The battered armless tire rolls on the rough sand,
Crinkling and crunching jagged glass.
The boy with his gentle eyes and hopeful smile,
A contrast to his sooty battered frame.
He spins the wheel, his laugh echoing through the haunted land,
Past the smoking rubble and the lives buried beneath.
He pays no attention to the phantom echoes of anguished cries.
Trudging on, a silhouette against the last, pale light from the west.
The world is ending in silence. Villages
Across the globe bristle with dishes
Feeding TV into homes all the waking
Hours. An elder, last speaker of Eyak
On Earth, sits with her great grandkids
Before a communal screen. She is tired
And angry; her breathing device bites.
She longs for silence to teach some Eyak
Words. She musters the will, the strength,
To reach for the remote, to hit mute, to hit
It with all her might, for the legacy of her
People, the survival of her nation’s culture.
But the six-year-old will not yield. And she
Must suffer in silence the end of her world.
Enter this bewildered land
animals and people are lonely
the tree groans fearing,
maybe felled, hills luscious
taking cover under rains
of wraith,
this is a country my dear
which has dreams
for millions who quiver
waiting by the side of a blood-
red river,
this country my dear
I hold broken
in lotus palms
waiting to be gifted
healing alms.
She cries a silent song
I hear the quiet agony
She feels exhaustion
From insomnia
I walk the floors in the Dead of night
She feels her nerve endings
Raw on fire
The futility of neuropathy
I bleed from
Her labored breath
And need to disconnect
But can’t pull the plug
She is one of many
I carry around
Like loose change
So much you cannot set right
yesterday a dark space
you were weeping in the rain
but no one noticed
how the little things can destroy you
make you uneven
steadier hands
holding the sail
towards land
turned to water
dark bruise
who named you
gave me to you
as if I were a traded property
this nervous laugh
learned it early
if you seem like a happy child
no one will see the flame under your bed
home a story
of hospital gowns
and empty talking talking talking
blue in the face of strangers
who shout to be convinced of their bodies’
weight against the window pane
star blanket upstream
prayer flags riding pollution
through fall
and the only courage you can muster
is a rooftop poem
scratched in the side wall
we were here
we were real
we did the best we could.
They trumped me up
Roiling me by their interrogation
for rebellion against their god
I was imprisoned for nothing but
the vastitude of human ignorance
Then, silenced & repentant
for what I didn’t know why
No one was a sinner but apparently I
who spoke for real freedom of thought
I was happy not being like them
in a dark room, not knowing time then
Not listening to them while obedient
The life itself was too brilliant
It was a horrible time for me
in the darkness, unable to see
I’ll never forget what they did to me
though I am now seemingly free
More at http://martinforoz.wordpress.com.
Rain brings the forgotten memories
digging into the healed wounds
of death and silence
reserved weeping
and broken hearts
Once the rain goes away
all is suddenly healed
Until the next monsoon comes.
—–
Ajmal Khan is a bilingual writer who writes in English and Malayalam. His articles and poems have appeared in Muse India
magazine, India Cultural forum, Countercurrents.org, Resist India,
Round Table India, Two Circles.net, Sanhati.com, Ignite South Asia,
Cafedissensus.com, Kafila.org and Kindle magazine in English.