explained,
new foundation, new life, new thoughts
pass into our universal plan.

Guide lines surface, love floats in
many directions in the new found
universe of planetary systems, worlds
of knowledge, survival, a must
to continue, in the enchanted universe..

Lost pasture of memories that use to be
a world of confusion, gone, minds open
deeper with understanding, and spirituality
enlightens those who seek above their
own knowledge.

War, a passing force, killing disappears
in the new world order found from others,
not from here throughout the enchanted
universe, calming desires, intuition of
loves sweetness, a forceful journey
into the unknown.

{I am sure our enchanted Universe is more
then what we expect it to be, so many
mysteries unknown to man.}


By Derena (Harriet)
© 2018 Derena(Harriet) (All rights reserved)
Bo Tansky May 2019
Fringe seekers, yearning for truth
How alienated and alone are you
What vacuum of truth are you seeking?
What expression of you are you speaking
You have fallen into a bottomless well
Where safety is the only hell
Down you go
Like Alice
Down and down
It’s a wonderland of your own making
Backbreaking, Earthshaking. Heartbreaking
Painstaking undertaking
While the Queen yells
Off with her head
You lay dead
In the place where
Angels fear to thread
And they pour happiness molecules
into your head
Fools jewels
Because you are stubborn as a mule
And it all seems so cruel
And won’t learn your lesson
I told you it’s you
You, you, you
And there’s nothing I can do
It’s just a fantasy
Of your own making
The curious come to seek the keys
Keys to the kingdom
The doors are too small
The keys are too big
And nothing seems to fit

Pardon moi, si vous plait
Do you happen to know the way?
Qui mademoiselle
The way, quite simply, is anyway
It’s all just play
Play, play, play
I would like to play
Then why do I feel this way?
Leena Adhvaryu Apr 2014
MUMBAI

The monstrous maddening megalopolis;

Obscure and replusive
yet inviting.

Home to a billion- mirage seekers,
who
withstand,endure &nurse;
their dreams
behind the fringes of misery:
waiting for their turn
lest
chase and collapse
at the door frame of a metaphor !
TiffanyS Nov 2012
Every corner you turn
is another story to be told
eventually the truth will unfold
and will start to rapidly burn

rumors are started by attention seekers
they are as useless as broken beakers
dont hide when people find out the truth
because listen here im coming for you

"ill run through your town
and shut you down"
No more nonsense
It is time to treat eachother with respect
Jamie King Sep 2014
We are young men buried in books
Shoveling words every day
As we are gradually shaped into tools.

Ours minds drained deep in the pools
Of knowledge. So they say
We are young men buried in books.

We find ourselves caught in hooks
Of wisdom seekers shall we pray?
As we are gradually shaped into tools.

Exhausted, some will turn into crooks
While we proudly remain grey
We are young men buried in books.

We bear fruit of hope from the roots
Of pain so follow the rules we lay
As we are gradually shaped into tools.

Are we zombies in schools?
In our paths we never stray.
We are young men buried in books
As we are gradually shaped into tools.
I've never been the one to follow structures when it comes to poetry but when I heard about the villanelle and how difficult it is to master I just got excited and inspired
Andie Lately Oct 2013
I like to sit down and watch indie films
Just to see how others view someone like me
The star that tends to be a loner
But eventually comes out of their shell
Due to love and support from people around them
I realise now that
I came out of my shell
A long time ago
With a wild woman at my side
A best friend who is quiet but strong
The attention seekers who have a lot of love to give
The wallflowers that are too shy to speak up
I knew them all
I was the star of my movie
I may not have a love interest at this point of the film
Or even in the end
But it is nice
My life is an indie film
RJ Days Aug 2016
All sorrow is perpendicular occurring
at right angles of tragedy encircling
the grief-stricken with straight edges
only once intersecting across infinite planes—

Don't dare draw the lines between points
or shade the region with limits or curves
because the trajectories of bullets are plotted
on branes intolerant of slightest triangulation

Woe unto the seekers of sine waves
sobbing thinking of filling every trough
believing surely by now we've offered enough
to sate these bloodthirsty Euclidean demons

Cresting won't ever arrive in this course
filled to the brim with asymptotes, cold corollaries
but never spilling over under our sacred
pledge of allegiance to the 2nd Parallel Postulate

No intersections can be admitted with thoughts
& prayers extending outward barely co-planar
serious public policy proposals axiomatic
insistence on the Nirvana Theorem or nothing

A set of all points remains, mutually exclusive
motionless and always incongruent clueless
about their own particular geometries
awaiting radical Pythagorean salvation

Some paradigm we’ve built here though!
Two hundred years of living polygonal hand
to elliptical mouth without tangential reflection
on the unproven flatness of humanspace.
I wrote the first draft of this after Orlando. Insomnia brought me back to finally edit and publish it two months later.
Sally A Bayan Oct 2016
Upon a huge, lush garden,
on a cold autumn day...
various leaves fall, in sweet surrender...
some still rise and go with the forceful wind
floating...along with dreams, wishes and prayers
murmured in the air...uttered fervently
...from near......or faraway places
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

papers, leaves, souls, sighs, and whispers
all circulate, dance in the air...blending with nature
like drifters...and seekers, far from their homes
their habitats...their comfort zones,
suspended, in the atmosphere of every season
...yielding...to the will of the wind,
...while the wind obeys...the will of God
they swirl...land, on new destinations
face new dimensions...
friendlier seas...no more running, just waiting,
while winds of change settle down
touching new base, new grass,
hoping, for a peaceful existence,
for some....the end of life's turbulent journey
..........on safe...tranquil grounds...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

somewhere near, or far...huge gardens exist
where leaves fall, where some rise again,
where new beginnngs, new lives are offered...
havens that welcome and accommodate
...refugees...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sally


Co­pyright August 27, 2016
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
#Not all dry  leaves on our lawn  come from our own trees,
      some are blown, from faraway places...
      the wind is a big net, catching molecules of prayers, wishes,
      bits and pieces of floating objects...
      some people see other places as a haven, compared to theirs...
      they try to flee...some succeed, while others keep trying...there
      are those who just want to finally rest, on peaceful grounds...#
Ylang Ylang Jan 2018
"-I think we should move him to Mallorca, or some kind of... I dunno, Carribeans? It's too rainy here.
          -Oh honey, I don't think it's going to work
..."

