Cellphone monologue
I’ve been driving, you know the road is no highway,
how taxing, skirting potholes, cajoling the new jalopy
will be there for a candle lit supper, come what may.
Out of the glare, jacarandas form a fragrant canopy
into the glow of passion driving down Love Boulevard
Oh my, your texts been erecting toll gates between us!
I need money to get through to you, road is barred.
Do you honestly believe I deserve to be treated thus?
Sometimes a man has to make do with his love ration.
But the once-sweet ferments, then love loses a mate
when the woman darts in and out for material fashion
though she knows full well her lover is no Bill Gates.
Hard to believe we used to be such a rhyming couple
my said inadequacy has made me reel under the rubble.
Categories:
jacarandas, black love, break up,
Form: Sonnet
Last Night
Look up there.
Do you see the seven sisters?
The night is unusually warm.
I hear speeding cars going down Broadway.
The freight train is screeching across Canobie.
Purple-blooming jacarandas cry petals of rejection.
You sat on the curb and told me it was over.
Told me you were now seeing Bob from work.
I am happy for you if that is important to you.
I am happy he pleases you sexually when I could not.
Look up there.
I see the seven sisters dancing like queen stars.
Dancing stationary as with stones set in black marble.
You and I are through now.
No more naked romps in the dark den at midnight.
The candle is lit there and Mahler music still plays.
But vacant now are your gentle taps on my back door.
Missing now is the dark-skinned 19-year-old lady I desire.
Late at night now I lie on the shag carpet waiting,
Hopelessly waiting for your midnight tapping on my door.
But you never show up although you gave me hope.
Is it really finished? Last night
I fell asleep there as Mahler’s fourth symphony played on.
I dreamed of you sleeping naked by my side.
Categories:
jacarandas, memory,
Form: Free verse
I once read a poem. It’s style was different than mine. Then I thought. Won’t it be nice to write about jacarandas & marigolds. Spices and all that taste nice. I reasoned. Won’t my readers love occasionally. To see a sweet poem with color. One that is simple. Without a care in the world. Skipping along like nobody’s business.
I thought. One with no intrigue. No scratching your head. To decipher what the hell did he mean. A poem without pretense. Not high falluting signifying nothing, Just words on paper. Not flat or boring. One without meaning. Like Jack Sprat and his wife and the platter. Or three men in a tub. Rub a dub dub.
But life won’t let me. The daily attack on the senses. The quest for the legal tender. Lies, sickness and death. A mirage like all else. I used to think I knew it all. Then one day. It changed. Like this poem. An illusion. No sweetness. No color. The same style.
Categories:
jacarandas, life, poetry,
Form: Free verse
The lithe traipse of night wind
tingles in my ear with faint secrets
chiming through jacarandas
and June's lavender-strewn grass.
I stand before the fatal moon,
his ivory blood trail lilting on the lake.
We'll both be gone by morning,
he to his desolate canyons
and I to my lonely bed
where I'll awaken
to summer's lambent birth.
Categories:
jacarandas, imagery, moon, night,
Form: Imagism
City of Trees
1
Johannesburg, home to ten million trees,
It’s the world’s largest urban arboretum.
Streets in summer lie beneath green canopies.
2
From sidewalks their branches meet with ease
And soon, very soon, each street’s a shady sanctum.
Johannesburg, home to ten million trees.
3
If only we humans could jump up and fly like bees,
We would look down on something awesome,
Streets in summer lie beneath green canopies.
4
Seasons change - the leafy cover changes colour
Leaves sprout and fall ad infinitum.
Johannesburg, home to ten million trees.
5
October! Now there is a purple frieze,
Yes, it's the jacarandas in full blossom.
Streets in summer lie beneath green canopies.
6
But then winter brings a different freeze;
Each leaf fades, then flits, like a phantom.
Johannesburg, home to ten million trees,
Streets in winter lie beneath bare canopies.
Categories:
jacarandas, environment,
Form: Villanelle
You were not present.
Far from the pallid sky-
in the graveyard,
the marbled tears
had become the eyes.
The meanness of the grill.
It will not fix the sun.
