Satish Verma, 25 october 2014
Cannot decode the signature of fear beneath the huge eyes,
serene and calm, darting right and left, like in stricken
animal at frenzy. Drift we must; will seldom cross the path.
Agony of existence, flying thighs, erect humps, sliding on sand
dunes. Even moon melts in our mouth.
You had kissed the frozen lips; of betrayed night.
The sudden gyration of hips, fading of stars,
and waning of nameless memory. Let’s go and
hide in blasts of whistling train. Pale wool of
knitted love cannot hold the heat. The waiting will
be over in minutes. Wheels will runover an epoch.
I would raise my head after ages in astonishment. I was still alive, cast
in a different mould. Dislocation became my integrity,
my fate, a frightened truth.
People were very short sighted, could not cross infinity.
Supreme was in them, discounting morality.
Satish Verma
Satish Verma, 24 october 2014
On your dark face
smile does not spread like a butterfly.
Most reticent I had been,
It was very difficult to give,
and very painful to take.
You wanted to be noticed,
and I had a tryst with uncharted path.
It was coming.
The separation!
Like an anal pain of cancer.
The essence was, usurped by a deathly kiss of cobra.
Your thoughts, body language were wrapped
in a tarnished blanket.
Let us start a parallel monologue
on different selves.
Do not count the wounds.
An anthropologist has become a messenger.
The history, the fossils, the caves are shouting,
we were cannibals.
No sound will trudge now,
on our empty streets.
No knocks will come on our doors.
Satish Verma
Joe Breunig, 23 october 2014
In these quiet spaces,
I become temporarily deaf
to the meaningless noises
that seek to define me.
In these quiet spaces,
my soul is nourished;
surrounded by silence,
my spirit soars upward.
In these quiet spaces,
my focus turns inward,
knowing that His Presence
is co-mingled with mine.
In these quiet spaces,
the renewing of my mind
occurs as my life, is…
humbled before Him.
In these quiet spaces,
His divine, sacred wind
envelops my frail essence
with indescribable peace.
In these quiet spaces,
consumed by His Presence,
I sense undeniable power
of God’s authentic Love.
Author Notes
Inspired by:
Matt 6:1,6; Rom 12:1-2; Jam 4:8;
Heb 13:15-16; Psa 46:10; Phil 4:7
Learn more about me and my poetry at:
http://amzn.to/1ffo9YZ
By Joseph J. Breunig 3rd, © 2014, All rights reserved.
Gert Strydom, 22 october 2014
When the aeroplane does descend
at Jan Smuts airport
(or whatever they now call it)
lights lie as far as I can see,
they glitter like jewels in the night
and there is a hodgepodge of people
that waits upon their luggage
and I am waiting on a briefcase and suitcase
but when you do notice me
everything fades away, the big city
that does stretch from Johannesburg to Pretoria,
the crowd of people that are coming and going
and it’s only you and I standing in each other’s arms.
Satish Verma, 22 october 2014
How it is that –
at shrine while saying prayers
sex was on your mind?
You hated the betrayal and emptiness of life.
but still tuned to sweet indulgence.
And then a sudden flash back
slaps in your face,
and you want to commit suicide.
Afraid of hurting your pride
I did’t fulfil my promise of wiping your tears
in a sprint of flinching ache.
It is night now
The words have a peculiar burnt-out smell
of the road,
as if they were smouldering
in hot ashes of peace.
Satish Verma
Celine, 22 october 2014
she told me nothing
would ever get better
she told me i was too weak
too fragile to fight the war
that was each step and each breath, in and out
she told me i was at the bottom
that nothing was lower
that there was no ascension from
here, no exit
no hole
no way out because i
had dug myself in too deep
she told me i was too weak
that i was unworthy
that shame was a better suited
name, she told me
that there were people worse off
people with shackles
people with dry throats and parched skin
and people whose very lives were ripped
to shreds.
she told me i was too weak
she told me i had a roof and parents
how could i dare feel this way? how could i
feel like i was at rock bottom when there was more
there was more bottom than this rock bottom?
so she told me i didn’t deserve to feel this way
she told me i didn’t deserve to live.