These artificial surroundings won't heal my heart.
Transplantation went wrong.
Drip drop, the drops are falling
On leaves
Rain everywhere, soaking everything
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom
In this garden of mine plants live their lives
Roots and stems and leaves
Lovers of rain; seekers of self destruction
Striving to know.

"-How is he? I haven't seen him in a while.
          -No idea. He's acting weird nowadays
."

The keeper of the values, the guardian of the golden shell
Believe me, I'm very well.
In this waterfall, this foamy-quick stream
Growing bones around me, the self-stems.
Michael W Noland Sep 2012
i am of the light
despite
my shroud
that crowds the villains in the toppled telemetry of my steeds
galloping gallantly from the burning cities of my dreams

i shall gleam from her or he
that which delivers
their truths faithfully to their dreams
open wounds turn invitation
in the pity of hungry thieves
who dared to dream
of peasants king-ed.
as we sing
sing
of desperation
in passionate confessions
of jaded wisdom
passed on through every failure
never to falter
in the betrayals of Walters
lost
in loss-less flac files
i have miles to go
smiles to grow
daggers projectiles
from mild mannered children
freshly ridden
of maniacal miracles
spiritual
but not stupid
we are troopin
this lucid movement
grooving
to the repetition of the drum
the gas blow back of a gun
the bursting bubbles of bubble gum
having fun
i learnt goodly on the run

learned nothing in victory

learned nothing in simplicity

complacently

snickering it all away
bullet by bullet
case by case
and eventually the blade
in my compassionate displays
we shall congregate
and hate ourselves
**** the donks to hell
dwelling on the cellar doors
that darkos teacher adored
in verbal massacre
of the written literature
of cracked brain fixtures
seeping the lines
in cold tingles
down the spines of maniacs

just relax

mix it down on a track
spit the thesis into pieces
through the creases of cracked sneakers, and out the speakers
of trouble seekers.

mistakes make us

deliberate chaos
tossed  
upon the fakers
who cry to think
the dream
became a reality
mistake us
for serrated blades that rip the hearts from beasts
sometimes i stop to think
while having a drink
conclusive brinks
of sanity creaks
of my humility
secreting
frivolously
the disposing of my jealousy
of your feelings

hellaciously
i rip a felony
from a face
in appealing agony
antagonizing me
in the frenzied forensics
of my oblique
outlooks
none of us
were ever crooks
speaking to self
while being booked
in hell
Intimidated by political thugs
Prone to insert in one's mouth
The nose of a loaded gun
Or suspend a plastic bottle full of water
On males' reproductive *****,
Devoid of freedom of expression
Also denied  to his right and
Deplorable condition drawing attention
Shunning his God chosen land,
What is more a bright and warm country
Under the sun ,a journalist dreaming began
Fighting all odds between
The deep blue sea and the angry Satan
To migrate to a better place,
Where for democracy
Avowedly there is a better space,
Inhabited by civilized people,
Averse to discrimination based on race!

Burning his boat,
Crossing desserts,
Crammed with other refugees,
Packed with him in a boat
Some trying  to reverse
Their economic lot,
Surfing uncharted waters
Seeking a paradise on earth
He headed to the country he sought
Though some their lives
At the hand of brutal traffickers lost
Beaten and thrown out of the boat,
Also at a port
Suspected of a terrorist bent
Many migrants to prisons were sent.

After a humiliating acid test
Why for a dreamland his country he left
As migrants' bane
They placed him at the foot
Of an ice-clad mountain.
“I will never see
My country again,
You are trying my patience in vain!"
He vowed
Despite the razor-sharp cold untold.

Then they took him up higher
An epitome to a cold fire!
Once more
He put his foot down
Putting on more clothes and
Changing attire.

They placed him
At the mountain's helm
As hell dark
Where the angel of death
Is seen stark.

Then in his head
Something began to bark
“*You rather choose
the better evil
If both your assailants and hosts
Are no two different devil! *"

Seeing first hand
Those with cold shoulder
Assylem seekers adore to attack
Though there are
Few not off humanity's track
At last he decided to return back
And under his country's sun bask
Mum for his rights to ask
Killing his journalistic knack!
About refugees mostly heading from Africa to Scandinavian countries Europe Arab countries and America.I want your feedback before I send it for group publication
Caro Mar 2019
It's March in California and,
It feels like an early September evening in Virginia,
An owl is cooing,
A nostalgic singsong that reminds me of the woods behind my parents house,
Comfort seekers in my senses inflate,
Disappearing into a heady haze,
Anything to distract myself from the mini self-betrayal I just executed.

I can watch myself as I do it,
Basking in this nostalgia,
The detachment from my pain easing my shoulders,
Making me feel high,
Or maybe it's the serotonin and dopamine,
Coursing around in my body,
Freely,
As it pleases,
Results of.

The owl is howling and my roommate is home,
My phone is silent and I'm blissfully alone,
Detachment, detachment, detachment,
My favorite drug, how I've missed you.

So sickly happy,
So near to trauma,
(my familiar place)
But my perspective saving me from feeling it..

I could be in Virginia in 2008,
My legs a little hairy,
A breeze blowing through my long, long hair,
Innocence teasing me.

Or I could be here, now,
Listening for an owl that has stopped calling.

How delicious. Sweet detachment.

My favorite drug.
Bob B Oct 2016
A long time ago a very young mother
Named Kisa Gotami gave birth to a son—
A child who was the light of her life.
The mother’s love was second to none.
 
Not long after her son was born,
The poor child grew sick and died.
“Who can bring my son back to life?
Have pity!” Kisa Gotami cried.
 
The villagers knew that there was nothing
They could do to help and suggested
That she seek out the help of the Buddha.
“He can do wonders,” they attested.
 
She found the Buddha and beseeched his help.
“My only son has died,” she wailed.
“Can you bring him back to life.
Everything I have tried has failed.”
 
The Buddha calmly said, “I will help you.”
The poor woman waited with bated breath.
“But first you must find for me
A family that’s never been touched by death.
 
“When you finally encounter that home,
Tell the family there’s something you need—
Just one thing to take to the Buddha—
And that’s a single mustard seed.”
 
With great excitement the mother ran
From house to house—to every abode.
But death had visited every family.
On her face, great disappointment showed.
 
After a long, unsuccessful search,
The young mother came to realize
That everything born had to die;
Everything had to have its demise.
 
