I lived in the garbage of the slums of a fertile land.
I crossed the Mediterranean to wedge my dreams into bleak, unsanitary concrete blocks.
I am trapped in a thermal sieve filled with rats and cockroaches.
I miss the dust of the ruined roads of my homeland.
In the land of human rights, police brutality has disfigured my dignity.
Life in this chaotic dimension is a horror movie.
I think of the Grim Reaper every day, like a terrified inmate on death row.
I numb myself with cannabis to clear the darkness in my deranged mind.
Sleepless nights piled up over the years in the furnaces of decay.
A solitary existence, without ties, without love, without a story.
Dirty hands and a cold heart, fueled by adrenaline against the atrocities of misery.
I am a free spirit, detached from the tyranny of conformity.
If I don’t love you, I will tell you to your face, looking you straight in the eyes.
I am guilty of embracing the innocence of my transgressions.
Telling the truth in all circumstances is a blessing that sometimes gives birth to curses.
I remember the grief in Samuel
when Saul failed,
like the grief in Nile
when blood crept into it —
just like it creeps into the bones of
this earth.
The rage in grief is distant but distinct,
escorted by bits of frozen nuts
and wizened grains of desert sand,
white assembly of killing spectres in
a background of black eclipse with
lunar talons
and swords of claws
and jars of cold tears.
Oh, how Samuel grieved for Saul!
The mourning is immense . . .
Sempervirence fossilised
along abbeys forayed with hot silt
and Dane guns of lewd hunters
Pulsations and acrid fever,
with the disease of camels, are frequented by
a recrudescence of the mastodon,
In liaison with his extended kinsmen the dinosaurs.
We are livid with mourning,
for the soul of a toothless one
gone from us
this grey day of elegy
and season of potent grief.
Fetters exist, and persist, swinging in
our faces like treasures of hell
where we hear that bug-ridden mats
are spread for us;
there, chants of elegy
hoot,
and black furnaces boil
and smelt
the repast we are to devour.
One day, life will leave my battered carcass.
One day, I will no longer belong to this rotten world.
Today, my suicidal urges mock Death with laughter.
I waste the breath of life that my universal force gave me freely.
I came from the darkness, and I shall end in the furnaces of my own destruction.
Doing good is a duty, to soothe the wrath of the Creator.
I will end in the flames of my own hell.
Like all those innocent souls, I too have suffered.
I know every face of death.
I have worn every mask of misery.
I am but an ignorant man, aware of his ignorance,
Thirsty for knowledge like the builders of the pyramids.
I chose to laugh so my demons would remain silent.
Since I learned to walk, my tears have dried.
I stand for truth, justice, liberty, equality, and righteousness.
I believe fraternity is an absurd notion, drenched in hypocrisy.
I hate the racists who preached humanism and universalism
Only to sanctify racialism and supremacism.
I converse with my demons.
The monologues are endless,
Dark confessions on scraps of macabre memories.
My mouth stays shut after uttering blasphemies,
I terrorize my ghosts with the darkness of my fantasies.
I stumbled before the gates of hell,
It's too late — I'll end up in Lucifer's furnaces.
The journey will be chaotic until the final breath,
No consolation, only incurable wounds in this infernal abyss.
I smile at the angel of death like those fanatics ready to die for a few virgins.
My humanity embraces all the demonic facets of its spark,
Forever at war with a legion of the damned,
A procession of curses on the highway of immortality.
A few impure souls to sacrifice on the altar of repentance,
Pharaoh's blood to cleanse my dignity,
To be a slave for the glory of my oppressors — impossible.
To brandish arms — a saving urgency.
Throw me a banana, and I'll send you straight to the doorstep of my ancestors.
I learned to handle weapons of war in a banana republic.
I'm on alert, like those sleeper agents.
Servitude and submission are forbidden.
I preach peace, justice, and harmony,
But I do not fear the horrors of chaos.
My existence traumatizes my enemies.
My demons terrorize my ghosts.
With cannabis, I treat the aftermath of my chaotic choices.
Irrevocable truths engraved on the indelible scars of my impure soul.
I'm still trapped in the same nightmare since my divine spark drifted closer to the flames of hell.
