I am just one breath from a thousand voices19 November 2023
Courtesy pinterest.com
I am the vestige of a fake sermon
the redeemer of a so-called vermin
the fate of which they will determine
heads or tails, palms would examine
I am a slowly revived olive tree
My gentle farmers rekindle me
their dreams of liquid green honey
set in their dead eyes that no longer see
My fruit hangs on the West Bank
where every corner smells death dank
metal on their heads lands with a clank
they think my keepers they outrank
I am a call for prayer in their lost homes
to Jerusalem, Rome and all those golden domes
The mind of each in inner turmoil roams
as fire every inch of their land combs
I am just one breath from a thousand voices
seeping through clenched teeth’s brittle noises
exhaled from tight chests pressed in dead choices
while inhuman armada in kids’ blood rejoices
Reading of the poem:
I am becoming a Tree
My arms extended in calling
I branch out in verses
they are shiny fruits hanging
high and low in perspectives
alternating light and dark
I am becoming a Tree
My trunk plants its roots in a garden
I witness moss growing on my feet
they disappear softly within green
circles of brown dissolve within its sheen
Totem of tomorrow’s world sprouts
I am becoming a Tree
Wide branches from keen twigs
absorb the sunshine in waves
they cast no shadows on the seekers
gathering around my rivulets
My waters are shared with all
I am becoming a Tree
I am sunshine and rain
I gather feathers and fluff
as the nightbirds hold in me home
Sizzling thoughts in me roam
I bear the smooth and the rough
I am becoming a Tree
I climb giddily towards the skies
Though my roots coil me to the ground
in sweet harmonious belonging
my leaves rustle in the clouds
I am bustling prayers and shrouds
Reading of the poem:
Hush hush now Mama will build a boat
Just to keep you and me afloat
And if we were to never meet a land
Mama would build a castle made of sand
Yesterday was full of lights in the sky
From ground they reached a burning tidal high
And when the flames seared higher than my cry
I watched them run wilder than hopes would die
Hush hush now Mama will fill your throat
With cries to fly beyond the highest note
The flags will rise above the waving hands
The music will break through the dancing bands
Tomorrow’s crops are burnt for ever more
The gaping hedges drizzling in downpour
And when the wheat’s prices were to soar
She gave them fields of seeds that many bore
Hush hush now Mama will knead the bread
So gently when you’re a million dead
The fallen hark for every word she said
An emblem lost from mind of every head
We once saw the Earth burning like a pyre
From each dark cry their lips would expire
And when I lay beside you on the fire
We rekindled flames blazing higher and higher
Reading of the poem:
Seek me in the rivers that flow stark
I have given in to the tides that all embrace
yielding into the deltas that claim more
that demand from all the very core
I will gaze upon the sun unflinching
the memories of you lying intact
unravelling in a world we never touch
as I watch your dark wings glowing
Laying on a bed of flowers exhaling
scent of jasmine, rose and moonflowers
I am one with my other face hidden
deep into the water it slowly grows
What is you has now become me, us
and what I am I know exists no more
yet I explore the emptiness of your face
translucent, aglow, it escapes physicality
I look beyond the life we never had
beyond stolen instances of nighttime
into the compressed breaths taken
to construe a world beyond the world
We will sing sweet and soft lullabies
to the unborn children we raised
in our mind’s eye they roam playgrounds
sitting in the recesses of my bosom
We keep and weep within my bosom
withered like an old nun’s gait
it speaks of unraveled moments
In Time we will see them flourish
Reading of the poem:
The beast in me walked for a death to instill19 April 2022
Courtesy Stefan Gesell
I walked once between daze and swoon
My hands at my sides my head in the moon
I bore in my insides a wild creature to come
A waif turning beast at the beat of the drum
I walked into winters that paved summers’ way
Like the trees that blossomed amidst rustling hay
I walked into nights darker than dying coal
I clasped coming suns like a deer her foal
Then I said come now beast would you spill
The gory insides of your ever recent kill?
The beast made no sound but shook its head
It bore no closeness to the recent dead
The beast in me walked for a death to instill
As I watched it leaving from my window sill
Inside I clutched the most fleeting remains
The beast had wiped me clean of its putrid stains
Reading of the poem:
Will I find that special sound
of sweet sighing redemption?
I feel it through the winds unwound
like a flag without a nation
I hear yonder muffled cries
I wander beyond their borders
in the weaving of truth and lies
heaves the rhythm of disorders
Blue and pink and a pint of glue
The glowing glee of a life to come
What is deceit and what is true
of meagre talk the total sum
Whisper without me an ear to fill
What comes forth a tongue to twist
Through landscapes I seek to still
As grows stronger my rising fist
Reading of the poem:
I was once a swan
gracefully gliding
I conquered surfaces of waters
gleaming as they slipped
tickling my under belly
working their way to my neck
that revealed itself to slaughter
Daytime picked its grind
tossing me sideways
ripping parts of my wings
as I lay flat on the lake
a sacrifice to my ineptitude
my commonplace fantasy
of being no more
What is left of me loosens
at the edges; it parts
revealing scintillating facets
of places hidden within
where I search for my traces
when I moved head held high
unveiling my togetherness
I am still sometimes a swan
patching feather after feather
through my insides laid bare
retrieving lost wings
carved inside my memories
They speak of lost paradise
when we were all children
I see now the swan in her
fleetingly visible in the sun
shadows of her wings soaring
high above the green lake
I see her and feel the ache
She hides it gracefully
We were once swans
Reading of the poem:
Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" - Piano Sonata No.14 - Arr. G.Grant
Geetha Balvannanathan's Blog - Isis Tratum 
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