She understood the law of impermanence
And that her suffering was not unique.
She now saw life from a new perspective;
Her eyes were open, so to speak.
 
Kisa Gotami returned to the Buddha
And started to follow his teachings--the Way,
Or Path to Enlightenment,
Which still guides many seekers today.

- by Bob B
Yenson Sep 2018
Cyberbullies get a perverse sense of satisfaction (called gratification) from sending people inflamed materials, hate mail or fabricated poems taunting ot designed to torment. Inflammable materials or poems are writings whose contents are designed to inflame and enrage. Hate writing is hatred or obtuse poetries (including prejudice, racism, sexism or thinly disguised personal references or insinuations etc) in a poetry.

Serial bullies, whose behaviour profile you'll find in full at Bully OnLine, harbour a lot of internal aggression which they direct at others. This may include projection, false criticism and patronising sarcasm whilst contributing nothing of any value. It may also include a common tactic of "a number of people have emailed me backchannel to agree with me". This is standard bully-speak which I've experienced on several forums. In every case it's a fabrication or a distortion - usually the former. It's also a variant of the serial bully headteacher who says "a number of parents have complained to me about you...". When challenged, the identity of the alleged complainants can't be disclosed because it's "confidential". The purpose of this tactic is to wind people up. Don't be fooled into believing it has any validity - it doesn't.

People who bully are adept at creating conflict between those who would otherwise pool negative information about them. The method of creating conflict is provocation which bullies delight in because they know they can always coerce at least one person to respond in a manner which can then be distorted and used to further flame and inflame people. And so it goes on. The bully then sits back and gains gratification from seeing others engage in destructive behaviour towards each other.

Many serial bullies are also serial attention-seekers. More than anything else they want attention. It doesn't matter what type of attention they get, positive or negative, as long as they can provoke someone into paying them attention. It's like a 2-year-old child throwing a tantrum to get attention from a parent. The best way to treat bullies is to refuse to respond and to refuse to engage them - which they really hate. In other words, do not reply to their postings, and on forums carry on posting without reference to their postings as if they didn't exist. In other words, treat nobodies as nobodies.

The anger of a serial bully is especially apparent when they come across someone who can see through them to espy the weak, inadequate, immature, dysfunctional aggressive individual behind the mask. For instance, when serial bullies see themselves described at workbully/serial.htm they usually send me an abusive email.

The objectives of bullies are Power, Control, *******, Subjugation. They get a kick out of seeing you react. It doesn't matter how you react, the fact they've successful provoked a reaction is, to the bully, a sign that their attempt at control have been successful. After that, it's a question of wearing you down. The more your try to explain, negotiate, conciliate, etc the more gratification they obtain from your increasingly desperate attempts to communicate with them. Understand that it is not possible to communicate in a mature adult manner with a disordered individual who's emotionally *******.

The Number One rule for dealing with this type of behaviour is: don't respond, don't interact and don't engage. This is not as easy to do as it sounds. It's a natural response to want to defend yourself, and to put the person right. However, never argue with a serial bully; it's not a mature adult discussion, but like dealing with a child or immature teenager; whilst the serial bully may be an adult on the outside, on the inside they are like a child who's never grown up - and probably never will. Serial bullies and harassers often have disordered thinking patterns and do not share the same thoughts or values as you.

Although you may be the target of the cyberbully's anger, you can train yourself to act as an observer. This takes you out of the firing line and enables you to study the perpetrator and collect evidence.

When people use bullying behaviours they project their own weaknesses, failings and shortcomings on to others. In other words, they are telling you about themselves by fabricating an accusation based on something they themselves have done wrong. Whenever you receive a flame mail or hate mail, train yourself to instinctively ask the question, "What is this person revealing about themselves this time?"
George Krokos Oct 2014
General Note:
This is an autobiographical poem, given here in seven parts for reading convenience, which mentions some personal events of my life and the names of a few spiritual masters that I have read and studied a good deal about, the main ones being Paramahansa Yogananda and Meher Baba; the latter I have also written about in two other poems titled: #1 “The Highest Of The High” and #2 “The Universal Divine Plan” which are also posted on this website.*

Part 1
Even as a little child I do now recall
You often would respond to my call.
And whenever I was filled with sorrow
about certain things feared of tomorrow
You would comfort me in some natural way
assuring me there wouldn't be such a day
and then my heart would experience much joy
almost just like acquiring a long expected toy.

Together we would have laughter and fun
like a couple of children playing in the sun.
Though You did reproach me when I was bad
then lovingly forgive me when I'd be so sad.
You would always try and point out to me
the good things around there were to see.

You always were the one I called on when in need
beseeching You as no one else believed me indeed.
You were more or less my constant companion and friend
and together would see things through until the very end.
Now and then I would go my separate way and depart
but sooner or later I would remember You in my heart.
It seemed somehow, You had a permanent place in there
as if it would be impossible to leave it empty and bare.

Part 2
The days did pass by and as I was growing up with age
You would sometimes come and offer advice like a sage
especially when found out doing naughty things some days
by my elders, at the time, being not agreeable to their ways.
They would, by inflicting pain, try and get the message across to me
that what I'd been doing was particularly not very pleasing to see.
Those were the times when I would hide and cry my heart out,
wailing with remorse and anguish I would doubt You were about.
Blaming You for my misfortunes I would try and close the door
not accepting Your existence and then declaring a private war.
When all would become quiet and my mind's rage did subside
You would try and reason with me to put all my weapons aside.

Often were the times when I would listen rapt with awe,
to words of wisdom coming from deep in my heart's core.
Little did I know, at the time, that they would prove to be true,
as only to realise, much later in life, that they came from You.
Yet then, many a time, I had the temerity to pass You by
and meeting with troubles and difficulties wondered why.
The hardships I encountered seemed only to confirm in my mind
that You were a figment of my imagination better left far behind.

My alienation from You increased to such an extent,
as I grew up, becoming a storehouse of ill-content.
Associating with those very much in the same boat,
I began to drift and sink in life's tide rather than float.
Such was my plight, I realised, turning my back on You
ignorantly, yet willingly, tangling with a desparate crew.
That worldly ocean contains very many surprises in store,
for the unwary traveller, going away from the home shore.
By living an unnatural existence in a stormed-tossed sea
it's everyone for themselves disregarding their humanity.
But there were the moments when You would shine through
via members of my family and others advice on behalf of You.
Little did I heed though, what they would concernedly tell,
as I plunged headlong into a self-created, God forsaken hell.

