Long Lodges Poems
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How can we not have this conversation
where footprints of the poor vanish
beneath the boots of investors,
and the river sings only
to those who can afford its luxury?
In Chobe, the elephants roam free,
but people walk caged in poverty.
We call it coexistence
when tusks are protected,
but mothers bury their sons
gored near neglected kraals.
And no one comes
unless it's a game drive
and the victim is not black.
How can we not speak
when the lion's roar is louder
than a widow's cry for compensation?
When leopards eat goats
and ministries write reports not cheques?
Let's talk about the five-star smiles
that greet foreign tongues
while the Batswana mop floors, serve beer, and sleep on concrete after ten-hour shifts.
Let's talk about uniforms and pay slips
that smell like servitude,
contracts folded into silence
in offices lined with antelope heads.
And let's speak of the racism
how a Black woman was shot by a white woman
who said, "I thought it was a monkey."
As if her body was a silhouette of threat.
As if Blackness is always a blur
on the edge of someone else's comfort.
The river bore witness, but the law shrugged,
and headlines softened the bullet.
Let's talk of fishermen
banished from their birthright,
told their canoes spoil the view,
that their laughter scares the tourists,
that their presence is pollution.
Let's speak of lodge owners
who toss insults like breadcrumbs
to those who clean their sheets
lazy, slow, replaceable.
No chains, but contracts.
No slurs, just smiles
with knives beneath them.
We cannot be quiet
when the sun sets
behind lodges built on lies,
and the river is fenced
not for safety, but exclusion.
How can we not speak
of the politics of permits,
where land is leased
like livestock,
and council seats are auctioned
to the highest foreign bidder?
Corruption blooms like water hyacinth,
choking life from the roots
of communal trust.
The sand knows.
The baobabs know.
Even the crocodiles know
how long we've swallowed
our own tongues
to protect the myth of peace.
So let us talk.
Let us gather in the heat
of midday truth,
where no luxury air-con hums.
Let us speak until the sky listens,
until justice stalks this land
as fiercely as the wild.
Because silence, here,
is complicity.
And we have been quiet
for far too long.
Form:
I
Yours is a mystery no mortal man can comprehend,
and your name which I mistook for my sister's, is a riddle
that would remain unsolved…
I have searched and searched within the recesses of my heart
since we parted at the crossroads
to know why my heart suddenly fell
like a fly into the spider's web, like a creditor's call
on a debtor's door,
like rain on a sunny day for you (a stranger)
on our first coincidental meeting,
and why it never stopped falling…
II
Weird as it seems,
the resonance of your soft contralto voice
lingers in my head
as if it were moments ago, and I feel
the reverberations against the daunting din
of the crowd that encompassed us…
The image of your slim black body stands in my mind's eyes
like slender palm on a bar beach,
and the perfect projections on your comely face
reminds me of my mother in her prime
when maidens prided in the sanctity
of their innocence
and thinking of you lulls me to sleep, to daydream
youthful dreams of her
in whose shadows I weaned…
Doyin! Lightfooted archer* on the wings of fate-
the suppleness of your black skin and your matchless manners
are true reflections of your untainted roots,
and the playfulness in your cultured tongue exalts you
amongst the silken daughters of Eve
(and are mere reminiscences of our first meeting)
How can I define your superlative beauty in verse?
III
Doyin, you are not one of my sisters, you are not my mother's daughter
yet, since we parted at the crossroads,
I have been in despair longing for the overwhelming ambience
of your sisterly warmth,
to hear the sound of your tender voice resonate
in my head down to my heart,
to feel the enlivening breath of your inner bowels,
to rest beneath the sheltering canopy of your hair, and
be enlightened by the magic splendour
of your bespectacled eyes…
Doyin, I long to bridge this river between us
to reach the enchanting realm of your refreshing countenance
and dwell therein within
the friendly fountains of your heart.
But since we parted at the crossroads,
and you went your way while I stood watching,
the image of your fetching figure
lodges in the chambers of my heart like a golden fleece
IV
And why my heart suddenly fell for you
I cannot tell…
Was it for your fetching figure or matchless manners?
