Crappy attempts at poetry
Inspiration for this page came from a recent happening. The verses of an obscure poet were picked up on by the most powerful person on the planet (other superlatives may also have applied here.)
Sweet Defeat (Nov 2011)
Conquer me I beg of you
Thrash me
Till I’m black and blue
But stubborn
You’d rather wait
Till black turns blue
So I wait
From disinterested heights
The moon and the stars
For witnesses
Won’t pine for you
Thus I will catch you
Unawares
And you shall defeat me
I go far away
Will not bother you
Return, find myself
It’s like I never left
You, still unmoved
I wait
Alone in the entire world
Oh boisterous cricket
Where art thou?!
Where?
Man-made beasts
Are all I hear
(with legally-asleep handlers)
You refuse
Now I apologize
For all the times
I tried to beat you
For I don’t know better
But please
For this one time
To overpower me I need you
For whom else can I trust to deal
So thorough a blow?
Take pity on me
I am yours for the taking
Body and soul
Like that Billie Holiday song
Don’t hold your breath
Like I’ve held mine
To creep up on you
When you see me exposed
The many sides
Tired
Stumped
How to get through to you
Or the other way round
Time passes
I mourn the losses
The losses that could have been
So refractory an enemy
A friend
Who worse than you
To snub a sacrifice laid?
A sacrifice which pleads
“Receive me now
Take me into your arms”
Thus to re-offer itself tomorrow
Where does love go?(March 2013)
The thousand aching fingers of love,
my love, come out jagged, imperfect
Letting go, being distant
Don’t trust it!
Count it a strange way of hanging on
Preserving what I hold most dear
Trust my love is there,
powerful
I have felt it pushing
Kicking and screaming
Held back by a weak creature
For all its might
Life’s just too short
For love to be free
So this, a plan born of giving up
The paradigm shift
Better off on its own, should I go first
I pray my love would be the blanket that keeps you warm
When people bound by duty peel off
And, dread that day, if my gaze is lowered
My eyes to never see the same again
When all and sundry is off to and back from
their jaunt to reachable heights
(will we ever learn?! for whom the bell tolls. et cetra et cetra)
I don’t ask much
Let my love be just a few proud feathers
Adorning the blessed wings you soar on
Lord knows, I bear witness, you are worth
A million feathers and more
To the devil (October 2012)
The fire you meant for me became
The fortress that kept you out
The harder you pushed, the firmer I stood
Tears out to drown me helped me see
Clearer now I don’t need a rainy day
To cherish the sun, to wear my life
Sans weariness
Treat your assignments with indolence
Submit, never
I carries like Atlas (April 2012)
Damn you!
Damn you to hell!
For you lowered my sky
I was doing fine just by myself
Setting my limits
Carrying my sky
An arm’s length
Above my head
And then you came
You hit me where it hurt
I went down
Took my sky with me
So small on my feet
Hit the ground
A big sorry bundle
Of silently screaming why oh why
(Pause for effect; picture me silently screaming, will ya!)
Took it up with the real sky
Calm as you like
Smug in its clarity
Began to impart said clarity
On dumb one
“Remember this morning,
When you brought down
Someone else’s sky?”
De pronto it hit me
For the second time
In seventeen lines
This time, the stupid thing I’ve done
Oh snap!
Sure I knew that Karma was a bitch
But this swift, damn!
Yo, but that was different
(I am cool with the sky like dat)
I was just telling the kid
What I thought was right for the kid
Yeah right!
The road to hell is paved with…
Wait a minute!
You use that up there too?!
I thought only us mortals…
I guess then it must be true
I mean
You must have seen hell first hand
Is it really like…
Just shut up and listen!
Word to the wise
Or the fool in this case
Next time, leave your sky be
Set your hands free
And fly
Mithat, asmat -you best believe the hype (May 2012)
magic you don’t believe in
I ask you then, how come
when there is distance in between
I ebb, am unwholesome
and when you are near
no wand
just a hand, a touch
I, as the world knows me
as you made me
reappear
no abracadabra either
my name through your lips
with all the petals of my being
towards you, my sun, I blossom
crystal balls
what need do you have for them ?!
the future lies in your eyes
my reflection in them
is the best person I have ever been
ever will be
they are twice the affirmation
twice the promise
screw magic carpets!
I know
your feet carry thoughts of me
everywhere that you go
so, next time you walk around
on God’s green earth
blissfully ignorant of your powers
you feel ordinary
just remember this
if it were the 17th century
they would have burned you alive
you’ve been put on earth
to prove yourself wrong
I salute my unassuming teacher
now we are a couple of sorcerers
and then I wake up
The back ( September 2011)
for fuck sakes man
get behind yourself!
awwwww shit
I got hit again!
same bullet
different shooter
then again methinks it
was the same shooter
good grief
aren’t I a big enough
shield for myself
when life draws on its arsenal
why can’t I draw on life?
what’s the point in living
if one can’t get one’s own back?
leave many selfs behind
to illuminate
the apparent dark
why do I keep falling in
the same hole
(again)n?
why can’t I be bigger than my hole
or sidestep it at the very least?
why do I keep getting smaller?
why do I catch a momentary wave
try to stay on it forever?
why can’t I learn?
why do I yearn, and yearn?
why do I keep feeding the beast
of discontent?