Part 3
It was only through repeated experiences, I would learn
that, where I was heading, would surely make me burn.
Tempted with fancy indulgences my mind would lead me astray
and going from one extreme to the other in weakness I would stay.
Involved with those called 'friends' who really didn't know any better,
being like the blind following the blind, with many an unseen fetter.
It was living a life of sense pleasures; mainly that of wine, women and song,
which seemed to be what everyone else was doing, as each day came along.
Now and then I would stop to reflect on the state I found myself in
but, though I tried, didn't have the determination to leave and begin
a new life which would bring out and develop my real self
instead I wallowed in the mire of this worldly life like an elf.

Then the seemingly unexpected happened, while reeking with taints
I stumbled onto some wisdom through the words of one of Thy Saints.
Paramahansa Yogananda was one of Thy true and recent devotees;
mystic, philosopher, poet and saint, through Yoga he was all of these.
The story he told of life, in a far distant land, awakened my sleeping soul,
overwhelmed my mind with inspiration and taught that You were the goal.

He made the words of the New Testament come alive for me,
with patience and love, showing how real they could easily be.
Without any coercion he helped me realise the truth they contained
for many years escaping my attention though now readily attained.
By dispelling my ignorance he was leading me gently back to You
with Divine knowledge and practical wisdom, I did follow him too.
He helped to turn my gaze inside so that I may see the Inner Light
and by acting on his advice was able to behold that blessed sight.
Transforming my existence, he told me that which I hungered for,
ignorantly looking in the wrong direction not knowing any more.
I began to know the meaning of discipline, in a persons' life by which
any individual could rise from the bottom of existence and so reach
that state of consciousness from where all problems were resolved
through perseverance and grace did get myself seriously involved.

Part 4
He opened up a whole new world of possibilities and life to see,
while reading and comprehending his words power flowed in me.
Then one day at work almost at the turn of a new year,
I heard someone mention a name they held quite dear.
It must of remained in my head like a dormant and potent seed,
because it was associated with a person of a very high breed.
As it turned out an incident happened, involving someone dear in my life,
which I recognized to be more than a chance to end some personal strife.
So, early in the new year, I became determined to give it a go,
that is, live up to my highest aspirations, forsaking much woe.
In order to remove the distance between myself and that which I aspired to
many things were done, impossible it seemed, while keeping my mind on You.

With the knowledge and courage garnered by Yoganandaji's grace
I began to come closer to You at quite a remarkably steady pace.
A lot of things were given up, mainly those holding me heavily down,
and other things were taken up, suggested by Your chosens' renown.
Purification of body and mind was the main way to achieve that end,
sublimation of all actions, inner motives, Your Will I could not offend.
You had to become my One and Only, all else I had to give away,
all that I thought was mine belonged to You, having the final say.
You were everywhere, in everything and also in everyone,
I sought to please You only, like Your Own Begotten Son.
This was more easily said than done as I soon began to see,
that I virtually had to cease to exist and live totally in thee.
How I were to do this was beyond my situation at the time
though I tried with a little success in that favorable clime.

Part 5
Then I remembered that name mentioned just a short while ago
and thus made some effort to find out more as I needed to know.
I came across and even bought a few books relating to that name,
thus began another chapter in my life which wasn't quite the same.
What I began to read was the culmination of all that had come before
and by maintaining a steady discipline realized incredibly much more.
My expectations and joy increased so much so in what I had found
all else meant nothing to me, it seemed, coming across Holy ground.
The words I read were so beautiful, loving, very profound and true
I was dumbfounded to realize they were coming directly from You.

The books I read were by and about a person called Meher Baba
whose name in English was translated as 'Compassionate Father'.
In actual fact He never wrote those books at all as such
but dictated the words on an alphabet board in his clutch.
He would spell every word out to one of His close ones patiently,
by pointing to each letter in the words, moving His finger quickly.
His close one would then record what was 'said' each time by Him
for the benefit of those who would come later, such was His Whim.

He did not write or speak during the greater part of His life,
communicating with silent gestures, not even having a wife.
The words that He 'spoke' were of the highest wisdom and Love,
bringing down Divine Truth, with which to awaken us, from above.
He confirmed and corrected what all the others said about You,
knowing more than the others did, but also respecting their view.
His was the highest philosophy that's ever been described by hand,
by anyone before or since, in this world, anywhere inscribed on land.
He was The One I was always looking for everywhere to find
You were really Him being the latest Unique One of The Kind.
He was also from the same league as Zoroaster, Rama, Krishna, Buddha,
Jesus and Muhammad, but appearing this time around called Meher Baba.

Part 6
You, Him and all the Others were the same One, it was emphasized,
but each time You'd come down were so very differently disguised.
Each time You would come heralding a New Age and New Humanity,
which was what some of Your Saints were preparing mankind to see.
By discipline, meditation, study, prayer, purification of body and mind,
one could devote them self to You in daily life, so not to be left behind
in the coming New World Order which shall abate the rushing tide
of ignorance and selfishness, being a part of mankind's lower side.

We have all seen and should know how bad its really been lately,
with all the wars and power struggles that have passed belatedly;
causing so much destruction, pain, loss of life and property
Your words would ring through my brain jolting my memory:
You said 'such are the pangs and symptoms of spiritual rebirth'
and that all would be affected by Your presence on this earth.
Which is due to mankind's forgetfulness, of its divine origin, and is instead
all engaged in asserting short lasting and false values lodged in its head.
These are based on illusion which is the reason we are grossly misled
being the cause of much evil, having ignored what You previously said.
It's only by living a divine life while here on this earth that we can all
fulfill life's purpose thus being not required to come back any more.

You compassionately stated the importance of following a Perfect Master (See Note #1)
by surrendering and obedience to Him/Her anyone could get there much faster.
He/She was someone who had already achieved life's purpose and Divine goal
and was the very embodiment and shining example of man's Highest Soul.
Only by becoming as dust at the feet of such a living true saint,
seekers could gain His/Her grace and so attain a life free of taint.