I sing the symphonies of my miserable life into the microphones of the bearer of light.
I stopped whining before the universal force.
One day, I will bathe in Lucifer’s furnaces to taste the delights of eternal life.
I accumulate transgressions and blasphemies since I discovered the grim nature of humanity.
I celebrate my failures so my victories remain taciturn, like the melodies of silence.
I still cannot chase after the fleeting vanities that humans sanctify.
Still not a hypocrite, so truthful that solitude has become my ally.
Still allergic to injustice and forked tongues.
Still alive to never imprison my dignity in a dungeon of victimhood lamentations.
I poison myself to endure the torments of my clairvoyant mind,
A journey littered with catastrophes and irreversible scars.
I chase nightmares I will find in hell,
My face drowned in the fleeting vanities humanity sanctifies.
I am in no rush to honor my appointment with the reaper,
Like a terminally ill patient who still dares to dream.
I am trapped in an asylum where appearances and masks
Are the mirrors of madness.
I burn my neurons with cannabis
To find beauty in the ugliness of my surroundings.
My indelible scars are searing reminders of my insignificance.
I have tamed the violence of silence
To anesthetize my demonic urges.
I trust not in human frailty,
Like a bipolar paranoiac.
The darkness of the furnaces of the bearer of light
Shines deep in my eyes.
I am a solitary soul, persecuted
By its demons and ghosts.
The melancholy of my heart has chained
My mind to the depths of bitterness.
My life on Earth has been infernal torture
Since the day I let out my first cry.
I am compelled to sow the seeds of chaos
In this dimension, to unlock the gates of immortality.
A symphony of blasphemies, to discover every fragrance of freedom.
It's late, lo. I knew that the water I saw was mirage.
This is a world where, often, facts and fancies camouflage
Depths that seem unfathomable are shallow when measured.
Within wombs of tombs that seem empty, riches are treasured.
The structure that looked like a passage was, in truth, a wall.
Doesn’t my crammed glance make the earth resemble a ball?
How could crows dine guavas at night? Lo, they were mega-bats.
Waiting under guava trees, I didn't know, were black cats.
Peeping through the brick holes of Kutab Minar, I feel giddy.
While I could reach the top, are the stairs now playing kiddy?
Each move of being is filled with likes, dislikes, dreads, and fears.
Equally in joys and sadness, as though raindrops flow tears
Running shoes, highway lanes, sleepless sleep, and suppressing thoughts
Each act, as though steering sailboats, becomes threads full of knots.
Is this shop I find between this and this bush mere confusion?
Aren't facts of truth tested in hot furnaces of illusion?
Euphoric, I rush to you, Lord, unaware I'm naked.
In your presence, my physique and psyche are elated
On my way, I trampled them—thus my kith and kin complained.
In my mad, single-minded pursuit, had I gone harebrained?
Am I a rebel that I've given up all social norms?
Drunk with your thoughts, have I forgotten all gregarious forms?
My home and all within it, seem to me nonexistent.
In my sleeping and waking I've become inconsistent.
I'm filled with hallucinations of heaven day and night.
With devils and furnaces, in my nightmares, I often fight.
I feel your Spirit flowing like a stream and washing me.
From my sins of commissions and omissions, I rise free
Transcending each mundane infinitesimal dharma
That fetters me in a birth-rebirth cycle of Karma.
Like a mad mullah or like a crazy priest of Allah
In each drama, am I not seeking you, the Param Brahma?
In love
I keep coming back
to this place in the hope
I'll hear your voice,
feel your presence settle
the evening and draw closer
in the scented air.
Already spring has fired the furnaces
of desire and life trembles. Flowers
beckon bees and I too seem drawn
to this holy place.
And yet this throbbing world
seems veneered on a core of silence,
the most exquisite sounds arise
out of a hollow. My words echo
around its walls and go unanswered.
I keep coming back
still enamored with creation, lovesick,
holding these humble prayers
I pin to a closed door
hoping it will open.
Does anyone ask a bird to sing or a rose to bloom?
Does anyone comfort a butterfly in times of gloom?
Reaping nectar is built into a honeybee's instinct.
