Commonword Blogs

No way there was
To get rid of …
There never was any clumsy door or bitter window
To get out of the messes and massacres …
All shrouded me as a toy
Enveloped with a father’s hands
Worried, sensitive and sincere.
I’m as though a piece of skull to amuse the visitors
Kept and well decorated in a showcase.
I’m as though a fallen object from the high about the ceiling of sky
To the ground of uncertainty … beneath nothing but next to inability …
To get rid of the moth-eaten earth
My life has been waste and restless
Configured which with customs and tradition,

Thanks everyone for all your comments. Here's version 2....

Until I call your name
you speak with glass voice
make my slow sonnets fade and curl

The dry trees crackle with
unconscious blossoming

Conscious of brittle bones, of cracked teeth, sand scatters
It echoes dust

Will your grieving bed prevail?
Direct dry tongues to dying towns?

Your eager fingers grasp - and clutch
life measured with tales told, words sold
And how to calculate the weight of feathers, or of gold?

You unfurl dusty half-deserted sheets

China blue irises,
Once filled with innocence,
Lacking vibrance, isolated and lost.

Recalling his father's
Arthritic hand,
Skin like crumpled paper,
Meandering towards him.

He was 6,
Even 25 years on,
Memories lingered stubbornly.

His father assured him
No one would find out.

The nights were the worst.

Desperate to hear
The cries of others, revisiting
The room he slept in
Back in 1984.

It still hadn't changed.

Desperation
Saturated the air.
Tear-stained face,
Blank and cold.

His father died years ago,
Yet he still felt his presence.

Hard, cold, unrelenting.
The stare of a blank soul.
Someone of no consequence,
Always dismissive of others.

She feeds off their ambitions
Yet destroys them.
Horror and disgust
Her only friends.

Empty and evil,
Eerie and lifeless.
Her voice caustic,
Her sight shortened.

What is it that pains her?
She never opens up,
Never lets anyone get close.
A smile left her once
Effervescent face.

It hasn't been seen since.

(c) NZ 2009.

Once upon a time there was a little boy, named David, who refused to get dressed in the morning. He would run round the house in his pyjamas ..

Play in the sandpit... Chase the dogs on the lawn...

And every time his mother said "David, please come and get dressed!" he would hide…

Or kick and scream so much that it was really too much bother to dress him at all.

He would make his mother cross... His father shake his head in despair.

Hi Nabila, Kabir is famous in India- you can have a look at his many poems. I like this one, still relevant after all these years. I haven't translated this, I just came across it and liked it. Vijay.

Moko Kahan Dhundhere Bande
Mein To Tere Paas Mein ....

Translation
Where do you search me?
I am with you
Not in pilgrimage, nor in ....

Until I call your name
you speak with glass voice
make my words into blank parchment
The dry trees crackle with
unconscious blossoming

Conscious of sand in eyelashes, rock shifts and creaks
It echoes dust
Will your stone cold bed prevail?

Direct descendent, indirect lineage
Your eager fingers grasp and clutch
life measured in cornstarch coffeespoons
And how to calculate the weight of feathers, weight of gold
You unravel dusty half-deserted sheets
Will your stone cold bed prevail?

Call of frogs and gulls, of meditation bells
It spreads through the sky like locusts