Part 7
Your advent here amongst us was like the 'spring tide of creation',
when everyone gets a gentle 'push forward' to a higher life station.
The work You did while here was often very intense and exhaustive
so much so that many times You remained very aloof and seclusive.
Undergoing a great deal of suffering while working within the inner planes
uplifting mankind's consciousness by removing the vitiating mental stains,
that have accumulated over all the years to such an enormous extent
obscuring the Light of Love and Truth revealed by Your last advent.

The words You gave came from the Source of Truth and have real meaning
and those who are ready to receive them there's a rich harvest for gleaning.
Though You did say that You 'have come not to teach but to awaken'
and it was because of Love, in this present form, Your Spirit had taken.
You showered on those who came before You of Your Love, peace and charity
not forgetting the good humor and Divine Knowledge imparted out of necessity.
Continually exhorting Your dear ones that by remembering and loving You all would be well
because You were the God man (See Note #2) Who was the slave of Your lovers; by Grace one could tell.
You did mention many times that You were not limited by this apparent human ****** form
and that You used it only to manifest Thy compassion being more accessible than the norm.
Coming down to be amongst us on our level so that we could catch a glimpse of You as before
appeasing our spiritual hunger; by sight, touch, words and deeds, thus confirm our faith for sure.

_________
Note #1
A Perfect Master or Sadguru (Satguru) can be either male or female and is on the 7th Plane of Consciousness (Involution).and has achieved full Self-Realization and is one with God. Also called a Man or Woman God. He or She live the life of God in the world and wield infinite power, knowledge and bliss. A person who comes into contact with a Perfect Master is helped to progress on the spiritual path.
See also ‘Discourses‘ and ‘God Speaks’ by Meher Baba

Note #2
Also known as or called an Avatar – a direct and full Incarnation of God in human form. The Avatar appears on earth (is brought down) every once in a while - from between 600 to 700 years or 700 to 1400 years - when there is a great upheaval or turmoil in the world. The 20th Century was marked by two World Wars and the threat of Nuclear Destruction.
See also ‘Discourses ‘ and ‘God Speaks’ by Meher Baba.
Owen Phillips Apr 2013
It's all gone out of me, the hammer falls and I'm not ready to answer
Trembling, weakness supporting a tub of jelly
The pollen-filled air flies past like the
Pelicans at the edge of the harbor
Taking us gliding for an unpleasant ride
Down the corridors of plastic colors
Through the one word answers that bubble forth from
10,000 years away in hyperspace
Where the mechanisms of language become so convoluted
That they disappear completely out at the vanishing point
Coming up behind you again to drag you into that smoky allure
You remember hating and pinching your nose from
And hiding in the car, but the new fear is of becoming addicted to it
Just like your addiction to ego games and
Intellect, just like your addiction to pleasure and constant validation

The validation's there in the eternal self, they say
But I'm an intellectual
Too impatient for meditation
And lost along the way to enlightenment
That I truly want,
But then I'll never have it if I continue to live this way

It's wilderness calling from a tame fool
Sticking up for you the overgrown horoscope signifies
The shapes of skydives,
He comes in and out of our dull lives
And there's an electric current that solidifies between
Him, Us, and his music
Iron rods jutting up from scorched earth
A broken paradise
Crumbling in a whisky tumbler
Blackened by fiber filters, creations
Unlocked by flowing ontological
Caricatures, open wounds gnashing
At attention-seeking osteopaths
Fortune seekers clamber down
Soccer field bleachers,
Somebody lost his sneakers in the woods
Once there was a set of barbells along the trail
We fell in line and started
Counting each other
One by one it seemed like the green apples would never fall
It was up to us to wait for the shower
It would feed our kin
We'd begin to rise up together
But it could never keep up with our pen
We wanted the ghosts to follow us and overtake our mortal foes
But we couldn't command the armies of the dead
We derive all our pleasures from films and campfire stories
We contrive our adventures but we wait for them to happen to us
We take a passive role in finding love
And it blinks lights at us across suburban streets through windows in the dark
The mind begins to writhe with new memories it composed of old
An idealized time of a child with the perverse mind
Of a hogtied adolescent
Guessing that the course of existence
Isn't determined by the speed of your calculations
Testing the warm water on a naked toe
We could dive in and forget to breathe
And the water could carry us forever
Alleviating gravity
All the obstacles we perceived in past lives
Remain with us like
Chimney swifts on the bottomless April days of a
Klu Klux **** telephone operator
Who believed in the spirit and the holy ghost
And burned a quiet altar to Satan's minions every Sunday night
Drinking nail polish and
Obscure references to the films of the
Ancient Greek philosophers, who
Saw the medium as a means to a message
And patronized the elitest filmmakers to study the ancient Runes
And reveal their findings to a power-hungry public
That would not outright reject it
But that would have to follow it down the rabbit hole
Through the wide mouth of the trumpet around brass fixtures
And into the tight hot moist mouth of the trumpeter
And the elemental warriors would strike oil beneath the whole affair
Ending the time we spent hoping for any entertainment to create itself before our barren psyches
Busying ourselves with incomprehensible tasks and letting our indolence take the reins until we found our heads again out there amid the vapors of
New car chem trails and old railroad bunkers where spruce and cedar grow through cement earth, they force apart the ground with just their roots

We weren't ready to keep watch the following weekend but we
Had no choice when the government bond expired
And we had only technological solutions left to hope for
And wrongly we abandoned our research posts to fight the enemies
With giant weapons and uncreative slogans
Our drummers played so fast we marched along and killed all that remained in record doubletime
Rendering the events of that victorious day immortal in the ingenious accounts of
Philosopher/poet/historian Michael Jackson
Who gave one final performance
To save himself from what must not be
Poetic T Mar 2014
I wish not to be taken in my
sleep, stolen away. not knowing
its my time as in the dream state
you had taken me away.

I would feel that like a thief you'd
stolen my life not knowing that you
were there, just that you took my
last moments away, never to open
my eyes once more my last sight
taken from my gaze.

The day time is the time I wish
for I can see who takes me and
say good bye to all. I could see
and hear my last breath and
word goodbye.

I would gladly be taken as you
would hold me by the hand, see those
who loved me as the light took me
I would not fall.