I still cannot tell
I leave it to fate…
I WISH I WEREN’T A BUNNY
by
JOHN M. ARRIBAS
I never wanted to be a bunny, I’m not playing this game
I’d reconsider a puma: a lion with a frightening mane
But that’s not my fate, I’m a bunny, a defenseless toy
Other creatures have fangs, claws; they can deploy
I have no defensive arms for use in personal defense
Why nature created a sitting duck, just makes no sense
My choice would be the fiercest critter ever seen
Yep, you got the picture, the ferocious wolverine
Indian lore says, one could cause a village to vacate
Moving in on his territory was a fatal mistake
He’d come after you, if on horse back or if on foot
He’d destroy your tepees and lodges all gone, kaput
But alas, that’s not me: in spite of what I’d like to be
I’m a bunny with soft fur, that’s something we all can see
I have soft long ears, and a wiggly waggely tail
A cute sniffing nose, my gifted maneuvers never fail
Maybe for you, but doesn’t satisfy my lifelong dream
I’m a ferocious beast inside willing to dominate the scene
Mother nature could have given me more traits to bear
Like those big hind legs and speed she gave to the hare
Or a cotton tail that can avoid danger by simply leaping
I spend the day, daydreaming or silently sleeping
But all in all; the object of my wishes and self esteem
Is to wake up tomorrow in the body of a wolverine
Each day when I open my eyes, it’s the same old story
My status hasn’t changed, I’m the example of lonely
When I first arrived every body came over to see me
I was the new thing on the block a real live novelty
But as time progressed visitors were fewer in number
Reducing my activities to intermittent slumber
Bunny (2)
I can’t complain I have fresh vegetables every day
And usually some company, if the kids decide to play
But I’m a one man show unable to live up to my reputation
As a prolific contributor in expanding the population
Each night I pray when I wake a willing doe will appear
I know she is somewhere but unfortunately, not here
In a dream the other night, I was lightening quick
Instead of hippity n hopping, I was lickety split
Those wishes that constantly flood my senses
Doused by the existence of surrounding fences
I’ll just have to accept my lot, be docile, not mean
But between you and I, I’d rather be a wolverine
THE WOMAN WHO COULD EAT WOOD
Who defied science?
The Woman Who Could Eat Wood had.
How and why at first no doctor could say
to her mom and dad.
Years later the doctors had discovered that after a test
special micro-organisms helped the wood in her guts digest.
‘Perhaps B can survive off wood because of some unknown power,’ her father had said.
‘I agree 100% with your thought,’
her mother had said.
‘A superpower I don’t have
All I can do is eat wood. That’s good.
But no one gets saved!
So I’m not special,’ B had made understood.
Sometimes she worried like crazy
that she was different. Sometimes she didn’t worry that she was different like crazy.
At first the cruel media (and some did too on Oak Street) teased her, hated her,
was terrified this kind
of “natural ability” could occur in her.
Quickly they lost interest,
forgot about her.
At Elmwood Primary school some people
ate for lunch sandwiches and fruit.
She ate doors and drawer knobs
and the occasional wood flute.
Some people
in the beginning
were scared that her
bodily functions were strange and not prizewinning.
‘She c-can d-d-i-ig-g-ge-s-st-t-t w-w-woo-d. As b-b-beav-v-ers d-do!’ a classmate had said, not grinning.
‘Friends, Pleeaasssssssssse DON’T be scare of me!
You’ll soon come to understand me. You’ll see.’
‘And YES. I eat like a beaver.
But I don’t cut down trees with my teeth to build
lodges and dams. I don’t eat layers of tree bark.
It’s totally impressive how quick they can build.’
After a long while
most people just accepted she could eat wood. Sure there were a few meanies of guile
who teased her and her parents to tears
for awhile.
She made some friends
and she even had some boyfriends.
She actually loved the taste of wood
that’d make most sick. That she liked to admit.
'I have no choice but to,
I guess,’ she’d admit.
She never felt sick or put on any weight.
Skinny as a HB pencil she was, but not unfit.
Her poos were wood when she didn’t pig normal food when she asked for it.
In fact she preferred wood.
It was free and it
saved her parents a load of money and too,
saved on dentist bills because her teeth never split.
TO BE CONTINUED ... IN PART 2
Police sirens are blaring
Outside my tuckered apartment walls.
The red and blue lights consume my room,
Provoking me – threatening me.
The sound – deafening.
It is the night, the best time to hide,
Under the cloak of the dark abyss -
Not even the stars and the moon dare to shine.
They are coming for us.
Those who are deemed too radical,
Those who are deemed too unfit
It began with the colossal wall,
Blocking our neighbors from the South.
Then, the seizes began – first the immigrants,
Frantically grasping onto their loved ones,
Cries of injustice filled the streets,
Bargaining, pleading, and falling to their knees in desperation.
Then, they went after people of color
Put in various sectors
Sweat camps, murder lodges,
The best way to extinguish them was to treat them like animals.
Force them to fight –
To water the seeds of hate
Teaching them to loathe each other.
