A Stupid Night

Sitting with loneliness as firm friend
on the void verandah, with vagrant moths flying
the uneventful blackness of the night,
I hear the phone ring monotonously.

It is my faraway rustic village friend
whose father has been expecting a better job.
He tells me around 500 persons
are going to be under his father.
I think, what power!
In the end, what is he going to do?
Cutting grass in a cemetery.
Anyway, I think it’s better than being
like me, jobless and heartless.

Switching off all the stars when day comes.
Sieving the sand of our public beaches.
Playing pop songs in funerals.
Monitoring the traffic in desolate regions.
Cleaning the tyres of aeroplanes with shoe polish.

I think these could be cool possibilities
in a world slumping to dire downfall.
Back in my old sofa on the verandah,
I find that the already tasteless glass of milk
has been clearly mistaken for a pool
with a moth swimming desperately in it.

I feel like a fretful child,
lacking the courage to prepare another glass.

I whistle stupidly and another night goes by.


Trochetia Girl

Posing beside the trochetia with your
magnanimous beauty you are the emblem
of an island whose people‘s hearts have no fences

Your elegant hair spread over your young
shoulders is like the sugar cane fields
undulating in a warm April

The tropical sun on your morning face
is the sparkling song of turquoise oceans
hugging, kissing the afternoon sand and wild rocks

The unspoken words on your lips resemble
tall filaos whistling like playful
boys just before sunset

I wish I could call you a vibrant sega,
the Creole music of our slaves,
danced in patterned skirts
and blouses and bush shirts and liberty

You are one of those beautiful free girls
in Mark Twain’s paradise, with eyebrows
brighter than divine rainbows
dispersing onto the bridge of a cosmopolitan nose

People say it’s not easy being free,
but you’ve managed to imitate the wind
to turn into honey that’s far too sweet for any pot

You must build a few jails in your heart to
imprison your grace, innocence and
patriotic beauty

Glory to thee, trochetia girl
Glory to thee


Three and a Half Victorious Lions

Three and a half lions are returning from war.
Dry dust circling around their firm feet.
They have dragged down the small sky,
Slamming it on their sworn enemies’ bodies.
Angry inhaling and exhaling
Gigantic pride
Muscles rippling
A couple of temporary bruises
The bells of triumph bellowing in their claws,
The livid lions return, intimidating everything.
Lions do not fight every day.
The clouds are becoming orange,
severely tainted by their enemies’ blood.
Go out and see! The sky is gone.
The delirious lions forgot to put it back.
Is it due to complacency, joy or neglect?
‘Only the one who fries the victorious claws of
lions and eats them can flatten the bent
sky and restore it,’ the lions are heard saying.
The silly jungle is dancing, mad in admiration
of their peerless protectors and leaders.
No one knows they’ve fought against ants.
None has the real intelligence to query
about the missing half lion. Deep inside,
the lions know David has beaten Goliath.


Lord Shiva

O Holy hermit on white Mount Kailash,
the invincible mountain of sacred and eternal bliss.
O Lord of 108 names, ardent lover of Benares,
indestructible city of eternal salvation!

It’s one of your fascinating secrets
the way you concocted Sanskrit
from the sacred sounds of a Damaru.

It’s one of your fascinating secrets
the way Holy Ganges flows from your head.

It’s one of your most fascinating secrets
how you fearlessly drank the poison
that threatened to devastate the whole world.

Blessed with sons Ganesha and Kartikeya
and wife Parvati the Supreme Deity of Shaktism,
you have no form and yet all forms are yours.

The sun in your right eye, the moon in your left,
and your third eye annihilating all evil
O Great God of the yogis
you are the most fascinating legend.


The Turkish Moon

The pregnant Turkish moon dies away
from the hectic Istanbul sky, leaving
in the midst of a void the souvenir
of a brilliance bitterly beautiful, again.

In the bittersweet sky now
there is an empty page, one upon which
I am trying again to decipher the promise
made by an unfaithful lover.