Aren't thoughts and feelings, like chains of pearls, with mind and heart linked?
Themes, like flowers and leaves of the autumn, are before me.
I had to, as a gentle breeze, lift them and make them free.
Words sometimes flow freely, like whirling rivers in a flood.
They get blocked at other times and put pressure in my blood.
Are similes and metaphors, like celluloid romance,?
They're sometimes fireless furnaces and other times full of trance.
Isn't the coining of words like hunting the wildest beasts?
I pursue after them, yet, as though they are my heartbeats
A cosmos with galaxies is hidden in each little song
My poems, like endless gold or diamond mines, throng long
In times of endless emptiness, I take refuge in these
In turbulence and turmoil, aren't these arts that grant me peace?
I am a child of war, misery, anger and suffering.
I grew up with sadness, uncertainty and anxiety.
I took refuge in solitude to avoid human bestiality and its hypocrisy.
My distress illuminated the darkness of my weaknesses.
I am forged in the burning furnaces of struggle and survival.
In my veins flows the impure blood of slaves, riflemen and resistance fighters.
My gaze carries the weight of the pain of my color and the age-old injustices of my oppressed people throughout the Earth.
My persecuted skin is the cemetery of the scars of battles, trials and sacrifices of my ancestors dehumanized by supremacist slave traders and racialist colonialists.
I am the bitter fruit of a continent nourished by fratricidal conflicts, genocides, civil wars, coups d'état, dictatorial excesses, tribal hatred, treachery, corruption and neocolonial stratagems.
My memories are horrible nightmares, broken fragments of all the horrors my eyes have seen.
My mind is a battlefield where truth, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity are expressed without hindrance.
My tears dried up when I began to commit sins,
In the furnaces of misery, my dreams were consumed.
In the darkness of my impure soul, love committed suicide.
I look at humanity with the dilated pupils of an undocumented illegal immigrant.
I have dark skin like my deported ancestors.
In my bruised heart burn the flames of freedom, equality and fraternity.
Under the weight of carnivorous chains, my ancestors suffered for centuries, so that I would never desecrate my identity.
The tortures of the slave trade and slavery are etched in my tormented mind.
In the darkness of the ruins that humans revere, I wander like a living dead in search of eternity.
The ephemeral pleasures of this polluted Earth did not dominate me.
I love life with the murderous impulses of a drug addict who knows that one day death will liberate.
An ocean of tears to drown this procession of hidden dramas.
So much effort
goes into feeling well...Man,
I’m exhausted! There’s nausea
from supplements, the squeak
and throb, Just One More Rep!~ exercising…
Man, I’m exhausted!
As much effort
going into relaxation – rush to get
things done (always a backup of
things); shuffle schedules, get sitters
for the animals – Man, I’m exhausted!
Even love, the chores, the cards,
the gifts, the emotional lifts...honey-does
seeming to have endless reserves,
never running short on pantries of
exhaustion.
Someday, probably, I’ll
wake-up, unpleasantly surprised
and find myself either stoking furnaces,
fluffing angel wings while polishing
the backside of clouds – Man, give me
a break!
Ouch!~ finally something I asked for….
We are shadows
living the dark
of our own
obstructions
imitators of light
worshiping furnaces
cores of stars
hydrogen eaters
helium floaters
casting nets
into a sea of glitter
our daily catch
of expiring illumination
traveling ever further out
away from man's indwelling
brilliance
that of a Sacred Heart
It was as if all vengeance
was set to touch down here
upon the blazing waters
of the bay. The air turning
fiery red and a big sun burning
through into the sealed
catacombs of the head.
But in truth all was passing
in an earthly quiet save
for the solitary cry of a gull
riding the last light home
to roost and the sound
of water lapping the pier.
In another time everything
was cauterized
by a smothering fear
and found no voice.
Demons carried
a white hot cross.
The colors of a setting sun
gave to eyes a palette
to paint the furnaces of hell.
Now - here in this light
and in these distances spanning
the bay's wide waters,
small boats move
and leave fiery wakes
upon the mind that linger
for a while
then heal to a reflective still.
The evening settles back,
as old men do,
into a deepening silence.
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