This was a game to the higher ups,
To the privileged
With their pale skin,
With their saintly Christian views
Their black pin striped business suites.
The women were next.
Those who weren’t already in the slumps
Those who weren’t already corralled into buses
Those who thought they would be spared.
They were used as trophies –
As breeders, to purify America’s society.
Some were used for other extracurricular activities.
I can still hear the screams –
I can still hear their souls dying.
Only a few of us had escaped.
Only a few of us remained.
We are of different backgrounds –
Each escaping the fate handed to us by the superiors.
Shh! Barking joins the shrieks on the sirens
The hounds can smell us through the walls,
They hunt us down like coons, mouth’s salivating-
Craving, yearning for a bite of tender, impure flesh.
There are six of us –
Sitting inside this abandoned, rickety apartment –
Although the superiors have begun to separate us,
Although they have seeded in hate,
We have blossomed as a unit –
There are more of us,
Hiding, like vermin, between the cracks of the walls
Waiting, like rats beneath the city streets,
We – the people
The radicals- polishing our weapons
The unfit – spreading like cockroaches
The impure – rising like smoke
Will have our redemption!
05/30/2018 - 100 years
In the dark depths of ancient lands,
where shadows whisper secrets to the night,
lies a tale of a region forged by mystic hands,
a pure product marked by "justice and fraternity."
From the dawn of the shining royal reign,
over the grand and majestic Tartar halls,
no soul from outside the system's chain
has ever stepped foot on this enchanted land.
Masonry breathes through the Monarch's sigh,
a subtle wind guiding those who were brought,
masons, the sculptors of masses, standing nigh,
keeping the throng low, their past forever fraught.
Though the monarchy's crown does not adorn its brow,
Romania reigns as an unseen monarch,
a scent of power lingering, somehow,
in corners unthought by the common.
And so I ponder, in this twilight's gleam,
what is patriotism in a masonic design,
where lodges commence with a national dream,
"Awaken, Romanian," a call so divine?
For patriotism, ancient and true,
a homeland is needed, a soil to defend,
as Tudor Vladimirescu's words ensue,
"The homeland's the people, not the thieves who pretend."
Thus the patriot tends to the crowd, the masses,
but can also be a thief, unseen in the light,
he's not of the people, but one who surpasses,
plugged to public wealth, in shadowy might.
All began as patriots, a noble disguise:
PNL, USR, AUR, FSN-PDSR, PNT-cd, UDMR,
each claimed to cherish the people's cries,
yet none brought the dawn, leaving dreams to despair.
Patriotism, a starter pack for ambition's plight,
one cannot skip the stage of care,
building roads and bridges, shining bright,
born to bring a throne to the masses' lair.
Some proclaimed to live for your joy,
a promise never met in the valley of tears,
Romanioka, where sorrows deploy,
since the great bring-in of 1800's years.
Remember, rat, in your endless quest,
all lands are ruled by the Monarch's hand,
through satanists, his dark behest,
but in "Romania," the worst of them stand.
Patriotism, the greatest faith's replace,
as chronic poverty, "traditional" named,
in this land where shadows embrace,
and dreams of betterment are forever tamed.
Historically accurate, narrative poem
27 November 1868, on the banks of the Washita River
Dawn’s peaceful first light streaks the eastern skies,
belying the horror of a marauding force of horses and men,
silently stealing over new fallen snow preparing
to deliver a fateful blow to the Cheyenne camp below.
The silence is broken when bugles sound the charge
over frozen ground, against a sleeping village that
having complied with every previous unjust demand
thought themselves safe from Custer’s command, deployed
in three columns according to plan, to charge from the west
and the village front, while Maj. Elliot’s column blocked
escape to the east. With the Washita river to their back,
there was no place for chief Black Kettle and his peaceful
band to escape the attack. Braves, women and children, it
made no difference, no preference was shown or quarter
given, most were slaughtered while their lodges burned,
though soon against other creatures the killing would be turned.
Black Kettle reached the river but lost his life while attempting
to cross over with his wife. The lucky few that did survive the
bloody strife and fled across the river to the ridge beyond,
below which their pony herd grazed, soon were filled with
dread and fully amazed when at Custer’s command the entire
herd was shot dead. But by now from other encampments
further east, many Cheyenne Arapaho, and Kiowa braves,
drawn to the sound of guns in the early dawn, were massing
on the hill beyond, milling and buzzing like angry bees, singing
and chanting prayer songs for their dead, filling the soldiers with
a fearful dread. So Custer broke off the engagement and began
to withdraw, but the stage had been set for another day-
June 25, 1876-
when at the Little Big Horne the debt owed for this atrocious
act, Custer and the 7th in full would pay. Meanwhile, as a
prelude it might seem, Maj. Elliot and his column, trapped without
a chance, were wiped out to a man by the Indian’s western advance.
