WORLD POETS MAGAZINE

  Birthday Egrets   Nine egrets, whiter than snow   in the wetland after the deluge, wings unfolding – graceful, slow, then like sudden overblown sprays of wild cherry blossom, perched for a moment on the tallest oak.   Nine egrets, whiter than snow   on this my mother’s birthday and she twice nine years ago gone. Are they a present from her, when presents should be hers? She promised to come back –   nine egrets, whiter than snow.   So perhaps this is it: in tiny mirrors of water from beyond, a special show plumbed by the horse’s hooves. Maybe she wants to remind us of the nine-times-tables we chanted…   nine egrets whiter than snow…   and how multiples of nine add up to the nine which scatters and glows with a transforming light of change, previous mistakes churned into mud by the birds’ feet yolk-yellow.   Nine egrets, whiter than snow   O wing me, then, whiter than snow – long black beaks nibs...

  Haven   At midnight, the cashier read aloud the Times : a new rat-like animal has been engineered alive. The cashier watched the customers, lonely, but they just squeaked, “That’s disgusting!”   He has stood behind this counter enough to fathom their famed open hearts: joy at milk cartons when they are the right color, exact change when hurry pats their back, “Have a nice night [and maybe free food tomorrow?]”   In cameo epiphany, every week and a half, he switches languages to greet some late-night visitor from his old piano realm, bask in his past standing ovations overseas. A night owl, you once listened to him yourself at five in the morning, and your own life bubbled up:   gallows traded for rats in the cargo hold, ninja stealth in primary-color containers. And what if the captain always had tango on his mind? It’s been decades, and still you paint blood on every canvas.   Candles with both sides sealed up guard the porch of your doorless house. Spr...

  It is cold   Lovers have fled the grass and the murmuring voices no longer ring through your castles of sand   You return somewhat grieved to your annual death   Then we meet again as old friends who faithfully seek each other without rituals without welcoming embraces   your waters who camp on the beach and my soul tired of absence   Only you listen therefor I also listen to the stories you amassed during your passing summers   love stories, surely, and one or two absurd deaths in your arms   But with you time aged without healing my wounds without erasing from my skin of distant ashes the few words of love I still remember   Only you understand   shadow of the shadows the extinguished fires and this Absence transformed to regret   Just like every year in the coldest hour     Lord I am a child, tired of running scared of the roads and the shadows of the night   I have slept on pillows of stone with my open e...

    Songs of Dawns-Americas Occult Odysseys that ceaselessly come to us by snippets   written a thousand years ago by new men   erased at the pace of waters by bearded, guardian gods –   Barbarians.     What barbaric words will sing the infinite delicacy of the opossum’s walk, or the cabin boys’ transverse flute? What language can wipe the past slaughters?     I don’t know anymore   I want to write a huge legend and upholster the wrong side of the forest with these dead voices     May I tell you that which I couldn’t experience? Which spell to cast as I dive in the copper-colored water of the cove? What was I trying to delete, to wash out from my thighs, the frame of which was troubled by water?     I watch as the flat tints of the rain season settle   Shamelessly   I pick the acid cherries brought by December’s damp fogs   Two drops of the blood of that invincible warrior of m...

        Summer   or At Badalona Beach     The subject was opposite me (a "Resting Man" on a deckchair) I saw the vertical incision on his chest the red towel the now rare Delial (with a shiver from several decades’ worth of recollections) must have been in his sixties immersed in the global news page (his cellphone rang a couple of times) waved no to the black peddler who approached him. His story roused my interest (the vertical incision, mainly) and of course I enjoyed the indiscretion the idler’s fantasy, I mean, the inductive inspirations:   at night (age contributes) a triviality was enough to wake him up in his lea- ther loa- fers got out of the con- jugal bed, quiet at the cor- ridor his son’s breathing sounded like an unhampered step to the future (sons are always made of future) sometimes laughter trivial dialogues with sleepless friends unfamiliar sounds from the computer. He stood still for a while with the unspoken suspension of an ani...

  Writings fly   I burned verses, with no name, no roots To build castles of rhymes, erected as monuments, I buried as dead books with insipid pages, so as not to ask uncertain tomorrows to bear witness. I have hung a thousand sounds I no longer wish to hear, For they spawn mournful rhythms.   In the night I told the stars to smile, asked the moon to shine, and the sun not not rise to awaken in the morning, Because what remains does not fly.   It is the pure sound of vowels, the sweetness of a look, that kisses the scent of newborn babes. It will be the fire that warms the spirit, the sword that strikes the mind, each page of mine awakens the solstices, the strength to think and to speak, To lift the weight of time in the temple of wisdom. Though writings fly, one will remain: the one of poetic truth.     I am the apprentice   In life, everyone is an apprentice. I dwell in the night, ready to welcome the hurricane. The lamp of my heart radiates strengt...

  Lives Unlived   1. The little girl in the school was grappling with a math equation hai Allah, prayed she I’d rather die than be put to shame in front of the whole class not giving the right answer   A million questions gushed forth when the bomb exploded over her head blasting all right answers   2. The sharp pain in the shoulder did not hold the mother from lifting the heavy iron to get the creases of her uniform in place   with the sudden explosion the girl’s hands at once reached out to the creases to save her mother the labour for the next day   blown to smithereens by the blast she ended up saving her the labour forever     Cycle of Ruptures   Through the crumbling orthodoxy of thought and feelings unfreezed they made love in the cusp between life and death   A ball of throbbing nerves tumbled out of biological chaos Igniting memories of the birth of motherhood   The child an assurance of continuity strands of kno...

  The Sailboat           II       o how i luv     to muse     over my nude figure bathing     irresistible     in the river     drop      my shorts     &     knead   with my invincible     army     of fingers          flesh warm & quiet    ever vibrant as i glide     across it flexible     like so      with a tickle    both wild    &    flagrant beneath the bob of bubbles     hidden below       i surf this      river      bare & laud each member of mine massaged    &     pulled      in   ...

  Hill (i.m. Geoffrey Hill)   Remove your hard-hat, turn off the hazard lights. You do the philosophy in different voices, with Heraclitus travel through gloom. You think the deceased are not the dead: the dead do not cease.   Your poem had an effect on me: it smelt like cold music, exercise of war. It points away from you, who are dead, who was not thought out or down. Nor is music sound.   Deities use us as the lenses through which they see the shadows of themselves gather wing. As one sweeps one is swept in turn. Stories froth through us. In our time   the masters of the white vans refine what cannot be said. The frowning nurse fulfils the prophecy. The kite-flyers fish for gods. Roadsides strew with canisters of nox.   The assembled dead are new-fallen sibilant leaves. Call-waiting music purls among the many tongued ghosts. A question concerns the Sibyl: is strong art made by the angry, or the unwise. The void.   Heading towards the spee...

  teapot   i mixed with the streets ripped from your roots a rose bud no longer the road is shortened, one small bud with my yearnings sunk i’m a tea a little bit blood red, a lesser lover   mother come wrap my sprouting shoots, pick me up tuck me into the house steep me on the window in your song’s vibrations, garnish with basil sugar me, stir with your hand make the house drink me mother   i left the street i’m a frostbitten petal my sweat is tired i took my missing feelings back i’m a little bit emptiness, a full separation i’m a small roof a small portico, i’m a rose bud torn loose no longer   mother come shake off my dust, tuck me like a roll in your chest raise me again with letters and lullabies, put me to sleep three days and nights lay me in life mother before your eyes spread a thick inside over me   (Translated by Andrew Wessels) the sky settled on the lake   the sky settled on the lake, clouds a flying carpet we prepare to step on the moon,...