she told me i was wrong that i
had been thinking of the wrong things, that
my life was constructed with broken glass and
watery glue, that my thoughts were not right
that i was doomed from the start
doomed from now to the end of eternity,
she told me i was destined for nothing.
she told me they lied, that their words were a mask and
their thoughts weren’t beside them, that they didn’t really care because
they had better places to go, better people to see, so she told me.
their smiles were for politeness and their hugs were bare and
empty, they didn’t care, they didn’t care, they don’t fucking care
she told me.
she told me to stop searching
that nothing was going to get better, that i was too weak
too feeble to stand up and find someone
that nobody cared enough to listen
that it was my fault it happened, my fault it was here,
my fault that she was grabbing me by the ankles
because i deserved it.
she told me to get over it
she told me people found me annoying
desperate for attention, for care or for love, whatever that means
she told me i was looking for attention
that nobody wanted to help, really
that i should stop pestering people whose lives actually
mattered.
she told me i should hide it
that it was a shame to carry it around, that i should smile
with my muscles and cry with my heart
that people would at least know i was a human, then
that i wouldn’t bother people
she told me to stay quiet.
she told me so much that even now,
even after mastering my smiling and learning
the laughing, even now after so much time
even now when i know she was wrong
even now i can hear her voice ringing
reverberating against the frail ribs of my inside.
Ailill, 22 october 2014
Child,
denied your rights at the family
dinner table of Horatio Algers
rags to riches fable,
heard your anger the other night
in the sounds of her cries,
the banging on the walls
coursing through apartment halls.
Spotted the fear in her eyes,
tears she could not hide
as she ran by my opened door.
Shocked to the core, powerless,
didn’t know what to do
to break up this family dispute,
knowing all you been through.
What? With my hands stained red
by the blood that you shed
when you were beaten for being different?
If I called the police,
how would it haunt me?
For you knew my hidden wounds.
You knew I’ve been hurt too.
It was a secret we kept between us,
dared not speak of.
Betrayal, blackmail, cuts both ways.
Within this play, each of us, shades of grey
clouding the way. Imprisoned by chains
holding us together, fault lies
on both of our shoulders.
Looking out from this prison cell
I find myself in, the irony of it sinks in.
The ways I’ve sheltered myself from you,
how you’ve hidden from me too.
Hold up a mirror and you will see
your own reflection within me.
Divided by religions,
Superficial competitions, other isms,
victimhood - oppression cuts both ways.
Wounded, brother against brother,
in denial of our shared trials.
This fear and mistrust between us,
goes both ways.
Forgotten son,
Is this the way to succeed?
Change history?
Defeat the oppressor within ourselves.
Don’t take it out on someone else.
Have we walked in their shoes?
Seen what they’ve been through?
Break the cycle of victimization,
create a transformation of consciousness
within us. Change this tragedy
into a comedy of survival.
There is no other way to see
our original face
the one we had before
the day we were born.
Gert Strydom, 21 october 2014
I am jealous on the friends,
colleagues and children
that is daily with you
and even your two dogs
that holds you company
in the afternoons and evenings.
I am jealous on the beach
where in summer
you lay and tan
and on the bed
where both your sheets
have got you tightly against them.
It is quite a thing
to be without money
and more than a thousand kilometre away
and to love.
Satish Verma, 21 october 2014
I have put the darkness
behind the burning flesh.
This world was not very open.
Stoically I lift the nameless grief
and take a leap in the blind shaft.
Morality had always been in contrast
with enormous guilt.
The adventure of turbulent life
was in quest of scraped moments.
Tender roots come out
from fallen seeds.
Of untouched desires.
Moonstruck I will gather dust.
Was it not sufficient to live on,
when past and future were not my part?
And how forsaken
was the moon.
Probability was always certain
and worship of a new messiah
a distinct possibility.
Satish Verma
Gert Strydom, 20 october 2014
At the local church I had been gardening
as it was my responsibility
and the bee box of the old retired minister
had become a danger to me
as if it housed beings that was sinister
and after reporting been stung nobody did a thing.
At the service in church there was an ominous humming
where that swarm of bees near the back window was left to be
and a sermon a pastor did administer
when the congregation did some angry bees see
and great fear did in the church register
while that small harpies that could fly were stirring
and did sting a first time visitor in the face
to the church’s and God’s disgrace.
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