Our bare arms are long
strong as our hearts
not as easily broken…
as they open embracing
comforting, grasping,
protecting
bearing witness to our loves
second to none
our losses
each wound stitches
healing ever fierce
our common core
our never gone humanity
our ever sacred power
to link hearts
in unity
banishing hatred and fear
as truly as
a new day
of justice and peace
Sometimes, when the heart is heavy,
the world of wonder and beauty can seem
little more than a vast, pitiless sea
with dark waves rolling relentlessly on,
great, towering crests and troughs
carrying only strife, struggle, injustice
and a squalid, petty, deceiving tide
of narrow self-interest. Then
I reach for your hand, feel its warmth,
sense a strange, mysterious connection,
the greater sea of lives intimately shared,
and buoyed by a wave of love, hope and joy,
surrender to its transcendent surge,
letting it take me wherever it will.
Do not follow these lines
they are pockmarked
diseased, not strawberry-
scented but vicious traps
in madness. Follow them only
when you arraign a last wish
of death traps.
Silent monologues in eternity
and aroma of a salon’s sapphire.
Honeysuckle is everywhere this summer
Walking down blazing-hot streets
Suddenly the lovely scent invades the nostrils
Makes me stop in my tracks
It brings me back to my youth
The fragrance omnipresent
I’m not sure I loved it back then
Need it now though to remember the sweetness
My graphic poems used to embarrass me
Yet I couldn’t stop writing them
Did I want attention ?
Praise?
Or a gentle rebuke?
No matter
Studying Bukowski
He probably never deleted anything
He has freed me
The writing stands
My mother’s plants flourished in our garden
her azaleas and jasmine bloomed
in the spring following her death
from their vulnerable transplanted state
they prospered and assumed new prominence
with stronger roots and assured strong contours,
like my mother, I love to nurture,
I delight in signs of new growth.
Gossamer wings
crush stereotypes in living
art and reality, in poetry take
us to glimpses on ether
let this not waver
reality position, unfolding
truths
untruths
gossamer wings, your pony-tailed face will eclipse all our lies
forever.
When I see these trees
their curled torsos — infinity
and colours around them swirl in sea madness.
Touch. Touch them
as they tell stories of lands
desecrated and bodies banished with the wind
blistering in rain hollows.
Don’t worry, the ageing crisis
is over, the dead have been dumped in fields, mines and rivers, their bodies will be preserved in museums,
today every death is a maxim, an honour to preserve till posterity
knows
how many deaths
how many deaths
in a nuclear age
in a global world
in the world pressing buttons with one slender finger.
Only history will rue such deaths.
(For ‘R’)
You go and do it
have the revolution
embedded in your incarcerated dreams, but
don’t bring red, only other colours
the dance of the peacock,
swirling feathers, the regal pelican, the coated parrot, the green,
the blue the mauve the yellow
not the red
not the blood
change by all means
bring in the revolution
yours, mine evolution.
Not the red
Not the blood
Yes deplore poverty
Yes play the blame game
the blockbuster
breaking the hustings
the gun, the vote bombs
But not with the blood
Not the red, only in
prismatic colours.