Long Deflating Poems

Here We Shall Remain
by Tawfiq Zayyad
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Like twenty impossibilities
in Lydda, Ramla and Galilee ...
here we shall remain.

Like brick walls braced against your chests;
lodged in your throats
like shards of glass
or prickly cactus...

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Elder Darwin swims in ethology.
He rolls in his deep grave ecology.
He itches and scratches his dissonance
that survival of most fitted and dense
implies manifest destiny for those YangStrong
while Darwin's Cross and his own eyes
clearly disguised
camouflaged ectosymbiotic...

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Highly prized hopes lift up the hopeless, the needy, and the helpless again and again
When will the weight of fire on my bleeding heart be extinguished?
I wish that’d happen someday…I pray that joy will prey...

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Every day you awake you need to give thanks, I am the past
and the present; You are the potential.
I am the essential.
You are the future; I am the now!
I am the reality in that order...

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Pride negatory
Better to share His glory
God writes your story

Special kind of gain
We can only learn through pain
God may not explain

Treasure has a source
Wisdom is treasure, of course
God stores His resource

When God sends trouble
And we climb...

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why are we here on this planet full of everything amazingly wonderful to everything, ferociously terrible, the majority of people can't stand it, but go on because they are afraid god will damn them, afraid...

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You dig into my skin with your claws of distrustful disdain
Why don’t you welcome the Healing rain?
I promise that it will wash away the troublesome pain 
That bullies you to the extreme – try, darling,...

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True add verse situation,
     whereat me mission
     trans send dint state didst ache
after yours truly nearly
     did nearly break
chassis 'pon took drastic
 ...

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I speak of pain without external scars
I speak of loss for treasured things
I speak in the silence of my broken heart
The me I hold against all that tears it apart.
You think I am whole
Because I...

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I’m getting older - this fact I cannot deny
Not quite ready for the scrap heap or to give up life and die
My body isn’t quite the same; my boobies have gone south
But I keep on...

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FUTURE)
It rained so hard the day 
I finally gave up on us
I barely remember that day
I barely remember your face
Yet memories of your touch still remains

PAST)
July 13
A panic so uncontrollable
because I was meeting you for
...

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Suddenly it seems so blurry
And universe seems so big
Walking alone is being lonely
Though I’ve done it for so long

The road is somewhat dancing
Affecting my sense of balance
Easily stunned by the flash of lightning
Missing another chance

Fighting...

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“Nobody likes a clown at midnight.”       Stephen King


CLOWN AT THE ABYSS


Darkroom abscessed 
with neon blush and black-blood —
sunken eyes look surprised
to find oneself in a dank dungeon.
Fecal stench, not...

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Good news
grows healthy outward actions
from inward integrity attractions.

Pathological propaganda,
fake news,
grows conspiracies
and black magic outside my door,
From unconscious accidents of ignorant mistrust
and deliberately mendacious distrust.

Good news plantings,
waterings,
fertilizing outcomes
harvest polycultures of healthy wisdom--
more good hope-filled news.

Fake news...

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The ants and the beetles were all celebrating
As I wed the spider that I had been dating
And soon sixteen legs would be consolidating
I could say eighteen but that’s exaggerating

But all of a sudden the ground...

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Stop drinking alcohol,
this only reassures us,
like social media,
like your favourite TV shows,
and drugs,
that our personal problems are all okay,
when intoxication is an escape route,
from our abstract reality.

Smoke cannabis on special occasions,
with friends,
on holidays,
away from work,
and...

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I've had enough of the usless drivel, hypersenitivity and endless snivels
We're more fulfilled I hear so often, yet the fruit on show to me seems rotten!
A girl of 9 cut down by a gun, floods...

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When I first saw her.
I thought i have seen a blue bird from Kakum forest.
Her face was sparkled like a sunrise.
Her eyes were that of a Engels.
My face can be seen through her eyes.
Her breast...

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I have this talent - I can create an ex-boyfriend out of thin air. **snapping fingers**

Lisa and I had just gotten back to school from Thanksgiving break and my soon to be ex-study-partner arrives all...

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I feel asleep
On the wind
It took me to places
High and lofty
Amongst the clouds
And cool high air
Where water is but
Droplets of mist
I touched the stars
And kissed the moon
Shook the hand of
Mr Gray in his tin can
It...

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Ego 

The human mind is evolving 
From cave man to building house
We have traveled the seas and space
We’ve survived the last iced age
Yet our minds are still creatures in caves

Our boys are so fragile they...

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With starting lines in measured meters 
Down back alleys we would run.
Asphalt drawn with borrowed paint 
Against each other’s clocks.

However matter what the speed, 
Our youth could not outrun 
The dimming of the light.
We ran...

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I have no boundaries

I am the air
Lightly above you
I am the earth
Strong beneath your feet
I am the sparkling city that embraces the ebony of your sky
Diamond Concrete

I am a bold faced lie
I am a dose...

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My legs took me to witness a dream I fear to narrate.
My eyes saw them coming like a white dove.
My mouth hung open because my eyes can not omit this pleasant moment.
They walked majestically with...

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Who told you ?
Who told you that I would still 
be here waiting ...
Bandaging and patching, 
cooking and cleaning, hoping 
and expecting,
Anticipating your love towards 
me, but when the rains came, I 
looked for you,
To...

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