Please not in the night like a thief,
taking my last moments stealing me
away in darkness, for me daylight is
the time I wish to move on to see you
as taken beyond the veil and I see it
all.
Owen Phillips Jan 2011
I scribble on
With a half lobotomy;
A radar seeking Hell by looking up
And another dictionary
From another time and place;
An alternate timeline
Reaching right and left
As well as fore and aft;
The beard of a ******
And naïveté too;
Undiscovered depths of emotional manipulation
Unseeing, unthinking,
A new old structural familiarity
To abduct and probe
The time-honored, vacuum-sealed
Ineptitude of ideology
Whose meat is sweet
But suits the skeletons of standardized educational theories
Like a pair of jeans at age eleven that you expect to grow into;
In hope of justifying
Overuse of monetary resource
For the sake of bonus states of mind;
Scouring the depths of discarded everything
With hooks catching on to all the similarly forgotten names
Who live in fear of obscurity
Clinging, not unlike insects
To their sixteenth minute of fame;
Finding in myself no way but out
To understand that which lives inside;
With disregard for any thread which weaves past me and takes no hold,
And loathing for the ones that do but unravel before the eyes;
Lightheaded, ending any sense of continuity
When, prostrate in the comfort of another tapestry
I stand abruptly, let my dreams be drained from me through tendrils
Like the passing of a temporal existence;
Drinking in the dust and glue of crowded bookshops
In fear of losing inspiration
To the insatiable jaws of my consumerist natural state;
Rummaging in a bargain bin
In search of someone to tell me, “Stop!"
With heads in clouds and bodies in ice trays,
Stealing lines of logic and lyric,
Throwing down and hacking into
Elemental bits which fit into my own vernacular
Sacrificing beauty for originality and vice versa;
Choosing idols idly with the tides
Of knowledge and of art
Rising and falling without fail
Never apparent and never blurred by motion;
Searching for a style like an odd-numbered jean size;
Finding greater inspiration in waves of unopened mysteries;
Following examples laid by unsuccessful fictions;
Learning ethics only from the prologues of ****** novels,
Unsuspecting victims snuffed in interesting and lurid ways;
Letting technological distraction detract from the projections of psychological complexity
Which I, from atop the high horse of my own pretensions
Pretended to embrace;
Committing massive acts of thievery, fraud, and infinite lethargy
For the sake of juvenile, illegitimate art forms;
Seeking other seekers who exist autonomously
For the sake of personal independent credibility;
Leading unsuspecting, overreaching, overeating, understanding, undemanding,
Too forgiving, not forgetting,
Victims of domestic warfare
To a loveless watery grave
For the sake of my own loneliness;
Patronizing every segregated buffet
With courage enough only for a small taste of everything;
With the flavors of the day swirling around
For me to shoot them down
And pin their carcasses to elementary school walls
And Mormon tool sheds
And nature centers
And all the forgotten places of summers past
In the hope of rediscovering
Some old buried treasure
Be it wondrous or worthless;
With the uneasy insincerity of a rodent who pretends to understand a city;
With adopted methods
And repeated thoughts
And ideas which came to me in waking dreams of my own retirement;
Sharing, for a captive audience,
The formidable giants which
Inform our common denominator
Searching through myself for only the most indecipherable
With the fear of being understood
And the fear of being ridiculed
And pretensions of some preternatural predetermination for greatness;
With acceptance of predisposition for obscurity,
The cost of the inundation of the new airwaves.
The series of tubes that feed us intravenously
With information, information, information,
Having killed God and left material validation in His wake;
It could be that new gods are born in the minds of the innovators,
Those wonderfully wealthy
Whose social structuralism
Was a beacon to us all;
In the darkness of an architectural anomaly
Where lights extinguish as my body lies dormant
Alone and abandoned
Only by my own subversion;
Confined ever to a convolution of passages
While above me all my peers still carry on;
Overstaying welcomes
And letting emotionality
Color conversation
A sicklier green,
A green of a tree only just sprouted,
A green of a new recruit,
A green of an inexperienced schoolboy
Faced with the daunting and timeless act
Of copulation;
Somehow taking in the sights and sounds and smells
Of advanced mathematics
Even occupied, as I am,
With explaining my actions
Most eloquently;
Devoting myself to another cause,
Another, another, another
Always relaxing my grip by losing focus;
Desperately hoping not to let my fellow travelers
Lose their innocence
While I reluctantly, dogmatically
Keep mine on a leash;
Always keenly aware
Of the universe of worlds
Beyond my control,
And even my understanding;
On the increasingly frequent
Intrusions of risk
Into my significant reality
And the iota of explainable truth which guides the motion of my body but most frequently my mind;
Questioning the meaning of all words
Without thought or coordination;
Considering another restful journey
To clear my mind of human language
And in its place acquire thoughts and emotions from the street;
Without foreseeable direction,
Malice aforethought
Or noticeable signs of critical reaction
Giving birth to litter
Forgetting articles
And floating my sense of time up the Ganges;
Taking only seconds to counter the possibility of
Accepting more responsibility for myself;
Complicating matters with an interesting or bitter goodbye.
Title inspired by Mel Brooks' film *Young Frankenstein*
CommonStory Jan 2015
Lights and colors, Lights and colors dwindle in numbers

Set a step in coordination

Fully exasperated

nonsense passes by, through images

Lenses smudged by illusive thumbprints

Who are you

Are you speaking cordially

heart trusted intuition and guts mustered

Seeping into the depths of darkness

see a surprise unseen by eyes of seekers and juveniles

Founded a resolve

Sturdy foundation like a trunk of a tree

Feed me turds quench my thirst with poison

Wrap a child sleeping soundly in a blanket of lava

Let's follow the righteous side even when full of lies

Stray from a darker path were the light of truth is easier to find

Follow the good where everything a light

and turn so you won't have to face the knife

Inject a form of lies and cast the mirage of truth over your eyes
©  copyright Matthew Marquis Xavier Donald
Jennifer DeLong Nov 2020
Wild in nature
Fly free with the wind
Dance with the waves
Grow like a tree
Discover the beauty
Wild in nature
Is where they long to be
We witches
are moonlight lovers
Forest seekers
Sky dreamers
Wild in nature
We are
We are nature
We are witches
© Jennifer L DeLong 11/3/2020
Geno Cattouse Oct 2012
What is the thing in us who love to pluck the strings of our imaginations
and try to create resonance with the words that float to the page. To create something from the
nothingness .
We paint our pictures in tortured hues or opaque clutters of expression. At times the palate will surprise even we who mix and stir and strive to find a unique shade or texture. We trawl and dredge and send up pretty balloons  in hopes they will return with answers. Well I do

I am odd in that regard. I think all who strive to express , to be heard, to hear to see to grasp and
be ambushed by sudden revaluation. To make sense of it all. to look deep within and waft on the wind at once are kin.

