Gert Strydom, 22 july 2014
In the middle of the week you did come to me
the sheen of your hair, your glowing eyes
sparkled like a sudden bolt of thunder
and for moments I was speechless.
You did astonish me with your beauty
and suddenly you jumped into my heart,
caught me unaware like a spectre
in the early years of old age,
you were suddenly in my arms,
volcanoes of a life lived wanted to burst out
and my heart did not want to calm down
in joyful amuck I was happy
and suddenly my life was new and fresh
and all of my sorrows were gone.
Gert Strydom, 22 july 2014
How many times
I have looked at the stars
as if they can lead me
straight to You,
as if with their help
I could find my way
and still untouchable
they hang above me
but Your name stays on my lips
as if the power of it
can catch everything around me
and to You my life is bound.
Satish Verma, 22 july 2014
Give me a piece of your body
before you go.
A tooth, a nail, a curled hair.
A relic, my sadness wants to keep.
By your absence I will live
in the bones of tangled bodies,
who were shot down on their tracks
under the sun, eyes apart.
The trembling does not stop.
Bread loaves were lying uneaten.
Wailing rises, reaching a crescendo.
Blood splattered soil, my hands collect
for god, to show a dirty game,
when I meet him as a witness.
Wanting to know, why not the right to live
was the most sacred thing?
Satish Verma
Anthony DiMichele, 21 july 2014
I bow to the spirit in you
with a lower case pronoun
the first person singular
agenda
dissolves
into everything
a plurality
ironically a unity
bonding us in our chaos
without both of us in each other’s way
*
don’t be negative
when your head
is buried
in the
sand
you are already one
dying
to be two
and so on
through
the entertainments
the fears
the day dreams
that can sometimes
remember
the sky inside you
*
we pick at our defects
as with scabs
always in a hurry to heal
to accelerate its natural pace
to be perfect
again
and be able to smile
with our original face
*
Gert Strydom, 21 july 2014
(in answer to A. E. Housman)
When envoys of God were visiting Lot
a crowd wanted to rape them in that night,
but they were struck by blindness and could not.
On the very next morning at first light
when Sodom’s destruction was imminent,
Lot and his family hesitated
while the very great danger was present.
The angels grabbed them where they waited
with words to flee, not to look back, to stop
on the plain or they would be swept away
and to hurry until they were on top
of the far of high hills, but on the way
Lot’s wife halted on that plain to stop
to the destruction, her glance did then stray.
[Reference: “XXXV” “Half-way, for one commandment broken” by A. E. Housman.}
Gert Strydom, 21 july 2014
On the quay I am alone
while fishing-boats sail into the green sea,
I hide behind my sunglasses
and some boats skip over the breakers
before they reach the calmer water
of the deep ocean,
seagulls hang screaming against the wind
as if they are a part of it
and the sails of wind-surfers flutter
while anxious some try to stay on top
when the wind changes direction
and are jerking them suddenly.
On the beach on the opposite side
a girl screams
as if she is barely alarmed
while her boy-friend sprays water over her
and a few lovely women
peep from behind their sunglasses at me
and I see the sun baking
their golden bodies,
high up cape gannets fly almost up to heaven
and I follow the sun
that is drawing lower over the dome of the sky
and try to see further
than where earth draws its horizon
and wonder what God does see
in humanity
where billions of us
teem like small ants
and everyone does lead a life,
gets hurt and do dream dreams.
Gert Strydom, 21 july 2014
In the moonlight False Bay looks untouched
still the sweeping water is ice-cold,
in love we are obsessed with each other
and at times our feelings feel age old
as if in our own self-preservation
we do continually reincarnate, know each other
in a great and magical simplicity
(something that I cannot properly write down)
maybe out of a mythological recipe
in which our true love does recreate itself.
Azhar alam, 21 july 2014
ہوا ہے ''ح ''سے مطمئن اور "ن" سے نوجہ نساط کو اسنے
دغا تھا "د "مے تو '' و " بھی کچھ کم نہیں اسمے
صدا "س " کی ادین سے " ت " کبھی تابط نہ کر سکا
"ن" کو ملنے کے بعد لفظ مے کوئی گنجائش نہ کر سکا
ملے یہ حرف تو ایک عجیب سا لفظ ہندوستان بنا
تعجب نہیں کوئی کی یہ شہروں کا گلشتا بنا
Satish Verma, 21 july 2014
On the hay stack lies my body
brought from the shooting range.
Brain dead, I exit, to watch
the blood drenched earth. Foot prints of eternity.
Window is shut. No light enters.
In tiers, the cadavers are lying in a heap
of stinks. Violence has brought the perfect
insult to bubbling life.
A naked truth sweeps the floor, burns
the statements of filthy peers. I was
young with small eyes, full of water,
in the face of crime, looking at the stars.
Death will walk on payments now.
History will ooze in spurts.
Satish Verma
Satish Verma, 20 july 2014
Walked into the sun,
He. With weak flesh.
A storm was raging on burning sands.
In hollow of his knees
gravel was hitting hard.
He moved onwards in trance
Visionary, homeless, life in open
was blessing.
A huge crowd followed him, voiceless.
Hushed silence breaks the dam.
Valley of timbers was ready to receive the blood,
from epicenter, from fields.
Satish Verma