I stand by a river,
which was very thirsty-
very deep.
The silent flight of a
white falcon takes a dive-
for the darkned moon.
The wingless poem soars high
to catch the words.
The jacarandas were trumpeting
in blue flowers, of the return
of demigods.
Satish Verma
Categories:
jacarandas, art,
Form: ABC
Melissa Lont
1825 - 1911
How does one as low and humble as I
Sum up my life of 86 years
In a mere poem as brief and short-lived
As life itself?
And what is the secret to my long life?
What do I know that you, my friend,
Would like to know
About success and survival?
About good health and good luck?
My answer is this:
Do not complain and do not explain! Never!
And as for being married all those years to Doctor Lont?
Well, truth be known, like Hera,
I knew of my husband’s infidelities.
But I also knew to look the other way
And pretend to not see or know!
I admired Ida Kincaid for her sacrifices to maternity.
But I loathed Ida Kincaid for her matrimonial mendacity.
At her funeral in June of 1903
I aloofly stood across the way
There on dusty Broadway Street
Under the bulbous blue jacarandas
Screaming hallelujahs!
As Mr. White lowered her cream-colored coffin into the Netherworld!
And when Doctor Lont, my husband of 41 years, died of the consumption,
I did not cry nary a tear!
Why should I have?
Now I too am resting within this hard ground next to him.
Next to the man, my man in perpetual suspenders from Springfield,
My man who never ceased being a boy.
Categories:
jacarandas, death,
Form: Epitaph
Each year in May, as Jacarandas bloom,
A carpet of sky is strewn across the grass.
Mother Nature wears her delft costume,
With a breezy sweet perfume none can surpass.
And we beneath these blossomed boughs assume,
true love upon a bed of azure petals.
Categories:
jacarandas, beauty, love, passion, romantic,
Form: Rhyme Royal
White and red and pink
oleanders bloom--
they are blown in wind,
littering grass and
drying on the bricks
of my front patio.
Orchid trees are flowering,
and royal poncianas.
Surprising jacarandas stun;
orange blossoms, honeysuckle,
jasmine, and acacia assail the senses,
while I, alive, enjoy
yet another
Spring!
Categories:
jacarandas, introspection, life, nature, seasons,
Form: Free verse
Trading the sweetness, a rainbow
on icefalls, you will come back on rocks
and drink the elixir of death.
A fantastic dream of soap bubbles in a tumbler,
ejecting the inky grief on the transparent glass.
The pink goddess of wealth
will descend again in your bowls. Brassica
will decide the future of grass.
The moon ride has become cheaper in cans
like sardines, unethical but sleeping with god.
Thongs were visible on steps of bathing ghats
for the benefit of bullfighters. Gibbons
indulging in aerial bombing. Comfortable
in groves jacarandas were smiling.
Unlike you I smelt the dried flowers
between the pages of history
to meet the shadows on the walls of time.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
jacarandas, art,
Form: ABC
Trading the sweetness, a rainbow
on icefalls, you will come back on rocks
and drink the elixir of death.
A fantastic dream of soap bubbles in a tumbler,
ejecting the inky grief on the transparent glass.
The pink goddess of wealth
will descend again in your bowls. Brassica
will decide the future of grass.
The moon ride has become cheaper in cans
like sardines, unethical but sleeping with god.
Thongs were visible on steps of bathing ghats
for the benefit of bullfighters. Gibbons
indulging in aerial bombing. Comfortable
in groves jacarandas were smiling.
Unlike you I smelt the dried flowers
between the pages of history
to meet the shadows on the walls of time.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
jacarandas, adventure, allegory, angst, animals,
Form: I do not know?
In the valley of blasts
a row of jacarandas
tall, sweet smelling,
shed blue petals endlessly.
A colossus spread
on wounds of earth.
A small girl with pellets
in her belly
was searching her wounded mother.
Essense of sorrow
helps to find myself,
in defense of freedom.
In the city of death
an unbeliever like me
wants to find peace with God.
SATISH VERMA
Categories:
jacarandas, adventure, allegory, angst, animals,
Form: I do not know?