I have travelled from country to country,
from simple to starry sky,
but the Turkish moon is nothing different.

To every patient place I’ve gone,
the moon is suffering enormously
from those intent looks of hungry artists,
including myself.
She is suffering from the scars that
exaggerate what she wants to unveil,
her sore flesh looking like a very
pale reflection of a confident Goddess.

Is the stained Turkish moon
another unsuccessful project of our Creator?
Is she another incomplete canvas deserted
by a painter tortured by visions too
beautifully painful, just like those

I see when I think of lost friendship?


Summer Desires

my tongue howls only for sorbet
I dream of wine and frozen strawberries,
lovingly, and without your go-ahead
I want another moth dance
in cigarette smoke,
reawakening my heart’s fire
near the dead fireplace
our pregnant dog ogles at me
every hour as if she knows
something,
as if she feels she can coax me
into sharing her nothingness
there’s a handful of
snow that’s refusing
to melt in my mind these days
time seems too short
way too short to mean anything
it is too long to mean nothing
everything ends in lost days
each time I open or close
the door it hits me
in my cold womb I’m carrying
the child of nothingness
in this cruel summer even
honey can’t sweeten my
thickened tongue


Trapped in a Peanut Coffin

In an old graveyard
 in a coffin, peanut-flavored death,

the heart too frail to find solutions,
I savor stale slices of hope,

 my vision blinking in guilt. I
watch spiritual scenes in my mind’s

eyes—
foretaste of afterlife.

Perturbed with a wife
 praying on young knees, I try

to swear in my mother tongue
but make sounds of a faraway father.

Punching the ceiling
that rebels and coaxes numbness

into my fists
 I aggravate the situation by

releasing a handful of mementoes,
with them rolling everywhere

and I chasing with the slick wings
of a raven along an infinite Elysian avenue.


Striptease

Her emerald dress exuding sensuality,
wrapping tightly a timid body
and a girlish fragrance
unprepared for exposure
yet, very slowly,
as if against her own will
she opens herself and
virgin curves began to appear—
so cherry and so tender;
 
her protective shield sliding
down, her maiden body
seems less embarrassed now.
Rapt, I watched her rapturous
petals open like holy water
sprouting out
from a fountain for the first time;
seductive expressions,
a cute lollipop
relishing pleasure while
giving pleasure.
 
Her stem bending here and
there in the serenading wind,
I know she’s the rose blooming
into the smile of my Valentine—
so pure and beautiful.


our neighbors

neighbors neighbors neighbors
bloody imitators
a chapter of paradise imbued with books of hells
brains like a fine assortment of scintillating flowers,
with skulls resembling bottomless vases
rich elephants on rickety wooden legs
ready to judge they have the dirtiest vocabulary
with the most disproportionate antics
 
neighbors neighbors
transient eternity; eternal ephemerality
a truth of two words: falsehood and duplicity
all the importance that insignificance can carry
the mere voicelessness of a boring voice
beautiful birds in fine feathers,
turning into greedy wolves behind your back
 
neighbors
the closest strangers, indifferent to your anguish
a double-edged sword
honey-pots surfeited with the blackest gall
as if their teeth perspire
in the heat of abstinence,
they have to gossip about you, shamelessly
 
neighbors neighbors neighbors!


Belle on Soft Belly

Your smooth body lying on the smooth lawn
Stunning brown eyes looking for a safe horizon
You look like a belle flying in the green sky.

There’re fierce flames burning in your calm heart.
Your lovely navel kissing the grass in melody,
Your village hair caressing your sunny sweet back,

Your soft hips badly need their purity again.
O Bella, I know you love my poetic words.
Let your ears hear me; this world will see your beauty.

Don’t ever fall on your belly in times of despair—
Remember, your fine feet want to dance in heaven
And winds of happiness want to kiss your lips,
strongly.

I’m sure, the wings of my poetry will help you
take off;
So fly, run, swim, laugh and just be your beautiful
self.
Let’s weave some real magic in this mysterious life.