What is it for you?
To wash away pain.
To turn your face to the pelting rain and feel the value of your existence.

What is it for you?
To say the things your mouth cannot express, untie your fettered tongue.
Do you dream in color.
Does  your poets voice speak to you in hushed tranquil tones
or rumble and stutter or whisper softly from dank and dusty places.

What is it for You.
A way out of your suppression if not expression.
The rubbing of a soothing salve over the aches and pains endured.
The betrayal acknowledged. The Key finding purchase in the  rusted lock. The key falling from your hands in the pitch dark once again as you wake up and find yet another door to open.

What is it for you. For me it is validation that my mind is unique as the neurons fire and
speak a language spoken not by many. We are seekers. You and I.
I do not fit the profile. I am rough and hard  my facade has bonded with my skin. But look within. I am bookish and brutal.Loving and glacial. Witty but slow. Volatile but pensive . A walking talking conundrum. I do it just to **** withum.

Why do you love poetry.
What leaks out of you mind.
What goes in.
What is it ?


.
Michael R Burch Aug 2020
Perhat Tursun

Perhat Tursun (1969-) is one of the foremost living Uyghur language poets, if he is still alive. Born and raised in Atush, a city in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Tursun began writing poetry in middle school, then branched into prose in college. Tursun has been described as a "self-professed Kafka character" and that comes through splendidly in poems of his like "Elegy." Unfortunately, Tursun was "disappeared" into a Chinese "reeducation" concentration camp where extreme psychological torture is the norm. According to a disturbing report he was later "hospitalized." Apparently no one knows his present whereabouts or condition, if he has one. According to John Bolton, when Donald Trump learned of these "reeducation" concentration camps, he told Chinese President Xi Jinping it was "exactly the right thing to do." Trump’s excuse? "Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal."

Elegy
by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

"Your soul is the entire world."
―Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Asylum seekers, will you recognize me among the mountain passes' frozen corpses?
Can you identify me here among our Exodus's exiled brothers?
We begged for shelter but they lashed us bare; consider our naked corpses.
When they compel us to accept their massacres, do you know that I am with you?

Three centuries later they resurrect, not recognizing each other,
Their former greatness forgotten.
I happily ingested poison, like a fine wine.
When they search the streets and cannot locate our corpses, do you know that I am with you?

In that tower constructed of skulls you will find my dome as well:
They removed my head to more accurately test their swords' temper.
When before their swords our relationship flees like a flighty lover,
Do you know that I am with you?

When men in fur hats are used for target practice in the marketplace
Where a dying man's face expresses his agony as a bullet cleaves his brain
While the executioner's eyes fail to comprehend why his victim vanishes, ...
Seeing my form reflected in that bullet-pierced brain's erratic thoughts,
Do you know that I am with you?

In those days when drinking wine was considered worse than drinking blood,
did you taste the flour ground out in that blood-turned churning mill?
Now, when you sip the wine Ali-Shir Nava'i imagined to be my blood
In that mystical tavern's dark abyssal chambers,
Do you know that I am with you?

Keywords/Tags: Perhat Tursun, Uyghur, translation, Uighur, Xinjiang, elegy, Kafka, China, Chinese, reeducation, prison, concentration camp, mrbuyghur

TRANSLATOR NOTES: This is my interpretation (not necessarily correct) of the poem's frozen corpses left 300 years in the past. For the Uyghur people the Mongol period ended around 1760 when the Qing dynasty invaded their homeland, then called Dzungaria. Around a million people were slaughtered during the Qing takeover, and the Dzungaria territory was renamed Xinjiang. I imagine many Uyghurs fleeing the slaughters would have attempted to navigate treacherous mountain passes. Many of them may have died from starvation and/or exposure, while others may have been caught and murdered by their pursuers.



The Fog and the Shadows
adapted from a novel by Perhat Tursun
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

“I began to realize the fog was similar to the shadows.”

I began to realize that, just as the exact shape of darkness is a shadow,
even so the exact shape of fog is disappearance
and the exact shape of a human being is also disappearance.
At this moment it seemed my body was vanishing into the human form’s final state.

After I arrived here,
it was as if the danger of getting lost
and the desire to lose myself
were merging strangely inside me.

While everything in that distant, gargantuan city where I spent my five college years felt strange to me; and even though the skyscrapers, highways, ditches and canals were built according to a single standard and shape, so that it wasn’t easy to differentiate them, still I never had the feeling of being lost. Everyone there felt like one person and they were all folded into each other. It was as if their faces, voices and figures had been gathered together like a shaman’s jumbled-up hair.

Even the men and women seemed identical.
You could only tell them apart by stripping off their clothes and examining them.
The men’s faces were beardless like women’s and their skin was very delicate and unadorned.
I was always surprised that they could tell each other apart.
Later I realized it wasn’t just me: many others were also confused.

For instance, when we went to watch the campus’s only TV in a corridor of a building where the seniors stayed when they came to improve their knowledge. Those elderly Uyghurs always argued about whether someone who had done something unusual in an earlier episode was the same person they were seeing now. They would argue from the beginning of the show to the end. Other people, who couldn’t stand such endless nonsense, would leave the TV to us and stalk off.

Then, when the classes began, we couldn’t tell the teachers apart.
Gradually we became able to tell the men from the women
and eventually we able to recognize individuals.
But other people remained identical for us.

The most surprising thing for me was that the natives couldn’t differentiate us either.
For instance, two police came looking for someone who had broken windows during a fight at a restaurant and had then run away.
They ordered us line up, then asked the restaurant owner to identify the culprit.
He couldn’t tell us apart even though he inspected us very carefully.
He said we all looked so much alike that it was impossible to tell us apart.
Sighing heavily, he left.



The Encounter
by Abdurehim Otkur
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I asked her, why aren’t you afraid? She said her God.
I asked her, anything else? She said her People.
I asked her, anything more? She said her Soul.
I asked her if she was content? She said, I am Not.



The Distance
by Tahir Hamut
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We can’t exclude the cicadas’ serenades.
Behind the convex glass of the distant hospital building
the nurses watch our outlandish party
with their absurdly distorted faces.

