Morgan, 12 september 2016
Have you lost your job?
Is your wife depressed?
How can things be that ok--
even your jeans are distressed?
My dear friend, there's a law
you can bank on, not to worry,
based on odds and statistics,
and such called Probability.
Even the angels accept it
and abide its changing faces.
There is little more you can do, pal,
unless you have friends in high places:
Up-tick follows down-tick--
that's the sum of it.
just wait and you will witness
its doings and reap its benefit.
For now, even now
the small gods that admire pluck,
seeing it empty so long, rush
to fill your cup with luck.
There is good in store aplenty--
a miracle job, a newly ecstatic wife.
Better times are coming, coming surely,
coming to change your life.
Satish Verma, 12 september 2016
Like swapping your face for
a tormentor. Stop the rains.
I am going home, after
a hard choice of peace
in sunlight. Give me back my
memory. I want to take a
flight. Scanning the midnight
sun on blue lake.
Stairs are climbing on me.
Stay with me. I am falling
on your purple doves
eating blood oranges.
I am sad inside the stitched
eye. Clouds are breaking the
light. I will not come
for therapy from lies.
Satish Verma, 11 september 2016
It was
a killing line.
Walking on razor wire,
when toes would not leave the sky
and heels will not touch the ground.
Myths and legends
were becoming a witchcraft.
Are you ready to eschew the classical script
and write a new fable, about
a life size robot,
who will speak for millions
and put his signature on the wall
of a dying moon for the sake of blue clouds?
The caldron is empty. No body was
throwing any baby in it.
Stay still.
The bold instincts will come back with vengeance.
Satish Verma, 10 september 2016
The rapture
was on prowl
to get the believers.
You knew
what you should not have known
about the baby blue.
Aphasia,
experiences an impulsive
violence, beyond the dead.
Bionic hands
to capture the moment of
swapping uremia with swastika.
A lake
ravishes the moon.
No body will sleep tonight.
Who was behind
the divination?
Allies were born enemies.
Satish Verma, 9 september 2016
It is.
An explosive denial
of an infinite firmness
of round orbs.
Why were you taking
off your shirt
to show the scars?
it stirs a sequestered allegation.
The glare was on my days
and your nights.
The suicide bomber was
a kid, you know.
When a poem leaves you,
how far would you go to kill
a blue jay
for the golden cage?
Satish Verma, 8 september 2016
A siege had an agenda
for a suicide match.
Treat him with dignity.
A proxy face of a serial
adultery. The collateral damage
will not be undone.
The aggressor denies the scrutiny.
You will find some upheaved
boats in his hideout.
There cannot be any deniability
for a long legged journey
towards the hot coals.
The battle for the lost glory
has begun between two moons.
one in sky, other in uprising.
Satish Verma, 7 september 2016
This politics of poverty
erupts again,
entrapped in arcane script.
A code of words will find
the fault lines.
Coerced to wait in a
black book, you start forgetting
the rules of game. It hits you
when you were writing
a poem.
At the end of the arguments
a lynx eyed moon walks
on the lake of tears, constructing
a dam of bread, for
a broken promise.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016
It is to the rocks at Pigeon Cove
watching the cormorants
and not to the monotonous tide
at St. Ann's sandbar
that will salvage your name
it is to the ocean
and not to the fluid borders
that will embroider you
by the stones and surf
in the morning mist
of your mineral waters
that will anoint you
from the anchors
of the tourist boat
from Boston
through a water song shadow
that will offer prayer
to your conscience
in a cup's communion
and it is to the silence
of the eagle
perched on the harbor dock
in the windshield of the sun
that will lock your eyelids
into your torpor of mind
familiar though
a threatening storm
that will save the whole sky
in a flushed warm
August dog day
of a fevered heat wave
that leaves
your conflated memory
in language
by a daybreak sentence
to make any sense
as the birds chatter
and the clouds scatter
why does it matter,
by the parking lots
of visitors with their mirrors
of the past that enfold across
their own corridors
as maps are lost on bridges
and are caught by the lone sail
down the hills
by the rails of the last train
that sought to visit by the dunes
or pursue a wanton shadow
of days that are narrow
as you kneel by your bed
by nail scarred hands
knowing as the noon bell rings
and a choir sings
inside you believes the face
of a memoir
is being composed
and small birds are clinging
to Evergreen branches
by the muggy rose garden
to pardon us all in grace.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016
In a hotel room with a small t.v.
staring at cartoons, commercials
game shows and comedies
where at noon in a grainy stall
you leave your lame worry
for all the walled slogans
of graffiti
in a flushed shower
of a vocabulary
of assaulting words
(while I'm all in prayer
of St. Francis
with melancholy
but hope to attain
better in an after life)
with this continued
rainy abyss
waiting for a brief
answer of "Yes"
near my Advent clock radio
without an hour's prohibition
of sister doing
origami for a stranger
wanting to be spent anywhere
than in this hourly
Kafka burlesque
by the florid window
hearing a flock
of pigeons and a crow
in a metamorphosis
of humoresque
when the time is set
for creation
or to be at another
train track
to visit the 14th station
or else crossing
in another direction
at no man's land
at Christmas time
to be near Bethlehem's manger
yet an art director
wants to view
my play tomorrow
about Roualt's colorful clown
and coming down from
the bay at Boston
to audition on
off-off-Broadway
racked by sorrow,
I try to pray.
B.Z. Niditch, 7 september 2016
Seizing to protect a pug
by the kiosk
tasting bread and wine
amid the chants
of the choir at St. Paul's
in Harvard Square
forgetting all triangular
morning masks and mysteries
near Cambridge Common
you eye Elizabeth Bishop
stopping at the crosswalk
returning from Brazil
with her luggage
in the glittering heat
of August's still noon
amid a phalanx of red birds
reaching out to a blue slate sky
when the first light
decides to shine
in taciturn airless hours
feeling the angst
of Sisyphus
amid the purple flowers
burning from
a high mountain
as a stone unable
to move or rise for us
hearing word lines of poetry
from the ancients like Ovid
sharing on divine
solitary horizons
transfigured by gold star dust
or listening to sister
in a far voice dreams
from a Greek chorus
burning your imagination
as we are a little changed
in sleepwalking liquid silences
of endless fervid fevers
as David among his flock
like old Cinna or bold Catullus
among the Caesars.
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