Nostalgic Afternoons

My afternoons are imprisoned in the freedom
of my paintings, twisting the long line of suffering
into the curves of a half-wrecked imagination

Sitting within the low dried bamboo fence
covered by lianas brimming with mauve trumpets,
I would capture the deepest secrets of her jovial face

under the monster-looking clouds, like a
proud pilot in the wake of dire adversity
The huge acacia tree, the strong scent, the rock bench;
they all give me a purpose, hope, an excuse
Watching the shiny kids returning from school I
would see myself there, oozing innocence,
with her black and white photo
gesturing in each and every page of my boring books
My old painting brushes in one hand I always try
to chirp like a merrily sailing bird or whistle,
and whistle like the balmy breeze, ending up grieving
over myself being a too fragile hourglass of love,
with her as a gigantic grain of sand that slipped
out when I was capsized in a sea of freedom


The Dough of Politics

Mould me.
 Beat me.

Make me your vulnerable dough
and mould me
Undermine me to the content of your mind
Rock me on the edge of
your sinister fingers
Whip me with your callous palm lines
and when your tyrannous will
is done wean me off to the
oven of your dirty breasts.

 Beat me.
Mould me.

Make me your dough
and beat me into a drink too
Let me glide along the railways
of your fearsome stomach
Cherish me in the infinite ravine of
your bosom
Let your belches and
nocturnal drinks cut me
I am the people of tomorrow

Mould me.
 Beat me.

Mould me
for
what is the mould without the moulding
What’s the moulding without the mould

Beat me
for
what is the beat without the beating
what’s the beating without the beat

Mould me and beat me and slash me
 but let me be myself, a wee bit


Golden Apple
 
This apple is not an Edenic forbidden fruit.
This apple is not the poisoned apple
 
offered to Snow White. It is not
any Desperate Housewives Apple Mug.
 
This apple is one from
my own garden of the Hesperides, a sleeping garden
that supports nothing more than an apple—
 
a garden never blessed by any elegant Eve.
 
This crimson apple
is golden in what it signifies.
 
This golden apple consoles and
reanimates its prelapserian Adam
deluded and maimed by the trenchant nails of love,
for whom life is poorer than popular Sisyphus.
 
This apple is the solid symbol of a weak man
who never concocts or tastes any evil soup,
bread or wine.
 
Modesty will force this ascetic man to joke
that he stole the golden apple
 
from a jewel shop or it is
a fake crown brought
to his garden by a waterless whirlpool.
 
The modest man might cut—
or even slash, and share the apple
with the whole world if only an apple
 
is what remains as eatable one sunless day.


Chinese Cicada Slough
 
I’m now a civilized hairy monkey,
part of the folk handicraft of old Beijing.
A Chinese girl’s calm has turned my heart of gall
into a delicate ten-by-five millimeter body.
 
She has dwarfed and sweetened the
black monster found in my blue blood.
Steel has melted into Magnolia bud,
shed cicada skin and akebi, in dire winter.
 
I can creep into her room every
night with an air of charming naivety,
unseen too, being so minute now.
But I hear people gossip that she
 
is slipping into madness, seeing
a gentle midnight ghost on her breast.
It’s a pity she can’t recognize me;
I should have stayed monstrous.


I'm So Sorry
 
I am the glowing moments I spent with you,
I am the fresh air you breathed before.
My fingers are those with which you caressed
the khaki-colored tea cup every morning.
 
In my absence, I know you would shoot the
birds in the nearby forest to think of me. You
would spread my virile fragrance all
over the staircase. Neighbors tell me they would
hear you shout commands at night.
 
I have seen death and people
turned to clay while fighting for greedy men.
I’ve gone to war, and come back,
only to see you dead! Self injury.
 
My tears are stuck in my nose; I’m so
sorry I made you mad.
Let me assure you my love, I looked my best
and gave you a kiss good-bye before
the heavy lid of your coffin was lowered.
 
I’ll live like a cracked vase with
the beautiful flowers of your memories.
 
You’ll now live
in the bullet buried near my lion heart.