Best Coptic Poems
A lifetime of waiting, stacks of National
Geographic half as tall as me, piled on
every step. A girl with nothing to do but dream.
The yellow-black jackets buzzed, I flowered
as I turned the pages. The relics of Tutankhamun
fascinated: gold, turquoise, lapis and the slaves
in mud-brick houses they live in still.
I longed to be the Pharaoh’s daughter;
I kohled my eyes.
Egypt called to me. Pyramids, deserts baking,
heat mirages, and oases of palms with still blue water.
The twenty-first century’s reality is far different.
Cairo teems with discontent, Mubarak’s campaign
posters hung from each lamppost.
Two weeks before the Arab Spring, I was there.
The only safety found behind the gun-guarded,
razor-wired gates of the upper class, and even then—
A country espousing religious freedom was killing
Coptic Christians in the streets, and bombing churches.
Cairo’s one poster child synagogue stood empty,
except for tourists—dark, decorative, haunting,
full of tales of Christ’s sojourn in Egypt?
The pyramids rose hen-pecked by pollution
through a surreal orange sky. Masked women
walk the male dominated streets. Women
live in fear in or out of the hijab.
The majesty of yesteryear, the pyramid of Giza
squats like a discard in the ashtray of desert.
Vendors and tourist litter the site.
Baksheesh is the only God in Egypt,
baksheesh and the horded water of the Nile.
First Published in here & there magazine
in the UK
Above racism, nepotism, communism, sexism,
ambition, pollution, domination, seclusion,
God reigns!
Way above segregation, self-promotion,
physical illumination, elevation,
apartheid, genocide, cyanide, religious pride
God abides!
Floating above Coptic, Catholic politics,
toxic doctrine, elitist foolishness,
putrid imaginings,
God in His Omnipotent Majesty reigns!
January
Journey into the New Year named after Janus,
the god of beginnings and transitions.
Another year of New Year’s
celebration and resolutions
of new beginnings,
putting the past behind us,
and going forward into the future.
Under the Wolf Moon,
also known as the Cold,
Snow, or Winter Moon,
coldest month of the year.
Zodiac signs Aquarius and Capricorn,
birthstone garnet,
flower carnations.
Considered the month of deep reflection and celebrating
Coptic Christmas to remember Jesus Christ’s birth
Year with cheer and success.
~
January 25
~
8/9/2015
lunatic tile underneath a formica god.
he cracks at the edges.
synthetic delirium..
coptic nerve....
in his head plastic can be holy
.in his head
he bends but never breaks
Each day, a red sun arises from the emerald river,
In the acrobatic leap in the dark with watermelon smell.
In the evening, the pale moon it is dressed up in silver
By a dervish who changes it in a dome where he`ll dwell,
As prisoner of the unmovable being, just like Parmenides;
The moving sands of the desert covered old Coptic monasteries;
Between sky and sand, in old pajamas, the Sphinx and pyramids
Breathe with the slow motion of the camels in ancient reveries
About tears and saints in white tents with summer’s distillation left:
Koran’ effects unto communities’ lives with beauty were bereft.
Museums and parks-cemeteries and ritual prayers in bitter Cairo I meet:
Under One single eye, invisible stranger I rest, in the hot night’s street.
Some say that God’s kingdom is in the sky, or in the sea
The birds would reach the sky before you, the small fish would have found it
The kingdom is in us and outside us, we’re children of its king
A poem based on a translation of the Gospel of Thomas (the language of the work being Coptic).
Each day, a red sun arises from the emerald river,
In the acrobatic leap in the dark with watermelon smell.
In the evening, the pale moon it is dressed up in silver
By a dervish who changes it in a dome where he`ll dwell,
As prisoner of the unmovable being, just like Parmenides;
The moving sands of the desert covered old Coptic monasteries;
Between sky and sand, in old pajamas, the Sphinx and pyramids
Breathe with the slow motion of the camels in ancient reveries
About tears and saints in white tents with summer’s distillation left:
Koran’ effects unto communities’ lives with beauty were bereft.
Museums and parks-cemeteries and ritual prayers in bitter Cairo I meet:
Under One single eye, invisible stranger I rest, in the hot night’s street.
The Holy Bible is an ancient collection
Of 66 books comprised
Thirty-nine books mainly in Hebrew
The OT, by the Jewish people still prized.
The NT books were letters
Written in the Greek language.
The first five books were written by Moses,
Who out of Egypt conducted Israel’s passage.
Around 450 BC, the Jewish scriptures
Were arranged by rabbinical councils,
Who acknowledged their sacredness,
Called Tanakh in Jewish circles.
In 250 BC, the Hebrew Bible
Was translated into Greek;
A translation known as the Septugint
For 70 translators this task did seek.
After approximately 400 years
Jesus arrived on the scene.
He often quoted the Old Testament,
Especially the books of Moses so pristine!
Jesus spoke of the laws—
The prophets and Psalms.
Concerning His prophetic life,
With the OT, He had no qualms.
In AD 40, The Gospels of the NT began to be written
During the 200’s they were translated
Into Latin, Coptic & Syriac
In the 1450’s, the Gluttenburg Bible was printed.
