Long Luxor Poems
Long Luxor Poems. Below are the most popular long Luxor by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Luxor poems by poem length and keyword.
Tutankhamun, a small bird of prey
This pharaoh of Ancient Egypt
Akhenaten’ son and his sister “the Young Lady”.
Alas! Alas! Alas! Ay that was the name of his vizier
His minister or favourite
He made him marry
As a child
With his half-sister Ankhesenamun
Daughter of his father and Nefertiti
The Great Royal Wife
Conceiving two daughters who died
At the first opportunity
While in the sands of the desert
The whirlpools danced
And the sun played in the brightness of the rocky ground
And the humps of the camels.
Enamored by the magic of the roads
Supported by canes due to his physical disability
And other real illnesses:
Osteonecrosis: death of the bones in his left foot
Scoliosis: curvature of the spine
Malaria or paludism
For playing erotically with females
From Anopheles mosquitoes
Like elephants do with ants
In the Valley of the Kings
In the desert area (Desheret, the “Red Land”)
On the western bank of the Nile
In front of Luxor, in the heart of the Necropolis
Who made him die young
At nineteen years old.
A friend of mine “Pasapoga”
Called that way because she likes dancing a lot
Who loves to study about prehistoric ruins
In love with Howard Carter’s studies
Famous English archaeologist and Egyptologist
She decided, one day, to travel to Egypt
To visit the tomb of Tutankhamun.
She was making her way to the sarcophagus chamber
Flanked by two statues of the pharaoh
When she felt a hand touching her breast
Without knowing if it was from one statue or the other.
On leaving the visit and reporting it
A tomb robber was arrested
His laughter betrayed him
In addition to the fact that she came out shouting:
-The gods and pharaohs are not worth a damn
Only their jewels and money.
From then on, because of the “Touching of the pharaoh”
She named the pharaoh as “Tocatetamen”
“TouchBigTits”
Even though he had not been.
A lone Nile felucca threads a path through a sorrel haze.
Morning tea outside the Winter Palace.
A Turkish cigarette mulling my wine.
The waiter is Nubian. He whistles a Cairo melody
as he sweeps the steps.
Luxor,
always one step from the desert.
Sand creeps over boulevards in serpentine waves.
Temples and hotels caught by an embalming dust; cinders
that must be swept daily under wilting shadows.
Soon Ra will walk out of the dawn.
I will barter with his face, haggle for a seared moment
of permanence.
For now, by the river, I sip tea, watch the light kindle
a far necropolis – a valley where kings gouged blood-lines
into the tombs for the sun.
Great is the battle, small the victory
when all that is won is lost to mankind -
in this war of worlds its great casualty
is the fallen consciousness in our mind.
From spear tip and arrowhead to smart bomb
or Ptolemy to Hubble looking glass,
Luxor hieroglyphs to CD Rom -
from the Bronze to Silicon Age we pass.
Primeval footprint, genetic blueprint,
sandstone castles under canyons of steel -
gone are the Caesars and Pharaohs extinct
and there’s a cautionary tale so real.
Civilisations that with hubris act
fall a ruin, a remnant, an artifact.
Written: August 2004
A lone Nile felucca threads a path through a sorrel haze.
Morning tea outside the Winter Palace.
A Turkish cigarette mulling my wine.
The waiter is Nubian. He whistles a Cairo melody
as he sweeps the steps.
Luxor,
always one step from the desert.
Sand creeps over boulevards in serpentine waves.
Temples and hotels caught by an embalming dust; cinders
that must be swept daily under wilting shadows.
Soon Ra will walk out of the dawn.
I will barter with his face, haggle for a seared moment
of permanence.
For now, by the river, I sip tea, watch the light kindle
a far necropolis – a valley where kings gouged blood-lines
into the tombs for the sun.
He turned off the running water,
soaped his face not glancing at the mirror,
a long night ahead.
He had four shadows
on the four walls of this rental,
not a good sign.
When later he turned the bedside light on,
the glowing silhouette of his head on the pillow
burgeoned, swelling upwards until
it pancaked on the ceiling above.
Still groggy after the hashish
still psychoactive,
he got dressed.
Out walking the dark Luxor streets
he found a coffee shop still open.
The thick sweet brew was served to him,
a lime green dwarf
sporting a banana yellow fez.
Never again he thought,
patting his pockets hoping to find
some curative cancer sticks.
Green scene that caught and took me clean away,
captivated on the sights as the train
excels, on our progress in the same day,
a rare place I will never know and gain.
The Nile amongst the fields and the beauty
of the palm trees, and brown sandy places,
camels, tall pyramids so much to see
as we pass the sites and sun kissed faces.
Travel between Suez, Luxor, Aswan,
Alexandria, Port Said, and Cairo.
Breathtaking, you never have time to yawn
knowing it will be a fabulous show.
Traveling through Egypt's grace in leisure,
a lulling train rides in comfort pleasure.
9/29/2017
I miss her, Mother Egypt
and those friends I left behind,
timeless history, marvels and mysteries
etched in stone by her own scribes.
Longing for the waters of the nourishing
River Nile and surrounding seas,
the laughter and smiles of everyone
who once loved and greeted me.
Near the shores of Alexandria,
Abu Qir and Fort Qaitbey,
Where Cleopatra's palace once stood
in somber ruins, she now lays.
Near Pompei's Pillar and Roman remains
of columns and fortress walls,
white marble statues and museums filled
with antiquities large and small.
The sights and sounds in every town
Of a marketplace lost in time,
Selling goods from almonds to wildwood
And candles to clocks that chime.
In the land of the Eye of Horus,
the son of Osiris the King,
and Isis, Queen Precursor
to Mary, Mother of God, Creator of everything.
Cradle of Christianity and home to
Pagan, Gnostic, Muslim, Jew, sanctuary
where the Holy Family fled from evil
to a warm and welcomed refuge.
Where the mighty Sphinx and Pyramids
stand silent, proud, and tall,
in the salutary sands of time
with eyes peering down upon us all.
Temples of Luxor, Abu Simbel
and Colossi of Memnon,
Valleys of the Kings, Queens and Hatshepsut
awakened, alive again each dawn.
Mummification, adulation
of life and death and stars,
Constellations, incantations
and the wonders of who we are.
Battle tested, rarely rested
waiting for the next invasion,
of Persians, Greeks, Romans and those who seek
your immeasurable treasures unabated.
The ebb and flow of come and go
throughout your long, hard years
of growing seasons, rhythms and reasons
to keep fighting back the tears.
Yet never waned while fighting flames
of one invasion to the next,
while still your people smile and sing
with a yoke upon their neck.
In a land that never loses the allure or
enigma of mankind's birth,
where magic and myth still hold their grip
on whatever we think life’s worth.
Mother Egypt, truth be told, I miss you more than all your gold
and antiquities that survive,
where I once sipped cappuccino
watching history passing by.