ANNE RANASINGHE I Have Forsworn You I have forsworn you, closed all memory;I work and eat, listen to music, sleep,Walk in the garden, watch the changing moonPretending that I have no need of you.But all the while I know it is not true.Your silence weaves around me such a tight cocoonOf loneliness and sadness, such a deepAnd painful longing that I know it is a fallacyTo feel and say or think that...
Joe Sharp What can I dae aboot this continual dreepin’Frae my nose a’ the day even when I’m sleepin’The Doctor says he can dae naethin’ aboot itHe said it’s no’ like somethin’ ye can take it oot an’ shoot it I went tae the Chemist tae pick up my prescriptionAn’ afore I went in, I gave my hooter a good blowBut as I bent o’er the counter tae sign my descriptionWater frae the well o’ my nasal canal...
Kim McMillon
The moon fell into the ocean
amiss the cloudy night
colored eyes gazed out
trying to capture
every emotion
every feeling
I was gliding
falling with the moon
into a sea of sensuality.
first poem in a poem cycle in progress 1995/2007 The title of this cycle is taken from The Song of Amergin: “said to have been chanted by the chief bard of the Milesian invaders as he set foot on the soil of Ireland in the year of the world 2376 (1268 B.C.E)”. Written originally in Old Goidelic, the only surviving versions are in colloquial Irish translation. The phrase ‘I am a...
John Keats (1795 – 1821) Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art– Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–...
Joe Sharp The Lady Marionette Jojo feels an urging to do somethingAn itchy twitching in the coiling of a stringA youthful longing to be tapping tippy toesTo the lively music of the piping piccolos In his dreams he dances to the minuetWith Annabelle the lovely Lady MarionetteJojo fears his frame of brightly painted lumberIs deemed not to be awakened from its slumber Within a cardboard cell he...
Preface to Alphabet. It was May 2008. I had just finished reading Louis de Bernières’ Birds without wings when hate spread her ugly wings, over Johannesburg. They called it xenophobia! Phobia is fear This was raw idiotic cannibalistic atavistic animal hate! So Louis de Bernières description or the raw idiotic cannibalistic atavistic animal hate during the Balkan’s wars provided me with an...
When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,She looked so limp and bedraggled,So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,Or a wizened aster in late September,I brought her back in againFor a new routine–Vitamins, water, and whateverSustenance seemed sensibleAt the time: she’d livedSo long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,Her shriveled petals fallingOn the faded...
. . .do not feelthat i am distant in your miragethat i am hidden from you mosaicthat i am fading from your canvass . . .i am an orphan these daysbereaved by life’s cruel cudgelsentenced to crumbs and dropletsbandaged to the whims of betrayed hopes . . . love is blemishedtrust is tainteddesire beclouds judgmentwhen lust rules the senses . . . …so do not feelthat the rush of your stream swirlis...
The landings of this world are rehearsed: And so the heron sinks into the water and the deer Joins in the flood, and so the face of one’s mother joins The lies that save her face: Always there is war flaming in South Africa Always empires are dying and refueling Always the children grow more staid than their parents And love seems to darken in each walk by the river: The silence of the...