Tag Archives: war

GARDEN

GARDEN

hurry up
final brushstrokes
finish that portrait

write
that chapter
conclude your
epilogue

they say
shock and awe
    sturm und drang
they are
going to
decapitate the State
it will be a quick campaign
over in hours

I am neither tactician
nor strategist
but I would beg to
disagree (always
overthink things
a curse that genetics
handed down to me)

but for you
I would give time
infinite time if
I had the power
and I feel
   you might have
requested it

for what
in all you do
does the soul
not require?

when
    our music is all
discordance, dissonant
chaos symphony

and me
in this chaos space
so at odds
      with your careful
subtle
cultivations of tranquility

you
   with your precise
place to stand, viewpoints
and perspectives

place outside
this poem
         space of refuge
green sanctuary

everywhere
       nothing but sweet
sanity – – lesson, message
example
for the world

but have you now
quietly captured
        in my mind’s eye
(and apologies for
the trickery that
did allow
     me to intrude)

watching you
at work
    patient, careful, loving
every moment
knowing
       the secrets of the soil
how to make things flourish

painstaking, just a half a degree shy of perfection (yet
on the right side)

a teacher too, but I observe
in awe
     a lesson here, not
for me uniquely

but out there, right there
place of deserts and gardens
where
    life could
not be more sacred

bodies of bombed schoolgirls
lined up in rows across
the sand
        over four score (to give
it a Biblical number
a collateral quota)

faces covered (saving us
the trauma of
God’s maimed body,
disfigured image)

transparent truth
warning to
take care
    with what you
make of God’s image

image you
        carry into war

with prayers
for annihilation, banner
in blood-soaked hands

hurry
with your garden

last hope
we all have

IN OUR HOUR OF NEED

IN OUR HOUR OF NEED

so these are
our great leaders
the one we asked for,
begged for, swore
binding oaths
we would give
our lives
in the holy
protection of

most sacred symbols
creme de la creme

steering Ship
of State between
Scylla and
Charybdis

charting the perfect
course to ensure
the entire crew gets
devoured by
the former
before the Ship
itself gets
swallowed by
the latter
pulverized into
microscopic
perhaps subatomic bits

no fear
no fear
     enough spin
doctors on the shore
think tanks well
bunkered
to call this
what it no doubt is:
perfect solution;
strategic victory

reassure us 100, 200,
3000% in our
our need

and yet
our poets and philosophers
(bless them) the ones
already marked for death camps
but presently well
and living

try to
get through to us
contact us to
tell us

all
  common sense
is now
gone to Hell

something so fucked up
about our evolution

and all our voting, political,
social, economic
and natural selection processes

centuries we had
to see
    for ourselves, live
and learn

tragedy we didn’t

TABANDA

TABANDA

The President is boldly
congratulating himself
on his essential
pre-emptive strikes
on a vicious, terrible people

I met one of these vicious
monsters decades ago
(met quite a few
but this one
I remember)
pulled the short straw
and had
to teach her English

all the middle-aged
British tutors at the college
horrified at her
reputation, flatly refusing,
worst of all
    was going to be
one on one
me and her, head to head
bound for confrontation
nothing for
     her ever good enough
no possible placation
hope of pacification

so I passed
through that door

looked around the room
no sign of mortal threat
no sign of imminent danger

just
Tabanda
sweetest student I
ever had
Libra glyph on
medallion
about her neck

not that I
knew, barring her name,
any of that yet

trying to
introduce myself, words
a bit stuck
not really coming out

needing to
make an adjustment, take
everything in my side

never before taught, met,
a woman of such
astonishing beauty

crazy the
lengths we need
to go to demonize.

THIS PICTURE,

THIS PICTURE

it is not what it seems
nothing is
what ot seems

an armada
sailing East
sailing across a
sea of mist, across
Homer’s wine-dark
smooth as
glass
    could not
be unruffled

and in
its secret stockpile
many a
noose of light
for the Sultan’s turret

ships
    big as cities
whose meaning be war
war
   their entire industry
gliding to
their assigned
positions, making headway

nothing being
wrong with this picture

everything wrong
we can
no longer see

everything, everyone,
insisting it is all
a bad dream

the night, so dark
mother of
storms
      about to
break

the story
       so thin we are
about to see through it

far too late
to do anything

NO MAN’S LAND

NO MAN’S LAND

I dream
of the two of us
out in no man’s
land

making love on a bed
of thorns, barbed
wire, razor wire

perhaps
you dreamt it too
it is a dream
we shared

bodies panzered up
shock and awe, clattering together

love, in any sense of the term,
a flagrant euphemism
for whatever it was we sought,
hoped to achieve
desperate
to hit our mark, believing
if we graduate
to this level
things get incandescent

trading stigmata, as we stagger
towards that universe
beyond words, outside language

overhead the Sun
still
   in control
weighty, central, utterly
orthodox
frowning upon this
nonsense

terminally skeptical,
and yet
      so vulnerable

open
  to crucifixion, for
us to bang nails through

turn
   that powerhouse of
fusion into
one giant circular coffin

LIONHEART

LIONHEART

Sir Richard
wants British children
to pick up
their toy rifles
head East
to attack Russia

wearing his truth-telling,
have-to-take-me-seriously
air ace
blue uniform

could not have
been more lunatic
could not have
been more clear

that military logic
crystal
as absurd a joke
as you ever heard

last thing
you may ever hear.

RETURN

RETURN

just returned
from the war

came back
scarred, horrified,
from killing people

all shapes
ages, sizes, many,
many

everyone of them
just like you

spiritually, emotionally,
psychologically

ticking all the boxes
in terms of
shared humanity
things
in common

yet
   in physical appearance
so crucially different

as per those small things
which
    really  really really matter
above everything,

nothing like you
or me
at all

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

PRAY CONTINUE

PRAY CONTINUE

I am badly wounded
haemorrhaging everything

waiting for
your coup de grâce

drenched in blood
surrounded by
scraps and
pieces of what was
once humanity

bits of bone
embedded in the
brain-spattered altar
in this place of shelter

I am not quite dead yet
so pray continue

lest
I bear witness

still a mathematical possibility
I might survive