a body on a table in middle of Gaza
shaft of golden light pierced apex
from Heart Centre grew a beanstalk
onto which InnerChild ascended
saw white sails of boats in blue-green ocean
they took our homes away ~
I
The prose & prosaic lives pursuing career
From apartheid in Africa to US freedoms (1983)
Poets voices muted, too much hunger
The luxury of democracy, enduring systems
Of dispossession, of marginalising, silencing
With vigilante foes of one's own kind - for fame? -
Yet systems of food distribution, & of medicines
Need democracy, too, urgent reform
Pandemics reinforce the civilized caste sytem
II
Is there a military-pharma-cyber mafia?
What will my pen say - or my spirit say -
When the prosaic careers go silent
The itch to write nudges me to poetry
For the likes of Patience Worth (d.1641)
Quaker girl worked fingers to the bone
Yet desired art of writing, exploring ... Now
The unraveling of time: Pearl Curran became her pen
400 years later! There is a colonial captive
A hidden teacher-philosopher from Old Afrik, here
Telling of a tax-technology-robotic civilization
Of new high priests, go-betweens in art, science, family
Expressions of my concerns for you, pulling you close to me but despite that you continue
to sleep on me from your journey of the unaccountable. A road to seek your individuality you often express, We took our
hands in sacrament we both said we do now
it seems you get so agitated and tell me you're
tired of this lifestyle.
Have you lost the faith you once possessed?
Am I a mind reader? You keep your frame of mind bottled up for whichever reasons today, yesterday, tomorrow you're persistently showing me your variants of your different faces and mental attitudes, No i'm not questioning myself, am I of dispossession of
you releasing your inner fears and tell me so
What I did do differently that I don't do now?
Lean towards me my child and these situations for I am the way, truth and light, I am
a trusting spirit and let no one take away your faith towards me.
Rest now…
To idle from natures’ merciless dispossession
Lifeless muscles slump
Still now,
Though exhausted from the blow
Perhaps you are the same;
Now we are one.
Breathless, windless, airless,
Silence after the slaughter
I did something wrong;
Beguiled from belittlement.
Yes, I am mortal now…
Aftermath of the hurricane.
The beginning of the end,
Heart beats.
They elude me now ...words
Drinking befits a drowning man possessed
Swimming off this broken page
Baton winning in a relay race
I breached the ribbon sliced with chest
Joy! I gasped
Grown tired of my own riddles
Those halting jagged lines
Conversely I committed
So disrespectful of my crimes
In dispatchment utter lunacy
Forgiveness once again!
Ive come to claim my lost respect
My place so quick forgotten was
So Zeroed out of ten
Twelve steps from cursed enslavement
Danced to music uncontained
Toi-toi in lone detachment
Side stepping their allure
And tangoed with enticement
And cha-cha'd with no cure
Then dropping over hurdles
Burning through those barricades
All over all these obstacles
So help me God I try to change
No longer need prescription
Still sometimes do I crave
Unshackled is your prisoner
Dispossession freed this slave
There is something about that -ism
A mystery by name
Other than recovery
Benign this deathly game
Be it known that happy healing
Doubles, behind the curtains of shame
After dispossession,
collecting the dolls-
dusting them off.
Who was watching
you, dousing yourself
to give a political statement ?
Cutting the leaves
of grass, I open
the book of Walt Whitman.
This was a targeted
killing. I will not join
the funeral procession.
A mistaken lull.
One day I will-
shoot endlessly.
Satish Verma
The yellow beaked vultures were waiting.
A cloth bag contains the bleached
remains; his father.
Impeccable gift unmasked.
After the inferno, hydrants went dry. The guilt survives
the dispossession, pondering over the black dew
now covering the pink roses.
The illusion persists. Master is coming home.
jug was empty. A miracle will start
the kitchen. An infant cries in the backyard.
The windows were sleeping. Let the sun
stand outside. A yellow moon at night will
open the door.
Satish Verma
Blood and bones
become qualification
watching and being watched.
Eyes in introspection
incubation
waking the black dawn.
Anguished
blank stares, after dispossession
collapse on the hills in confusion –
umpteen times. Ontogeny
repeats filial love
after parental loss.
Monofloral we stay,
you cannot do anything
except to collect the honey.
Shot in the face, my name.
The next tragedy
begins at home!
Break the cutlery
there is no water,
frogs will not jump today.
SATISH VERMA
The litter of chatter
On air pitter patter
Like the Galean on water:
The other one without the power
There is a desolateness here
Borders broken
By the commerce of men
Restructured by the twitter
Bringing anomie from the bitter
Knowing of self without fetter
To community and roots
Of anchored ancestry.
Fragments, fragments
Broken stones on jarring landscape
The superficial arguments
Making conditions
Of our dispossession easy
For robber baron twine
The fragile shrubs of history.
Pause
And listen where the minotaur
Make new catacombs
With mind dripping claws
The old heart is speaking so near
Descend the cloud of noise to hear
Or else we fritter, fritter
Away sun upon the salt mines glitter.
Howls my heart in silence, a hymn of dispossession,
Prostrated at your dusky feet, defined inadequate
And close my eyes in fruitless shame, despising their transgression,
Blind-sided by your beauty, horsewhipped desolate.
The chestnut lustre of your hair has lacquered my perception,
Devastated by your pecan lips, sullenly un-kissed,
I shrink like flambéed cellophane, contract with cold deception,
Yet cannot face the love within, the love that you have missed.
What are you that drive my spectral dreams, imagination?
Who are you that sculpt my heart and steal my breath?
That stirs the loins and fires my love with tortured aspiration,
At once you are both promised life and predetermined death...
The first time I saw her
I knew
she was the only one for me.
If I had cast a stone at
her sleek form
it would have sunk without
a ripple beneath her glassy surface.
Icons, man-gods, have died in
things such as she.
When I entered her she
hugged me in a warm embrace
and, body, mind and soul,
I was lost to her alone.
Lost to her smell
her look,
her feel.
her high-precision feminine mystique.
Instantaneously, in a rush of hot blood,
a pinpoint collision of clarity and chaos,
the knowledge of sex and death,
of life and love, possession and dispossession
shotgun blasted me with the truth.
I could buy her, yes,
but never own her.
Have her, but never
hold her.
She would be companion,
conveyance and coffin.
She would take me
anywhere I wanted to go.
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