Gert Strydom, 17 august 2015
Your smile is the summer sun
and just as hot
as it shines at high noon
and your eyes do sparkle
the open blue sky
when for moments I am lost in them
and maybe are looking much deeper than I ought to
and I see a lifetime lying in their depths
when your lips do flame of aloe
and an unsaid moment hangs between us
and in that short time that lingers
it’s only the two of us in the whole universe.
Satish Verma, 16 august 2015
I had to let them stay.
My anguish & anxiety.
Denuding me, filling me with hymns of pain.
The blank days drifted in slow motion.
I tried to sing,
imitating the cuckoo on the tree,
to shake off the clouds from the eyes.
Everyday the pain was new,
dreams were old
in the eternal churning.
Grizzled clouds hanged on trees
for witnessing the chaining of desires.
Empty words went into seizures,
clogging the arteries of crisp brain.
Deep within a seed
opened the eyes sitting
quietly near the blast of pain.
Green sprouts drank the light.
My poems wept
and truth started a dance.
The time and space intermingled
to celebrate a birth.
Satish Verma, 15 august 2015
You gave me a name without asking.
History of my pain
did not need any label.
I recalled only
the blooms of bougainvillea,
not the heat which gave them color.
My burned lips
remembered only the dew
and rear view of life.
The total otherness of the moon and stars
did not heal the scars.
My perceptions had
given me hot tears.
How the distance between us
created the schizophrenia?
The familiar laughs
have frozen after all!
In the middle of night I lie awake
to count the door
and the closed windows.
I listen to the moaning of walls.
My eyes remained half-closed in freckled sleep.
Heart blinks, unsnaps
and weaves a moon.
Gert Strydom, 14 august 2015
I do fear that all love does come to an end,
that for each piece of happiness there is oblivion
and the thought turns around and around in my head
as if each life is bound to a kind of darkness,
as if all things and people must go to naught
but then the realization comes
that the essence of love
goes much further than this earth,
that love hits with an own power and fullness.
Satish Verma, 14 august 2015
It hurts, the abstract isolation of life
emptying of self.
The infection
of water in the sun.
A nameless pain annihilates
the ascending desires.
I want no more
traffic of dreams.
Only discovery of Being.
Where the city had gone from the mirror
of my poems?
Streets had the color
of a wrinkled maid.
And new dictionary had new words
of an obscene vernacular.
I wanted my stack, my lake.
Surface exploded into nothingness.
The lake boiled in the heat of eternity.
A part of the evening was cool,
participating in the festivities
of homing birds.
It took a whole night
to see the face of truth!
Gert Strydom, 13 august 2015
The holy Bible asks
who can come into the presence,
into the dwelling place of the omnipotent Lord God
and it’s no riddle that a person has got to solve
as it is clear that he who is sincere
will see the Lord.
Satish Verma, 13 august 2015
The tryst with path,
was full of voices of silence,
confronting its wrath & revenge.
Nothing was new, soft matter divided the winds,
arithmetic of energy,
faced up to its agony of spent life.
Decently artful,
you manipulated the clouds, its music,
the bluebells went into trance.
The shower laden
leaves started dancing.
Half solemn, half smiling
you preached the immortality
of a sick downloaded wisdom.
The golden days had
yellowed vision of time, but mutation was complete.
The masts were broken.
The air was scented with
punch & humility.
Adjectives had the
advantage over nouns.
Gert Strydom, 12 august 2015
Lord, the blood of the innocent trickles in the sand and clot
on the farms and in the cities of South Africa,
the beaker of the sorrows of Your people is running full
and I want to ask for deliverance and for much more than just mercy,
I am asking for Your peace and for true rest
as according to reports people are being murdered and robbed,
from the most distant northerly farm right up to the coast,
and some people flee and loose themselves under neon lights,
famous people are seen at objectionable places
while some people do pray to ancestral spirits and to rocks
and a future and a free life is much less than a maybe
as thousands have been buried with their shattered bones
and murdering shot after murdering shot is being fired
while people are begging and do wander through the land,
criminals do continually kill
and people do die without respect or mercy
It’s clear that a dark force is bringing evil over my people
and even at the church,
at government hospitals
crime and recklessness is being seen
and people do show signs to each other with their thumbs,
cellular phones and jewellery are being robbed with firearms
and factories are polluting the grey blue sky of the old Transvaal
while illegal shacks do stretch from hillock to hillock
and farmers are waited upon on Sundays and hunted down
from the Limpopo river to as far as flat Table Mountain
and at distant places and on farms robbers do strike at night
causing innocent people to die throughout the country
and passengers are threatened on train upon train
as if the police does not exist
while criminals use robbed medicine
to create their deadly drugs.
A politician tells naked lies and do excel in fraud
while robbers, criminals and murderers do never go to jail
and everyone that stands against these things is being seen as a rebel.
There are great abominations in the country like in the book Ezekiel,
people treat each other much worse than their animals,
some Afrikaners are rotten deeper than the core,
while black people dance naked to ancestral spirits in the veldt,
and a dark force is bringing its ungodly practices back.
Each criminal gang see themselves as soldiers,
some people are blindfolded against the walls of their own homes
and others dig holes for their own bodies
while most people are only searching for peace and a own life
and that You are going to intervene my Lord, is something that I do know
as like a David, I did also go through a valley of death
when communists wanted to destroy everything that is holy
and did suffer great losses against a much smaller army.
At the hand of foreigners Eugene Terreblance did die
and laws that oppress my own people are every day being seen
while municipal labourers do strike and rubbish heap up to the yard
and people without hope do visit dancing places and each and every bar
while those that do govern think that their dominance does last eternally
but you do notice the corruption that is being swept under the rosemary,
and You do see my scattered people and the bones of their struggle
as the Afrikaner does know humiliation, oppression, nemesis and pain
and thousands have being killed and lay in the grave
while the wind of abatement does blow continually and people do sob.
Lord, do hear the cries of them that are still following You
as some have become feasting places for the vulture and the crow.
and I pray for peace a place in the sun for everyone
from the rough back-veldt to each city,
and that Your bright light do splash down on the urban buildings of glass,
that everyone will reflect Your love, mercy and righteousness.
Satish Verma, 12 august 2015
Blows had blackened the mist,
fear of crossing the road, dented the veil.
‘Ism’ versus the boundary had a long rhetoric.
I was struggling with scars of learning.
Pain unwrapped the gift of rhythm with confession
bitten by skorpios, blue and cold.
Finding the cause does not solve the rigidity.
Entering my own genome, increases the panic attack,
where I am heading after all?
And today sun beats the unentered thighs
marrow, blood of a martyr, who pledged
to die to himself between enquiry and truth.
Fragmented self now seeks totality
and the mystery of staying alive,
when the hills are dead and green had turned around.
As usual I am meditating, to live or not to live.
The greatness of earth still impresses,
it does not insult the death.
Gert Strydom, 11 august 2015
The wind blew on the beach
and our hands were each in each
while our hearts did beat like one
and all of our yesterdays were gone
but the new morning was just out of reach
while the moments lingered and slowly time moved on.
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