Tag Archives: language

WHY

WHY

why be so singular
writing it as a poem
when you
could have (fire away!)
written it in prose

did you not
require clarity, transparency, conformity,
syntax you might
micromanage?

all of which (we
do believe) prose
alone is
the form
that
can secure

you see
the path
you see the doorway
avoid the kitchen,
drawing room
above all
the boudoir

for all
their highfalutin veneer
patina

there much
distraction and divergence

that way
leads
to carnival, sideshow,
introspection
all that
reeks
of
orgiastic pantomime

pathways opening but
then
immediately closing

rawness, roughness
that could not be more refined

but here
I am simply reminding you
of what you clearly already know

ISFAHAN

ISFAHAN

“The world always decides”
      Kingdom of Heaven (dir:
       Ridley Scott)

It is hard
to see
the past
           through
all the
      smoke, mustard and
nerve gas

death mirrored from
mirror to
    mirror

same old
lies and deceit
again and again

unless a door opens
and then another
rooms nested
within rooms, infinite regression
a theme in boxes
and dolls

but with you, Tabanda,
a door opened

and looking back
now I am at last able
to reconnect,
reconstruct through
all the disinformation
and outright lies

what was it Rumi, Omar
Khatami wrote
about beauty?
Surely, Tabanda when
they wrote their lines
they had you in mind.

The Sin
   of Empire

born into a fading self-
important brutal Empire
close to camps and
fortresses founded
by Rome
         (taught us
everything)

forgive me
   for my ignorance
not realizing how deep
these assumptions
of superiority really go

how it is here
in the semantics, structured
in the very syntax

and you sitting in the classroom
smiling imbibing my
attempts to
     teach  instil my
mother tongue

so what if I told you
I have never travelled
to Isfahan
    your lately bombed,
beautiful city

city whose name
is such a pleasure
for the mouth to speak

****

I am disappearing
off radar

see stars floating
across the sky

and my memory if you
my so-called impossibly demanding
jaw-droppingly beautiful
student from Isfahan

everything here
you can translate into Farsi

Persian time
cannot be said to be
a short system of time

I think of your war
your million dead
        not a statistic, each
a remembered martyr

the Libra medallion about
your neck
   glinting for a moment
in the hard
English sunshine

in the Fitzgerald translation
(his own reworking)

Sultan’s turret
caught in a noose of light

AS THEY SAY

AS THEY SAY

they paid
the ultimate price

got you thinking that
someone lined
you all eleven
             against
a wall
          found a
firing squad
to put them
   you out of your
                        misery

miserable because
you lost the game via
a stupid
      mistake

ultimate price;
   as they say

ZADIE (3)

ZADIE (3)

Oh Zadie
your words
hurt me

I was wandering
along the periphery
eating an onion
gifted me
by Roland Barthes

when
I overhead a word
that hit me with
all its 50 megatons

and so, I had no option,
but to
    take it to heart

which
    would have killed me
had not realised,
it was
not
   actually a bullet
and only like a bomb
by virtue
of
   analogy
a prime (should I say
“primed”) example of
metaphoric
thinking

and I rose
to go on
my way

fight again another day

but then another bullet
hit me, though
you may say
I just walked into
                        it

but luckily, was
a recent arrival, via
plucky trade

a miracle, God be praised!,
and I was saved

its manufacture British

Oh Zadie your
barrage, blast, MG-42 spray

so totally
nailed my argument.