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
Forgive us please our enormous bilious hubris
The quasar-lit heavens smile only down upon us
For Our Master he presideth over the Universe
Our Architect-Father he beds down in the blackest holes
Our temple bells and lodges’ knell toll only for Thee
While Thou slips from one parallel universe to another
Yeah, notre terre qui est à Votre taille
The muezzin’s cry reaches far into the darkest cloud
From turret to galactic turret resounds the prophetic call
Colliding antennae make a murky Baghdad morass
The fallout heralds the bigcrunchy messianic massage
Our Master who art the shine on the Brahmin’s head
Which knows no limbs feet chest nor shivering loins
Forgive us our cowering at the spewing Purusha mouth
For Thine is the thunder exploding forever and ever
Did not a bodhi prince once keep a damning silence
He saw no need to undo Thy mighty male tie
Lest he’s forced to traverse this soil again in rags
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
As for the other fully bearded nodding mates
They are those who first invoked Thy game
They’ve now bought the world over in Thy name
But prefer to run the banks ‘ere Thou cutteth the rates
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
Is the epicentre of the roiling boiling might
Where domes echo for the right to languish at Thy side
And watch the Goya geek chew the heathen to shreds
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
All the stars you see out there in the ever-ever
Are but the conjurer’s balls dancing up in the air
The illusory waking dream of the never-never
Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
Give us every day the fireworks in the sky
For Thine is the show and ours the joy
For ever and ever spinning a lie !
T.Wignesan, November 3, 1997, Fresnes-Paris (Rev. 2012, Paris)
From: T. Wignesan
Copyright ©: T. Wignesan, rev. November 3, 1997 (from the collection: longhand notes (a binding of poems), 1999.
Matsuo Basho: English translations of haiku about summer, trees, firefly, fireflies, cuckoos, rice fields, rice paddies, bush-clover, Iris, Irises, temple, temples, Japanese culture, light, daylight, lit, boat, boats.
Fireflies
turn our trees
into well-lit lodges.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
A noontime firefly,
dim by daylight,
hides behind a pillar.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Firefly watching,
the tipsy boatman
rocks the boat.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Rising above fields of rice and barley,
the cry of the summer cuckoo.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Tedious life!
Plowing the rice field
back and forth...
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lying in the summer grass,
discarded like a king’s robe,
the snakeskin.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The shrubby bush-clover?
How impudent
her appearance!
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Glistening dew
sways without spilling
from the bush-clover.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
I bow low
to the venerable
rabbit-eared Iris.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Rabbit-eared Iris,
pausing to chit-chat,
one joy of my journey.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The rabbit-eared iris
inspires
another hokku.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Rabbit-eared Iris,
admiring your reflection?
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Inside Uchiyama,
unknown to outsiders,
blossoms full-bloom.
—Matsuo Basho, translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Uchiyama was a temple little-known to the outside world. In fact, uchi means “inside.”
"Go ahead, make yourself comfortable,
contemplate, whisper secrets to momma moon,
let me read you and we will phase out this bad
luck you been having, real soon.
Momma's confidence, anonymously
reflected in the night sky,
moonlighting from her day job,
as performance muse, child.
Honey, there's a reason, why.
Her stars, like diamonds, strewn across a velvet counting tray.
Been cheated upon by every skguy.
I "been around the block honey",
seen a few things, especially that Gaia wouldn't want repeated, about
orbits and tractor beams.
Her waves crashing like a heart pounding with desire,
pulling men deeper into her depths,
like a siren, especially with sailors embarking
her Bermuda triangle, circle of fire."
'Don't get me started on the Swiss Alps.
Oh no, let's not go there!"
"In her baptism of salty tears
and resolute surrender, uhh uhh!
is an ever-changing batter of emotions, my dear,
beneath the layers of society's masks,
stratas straddling a variety of contexts,
Lodges, secrets.
Mmm hmmm. Karma Sutra.
That's where we could be goin next!"
Relations, ships, tides, so complex.
"But let's talk about you, inside you
lies a battlefield of emotions,
awful powerful voodoo,
where vulnerability dances with strength,
but she chooses to go volcanic and blow her stack!
Oh, sorry, we were supposed to be talking about you,
honey child, let's get back on track.
You see, I guess with her holding it in,
what can you expect.
It is in the broken that we can find beauty, though,
igniting strength in the depths of vulnerability."
To Be Continued, Baby!