decked out white as a pearl
can you feel the quick spin
pull you from a distant sin
blood flung wide in one’s insides
lifting brainward, like rising tides
somehow the mind becomes silent
as music blares, bold and violent
POEM: Dervish
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Category Archives: poem
POEM: Prisoner #7
“Names are for the living.
“Names are for the loyal,”
So they told him,
when they swapped name to number.
He had too many questions
for a dictator’s lackey to tolerate,
“Is six alive? How about five?
“Is there an eight? How ’bout a nine?
“Do they live and die in ordered time?
“Or is each end a random call?
“Toss a coin, and let it fall?
“Let it roll, till it shows a face,
“Heads a bullet, tails for grace
“I’ll take the end that’s certain and dire,
“before letting chance choose when I’m retired.”
“But seven is such a lucky number.”
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POEM: Kathmandu
tight warren of streets, alleys, and stupa-laden courtyards
— a junky’s labyrinth
low portals force a bow to the ever-watching Buddha
how’s someone, hot-wired and strung out —
slipping the sacred geometries —
kink their way through this dusty burg
without clocking a noggin on bricks
— blocks of brown, dried blood brown
how do lost self-medicating masses find themselves
where it’s so easy to be lost
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Around the World in 5 Works of Poetry
5.) On Love and Barley by Matsuo Basho [Japanese]: One doesn’t get better haiku [and other traditional Japanese poetry forms] than Basho.
4.) The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur [Indian-Canadian]: This isn’t the expected fair for an “around the world” post as it’s not blatantly infused with setting / geography, but culture does factor in prominently.
3.) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman [American]: Not only does Whitman explore the many dimensions of America, he also references other cultures and locales. [There was a fascination with the East brewing in Whitman’s day.]
2.) Octavio Paz / Selected Poems by Octavio Paz [Mexican]: Paz was a diplomat as well as a Nobel Laureate, and his poems include many references to India (where he was posted) as well as Mexico.
1.) The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran [Lebanese-American]: Featuring an intriguing melange of advice in poetic form.
NOTE: It’s not as global a list as I’d like. I’d love to hear what works others might include in the list. I don’t think poetry gets translated as much as fiction and so it’s a bit of a challenge. It’s much easier to find examples of novels & short story collections from far-flung corners of the world.
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POEM: Dark Shantytown
walking in the street
after the sun has set
No streetlights
No porch lights
No headlamps
No torch lights
No box-lit sign for the butcher
No neon sign for the barber
just the dim hypnotic flicker of screens
like swimming a benighted sea
knowing other life teems unseen
sometimes a face drifts into view
and you pivot to avoid collision
or maybe just drift vaguely past
one word rattles in you brain:
SHARKS
Are there sharks?
Where are the sharks?
Will I see the shark,
before I feel the shark?
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POEM: Running
Botswanans have a saying:
“only food runs”
I wonder how much that sentiment holds sway in India?
Because, as I was running in the park today
a man looked at me
and then looked back behind me
and then looked at me
and then looked back behind me
and then, smiling, he shouted something in Kananda
that could only have been:
“Whatever was chasing you is gone!”
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POEM: That Particular Hole
I can’t find the fate beneath my feet.
It’s always just across the street.
Over there.
On the other side.
Where the demons slink and hide.
Follow me down.
For I must go.
I feel the falling of the snow.
The cold slows me to a creep.
Then trickle gives away to seep.
Evaporates ‘fore it hits the deeps.
By then I’d given up to sleep.
It’s a long way down
that particular hole.
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POEM: Off the Rails
Rails of sanity. Rails of convention. People find it scary, being afloat on endless seas.They long for rails, and the further out the tracks are laid, the easier they rest.
teary for the lunatic
who ventured off the rails
sitting in a open sea
adrift, not hoisting sails
worry not for me, my friend
horse latitudes are past
when the drifting day is done
i can always raise the mast
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Death Haiku
scorpion corpse
sitting atop a wall
why die there?
vultures circle
i give them wide berth
they’ve yet to choose
ant-swarmed mantis
i thought you a leaf
do the ants know?
fresh flowers
mossy flush-set headstone
unseen, not lost
the potter’s field
out near the back fence
closer to the world
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A Conversation of Mutual Disenchantment
“I remember being born.”
“No. You don’t.”
“How would you know?”
“Well, let’s start from the assumption that you’re human…”
“I’d like to think so, but what are my options?”
“I don’t know. Humans don’t have that neural machinery at birth… So nothing from Earth remembers its birth.”
“And yet, I do.”
“Mightn’t you have cobbled together the scene from your mom’s stories, the family photo album, et cetera?”
“Nah! It’s too detailed. Feels too real.”
“I find your ignorance exhausting.”
“I find your certainty perplexing — not to mention irritating and slap-worthy.”
“Let’s agree to be mutually disenchanted.”
“Agreed.”