In 1516, Martin Luther declared his intolerance
With the Roman Church’s corruption,
So the Diet of Worms Council decided
To Martyr Luther by selection.
Instead of killing Martin Luther,
The Council translated The Bible into German.
Similarly William Tyndale translated it into English
For British, private sermon.
In 1535, Coverdale printed the first English Bible,
But if found in one’s possession
Queen Mary would burn you at the stake—
The burning of Protestants was her obsession!
Shakespeare quoted from the Geneva,
The first Bible taken to the USA.
In 1610, the King James Bible was printed
And we still have it with us today!
Copyright © Maureen LeFanue 2007-2011
The Hate Machine
The tail of a bird the bone of a man;
Warm red Blood upon the sand.
A hooded figure, a Nazi Cross.
Was there ever a man who could count the cost.
Of the Hate Machine.
A starving refugee, a child in pain.
A soldier dead in the driving rain.
Man is a very mischievous elf.
He fooled around and built himself.
A Hate Machine.
Hate for your brother and hate for his creed,
Cut him and beat him and make him bleed.
Condemn him to Hell for the shade of his skin.
Forget about reason be slave to the whim.
Of the Hate Machine.
Sour old ladies on shiny oak pews.
Preachers and deacons withholding the news.
Together with children of innocent years.
They make up the screws and make up the gears.
Of the Hate Machine.
Hate the Republican, hate the Jew.
Maybe even the Democrat too.
Hate the President, the ignorant clod.
Hate your Mother and Hate your God.
That's our Machine.
A Marxist student, a burning flag.
A Coptic Christian, beaten and gagged.
Quiet citizens caught in the stream.
Together make up the Hate Machine.
It's Mankind's Child.
The tail of a bird, the bone of a man.
Warm red blood upon the sand.
Fighting and killing where will it end.
Why must we fools always depend.
On the Hate Machine.
In humor hides wisdom
In sadness hides Coptic truth
Empathy can hold all of the world’s treasures
Compassion the vessel of which to drink it plenty
Righteousness is not being right
Olive branches know this plight
A man without a smile
Is a desert without a mirage
Walk along the road of the wounded
And hold their tiny hands
Those who mock for their trivial pleasure
In the end will feel the angel’s measure
The Cross
It six o`clock Sunday early evening she is in
the church that looks Coptic, the sun lit up
the cross on the top and the roof looks rosé.
A Morocco radio station plays Arabic music
this is quite fitting now that they have been
targeted by a racist who has not read history,
but let us put that aside for now.
In many European countries, the leaders lament
but secretly wish they could do the same, life would
be so easier without this intrusive Islam.
We, onlookers, are guilty too we have not been able
to accept the Muslims on equal terms
The cross is now in darkness there is a murky side
to all religions they produce extremists
S--t Happens!
Does sharing s--t with others make one's poems poetry:
Blank verse or rhyme with meter win if metaphors disguise
The fact that truth is absent: is there love in bigotry,
A plethora of nuance monkey typists might devise?
Do we owe praise to Coptic Priests whose work is all but free,
Whose muses obfuscate obscure: confusion proves their worth?
By God! They posture too, or so some say! It's their celebrity,
Like crosswords, with the clues in Martian language (not of Earth.)
Though I've made A's at Stanford with my poem's in 'Free Verse, '
Enamored, I love meter, rhyme, for both can proffer pause,
New words that float more gentle dreams, in stillness more diverse
Than rush, my muse so often spills, unbound by human laws.
For me, a poem's poultice is my prayer to the night
Whose fingers somehow chill the soul. It's worse when I've no voice.
A poem's wolf's call echos back when hills are out of sight,
If I'm alone I moon the sky, sweet rhymes, my music's choice!
Brian Johnston
3rd of April 2019
Ignorance and darkness my Lord Your light of truth tried to extinguish but to no avail!
© Demetrios Trifiatis
10 April 2017
* At least 45 people were killed and dozens injured on Palm Sunday bombings at two Coptic churches in Egypt. God bless victims' souls!
a grandfather clock in the corner of the
room turns its grayhead and sounds.
it is the hour of salt... it is the hour of aged reason.
and i have lost all affection for the sweet naval of
oranges, which clamor one on top of another
on the kitchen table.
perhaps if i was an expressionist
i would express in driest terms the preservation
of ramses II, or the way of the fermented dill
pickles in the back of my refrigerator.
it is the hour of the second cup of coffee,
it is the hour of the coptic eulogy, and i am
as horus or osiris in the twelfth dynasty
at midnight.
now in the kitchen three chairs sit crookedly
next to me. with crystaline hands i gather
upon the table morton salt from the cupboard
and pour it into a gray dispenser.
i set it next to the fruit bowl with ornate
green vines drawn along the sides of it.
but it is the dried antiquities of cumin and
saffron that i seek.
i seek the harbinger of life after life.
but all i have is a 15 jar tiered spice
rack sitting on a shelf across the room
and a little less time.
In
the house
of Thy love
the seed of hate
Sowed*
© Demetrios Trifiatis
10 April 2017
*At least 45 people were killed and dozens injured on Palm Sunday bombings at Coptic churches in Egypt. God bless victims' souls!