Drinking watered-down liquor,
half-****, descanting through the open window,
we speak sneeringly of life, love, girls.
The cicadas’ serenades keep breaking in,
wrecking critical parts of our dissertations.

The others dream up excuses to ditch me
and I’m left here alone.

The cosmopolitan pyramid
of drained bottles
makes me feel
like I’m in a Turkish bath.

I lock the door:
Time to get back to work!

I feel like doing cartwheels.
I feel like self-annihilation.



Refuge of a Refugee
by Ablet Abdurishit Berqi aka Tarim
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I lack a passport,
so I can’t leave legally.
All that’s left is for me to smuggle myself to safety,
but I’m afraid I’ll be beaten black and blue at the border
and I can’t afford the trafficker.

I’m a smuggler of love,
though love has no national identity.
Poetry is my refuge,
where a refugee is most free.

The following excerpts, translated by Anne Henochowicz, come from an essay written by Tang Danhong about her final meeting with Dr. Ablet Abdurishit Berqi, aka Tarim. Tarim is a reference to the Tarim Basin and its Uyghur inhabitants...

I’m convinced that the poet Tarim Ablet Berqi the associate professor at the Xinjiang Education Institute, has been sent to a “concentration camp for educational transformation.” This scholar of Uyghur literature who conducted postdoctoral research at Israel’s top university, what kind of “educational transformation” is he being put through?

Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, has said it’s “like the instruction at school, the order of the military, and the security of prison. We have to break their blood relations, their networks, and their roots.”

On a scorching summer day, Tarim came to Tel Aviv from Haifa. In a few days he would go back to Urumqi. I invited him to come say goodbye and once again prepared Sichuan cold noodles for him. He had already unfriended me on Facebook. He said he couldn’t eat, he was busy, and had to hurry back to Haifa. He didn’t even stay for twenty minutes. I can’t even remember, did he sit down? Did he have a glass of water? Yet this farewell shook me to my bones.

He said, “Maybe when I get off the plane, before I enter the airport, they’ll take me to a separate room and beat me up, and I’ll disappear.”

Looking at my shocked face, he then said, “And maybe nothing will happen …”

His expression was sincere. To be honest, the Tarim I saw rarely smiled. Still, layer upon layer blocked my powers of comprehension: he’s a poet, a writer, and a scholar. He’s an associate professor at the Xinjiang Education Institute. He can get a passport and come to Israel for advanced studies. When he goes back he’ll have an offer from Sichuan University to be a professor of literature … I asked, “Beat you up at the airport? Disappear? On what grounds?”

“That’s how Xinjiang is,” he said without any surprise in his voice. “When a Uyghur comes back from being abroad, that can happen.”…



With my translations I am trying to build awareness of the plight of Uyghur poets and their people, who are being sent in large numbers to Chinese "reeducation" concentration camps which have been praised by Trump as "exactly" what is "needed." This poem helps us understand the nomadic lifestyle of many Uyghurs, the hardships they endure, and the character it builds...

Iz (“Traces”)
by Abdurehim Otkur
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

We were children when we set out on this journey;
Now our grandchildren ride horses.

We were just a few when we set out on this arduous journey;
Now we're a large caravan leaving traces in the desert.

We leave our traces scattered in desert dunes' valleys
Where many of our heroes lie buried in sandy graves.

But don't say they were abandoned: amid the cedars
their resting places are decorated by springtime flowers!

We left the tracks, the station... the crowds recede in the distance;
The wind blows, the sand swirls, but here our indelible trace remains.

The caravan continues, we and our horses become thin,
But our great-grand-children will one day rediscover those traces.

The original Uyghur poem:

Yax iduq muxkul seperge atlinip mangghanda biz,
Emdi atqa mingidek bolup qaldi ene nevrimiz.
Az iduq muxkul seperge atlinip chiqanda biz,
Emdi chong karvan atalduq, qaldurup chollerde iz.
Qaldi iz choller ara, gayi davanlarda yene,
Qaldi ni-ni arslanlar dexit cholde qevrisiz.
Qevrisiz qaldi dimeng yulghun qizarghan dalida,
Gul-chichekke pukinur tangna baharda qevrimiz.
Qaldi iz, qaldi menzil, qaldi yiraqta hemmisi,
Chiqsa boran, kochse qumlar, hem komulmes izimiz.
Tohtimas karvan yolida gerche atlar bek oruq,
Tapqus hichbolmisa, bu izni bizning nevrimiz, ya chevrimiz.

Other poems of note by Abdurehim Otkur include "I Call Forth Spring" and "Waste, You Traitors, Waste!"



My Feelings
by Dolqun Yasin
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The light sinking through the ice and snow,
The hollyhock blossoms reddening the hills like blood,
The proud peaks revealing their ******* to the stars,
The morning-glories embroidering the earth’s greenery,
Are not light,
Not hollyhocks,
Not peaks,
Not morning-glories;
They are my feelings.

The tears washing the mothers’ wizened faces,
The flower-like smiles suddenly brightening the girls’ visages,
The hair turning white before age thirty,
The night which longs for light despite the sun’s laughter,
Are not tears,
Not smiles,
Not hair,
Not night;
They are my nomadic feelings.

Now turning all my sorrow to passion,
Bequeathing to my people all my griefs and joys,
Scattering my excitement like flowers festooning fields,
I harvest all these, then tenderly glean my poem.

Therefore the world is this poem of mine,
And my poem is the world itself.



To My Brother the Warrior
by Téyipjan Éliyow
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When I accompanied you,
the commissioners called me a child.
If only I had been a bit taller
I might have proved myself in battle!

The commission could not have known
my commitment, despite my youth.
If only they had overlooked my age and enlisted me,
I'd have given that enemy rabble hell!

Now, brother, I’m an adult.
Doubtless, I’ll join the service soon.
Soon enough, I’ll be by your side,
battling the enemy: I’ll never surrender!

Another poem of note by Téyipjan Éliyow is "Neverending Song."
MsAmendable Aug 2015
Who are we?
Walking around proudly
With our heads to god,
So easily bearing
Satan's hands on our ankles
To drag us down, we
Can fly until the planes crumble
Until the balloons pop
Can climb until the mountains
Cease, but we
Never realized that for all we go up
Must come down,  and
Leave us yearning for the skies again.
So lay flat on the ground
With your eyes to the stars
Give Satan your limbs
And God,  your head and heart

— The End —