Amen (August 2011)
shut the fuck up
kneel the fuck down
don’t you try to be
smart, nice words
you know they amount to jack
and don’t strip it down
to the basics, the bare minimum
the break from question marks
don’t go and substitute it with
ephemeral exclamations
today’s topic will be…
the fuck you need a topic for?
don’t remember
forget not
you have been here before
it’s the first time
be sure to come back
don’t wax lyrical, gush
pronounce it aloud
from your mountain
new one
same old pile of stones
don’t look up
while your inside
is dying for a glimpse
just be still, silent
let it linger
til you have become
one with one
be silence
listen
PS why do you talk so much? I mean, I was just wondering…
The declaration (Aug 2011)
NO, I WILL NOT GO!
Let it come hither
If it so desires
At this moment to be free
My whole being aspires
Grab what it can of eternity
Let beauty course through my veins
No, I will not help nature
Take its course
Be an accomplice
To its craze, its haste
To everyone their due
Insanity to the world
To the fools
Peace to me, oh sweet peace!
Truth of many a hue
So, let it salivate from afar, anear, wherever
Stake a claim
Dole out promises fulfilled past
Like it got it all figured out
Here I will be sitting
Spirits and middle finger up
As if it did not cast a long shadow
Its clout meant naught
And oh, should it insist
On a council, I wonder
So please its heart
Would it deign to show its face?
How about the twenty second of never?
Said place
Said attitude
Come get me!
.
.
.
Fuck it, I am hungry!
Tesfa Yetemolu Yefikir Sinignoch ( Feb 2008)
I was just thinking about you
For dog years
In more places
Than a stray dog could only dream of going to
Mustering strength from my exhaustion
When all hope is lost what’s there left to do
Save for hope some more?
The very thought of you brings out the prophet in me
Check this out
Your heart shall be my shelter
The whole 150 cm3 of it [citation needed]
And time would no longer count
Neither 1.5 ml
Nor 1.73 m
None of it will signify a damn thing
Only you would count
Let space-time shrink
We will live the scientific life
Physics, chemistry, biology –we will have it all
Regain my missing rocks -now, that’s geology
Til with thee I wake up
And I am dead
Never mind the statistics
Best believe we gon’ die together
But that’s for later
Now can hardly wait
For my universe to end
Esat ( June 2011)
She was hot
Prometheus would have been pissed
Pandora’s descendant was sporting fire
But no need to panic
A mortal man to the rescue
Since before fire
He was meant to be her fireman
Or so he thought ……..
Got to return fire to his kind
Get it off the wrong being
Approaches his destiny
With all sense of urgency
Hose and all…..
Damn oxygen!
Couldn’t stop her from taking it in
Try as his lips might
He needed them for something else
Had to scream out how searing she was
And couldn’t keep her blaze under wraps
Had to show it to the world
Soon he would lie next to her
Draped in the dereliction
Known as satisfaction
She is still burning
But, behold!
He too was on fire now
She, never the one to give up
He, never the one to compromise
In between many fiery a sun
Two fires will duel
Top and bottom
Front and back
Side by side
Alas, there will be no winner
For both will keep on burning
Happily ever after
More than body
Stronger than soul
Fire they would have in common
Long live the fire!
No Debate (January 2008)
You
Have got the roles reversed, I say
Have faith in me
When I should have believed in you
Me
I am not that into roles
Only role-play
I rest my case, you say
Roles are there to be played
Somehow
Someway…
But um
Seeing
What is it to you?
So irrational
The ultimate romantic
Me
The master of reason
See first
Believe last
You interject
You have got the order reversed
I proceed, true to style
Talk on never listen
How could you stay loving
The game and
The abysmal player
The team relegated every season
To realms unpleasant
Both in equal measure?
I
Keep wallowing
In and out of roles and reason
I don’t get me
I don’t get you
I don’t get us
But I am happy for that
And elated to be happy
For someone rational
I can also be irrational
For a critique
I want to be like you
Get a tinge closer
You
Perfectly poised as ever
From the moments of ignorance
To those of knowledge
To the rush that sweeps through me
To the feeling I regret having for anyone else
Anything else
To the breaking down
The breaking dawn
The conceding
And back to the ignorance
My number one fan
Yesterday, now and always
Sleep ( April 2012)
They say it is a beautiful day
Sprawled on the asphalt
Face down
Why do you refuse to take in the beauty
All the movement
All the color around you?
It’s like nature is putting out
For me and you and you and you
Look at the spectacle
The magnificence of life, of another day
And all that lies therein
Instead of being the spectacle
Writing with your own color
Red on black
“vanity of vanities; all is vanity”
Too late for you
Too early for everyone else to read it
Even if the world had the chance to see it
Would they see your face again tonight
A reflection of themselves in the mirror?
Yeah, it’s a beautiful day
With beginnings and ends
Comings and goings
Everyone’s load is the heaviest
Everyone’s on top of the world
Endless thoughts
Until suddenly ? They are brought to an end
Shit that happens when one thinks one is strong (November 2014)
Almost got it down to an art, barely floating
Hanging on to straws, the little things
Then a little something comes and
Breaks me down
So tiresome, being a second-rate phoenix
No triumph
Just getting by
Eyes on my feet, the present
Horizons
Not crazy about them anymore
Hard enough the battering waves
False lighthouses
Don’t want to provide the water
As well
My troubles (July 2012)
Forces of nature: air and water
I looked to thee for this exorcism
But sighing, yawning could not cut it
My troubles stayed inside
I was left out in the cold
Maybe another try
Stretched out my arms, for the wind to take them
Away like the chaff they were
They insisted on their importance
We are the grains you see!
Let’s see, if trying to drown you
Might work like a charm:
a. For all their weighing me down
They remained afloat
b. It gave us a well-deserved break
My troubles and I both
They returned well-rested, stronger
c. By-and-by
The din died down
Laid me down, the bed with
Its aura of, wake up!
It was time ages ago
Recent Comments