End Times: Republished

END TIMES

Hold fire! Mukti’s rickety rickshaw
Holds its breath a moment, pauses in suspense,
Gasps, gulps, shudders and shambles one day more
Bent upon what uncertain comeuppance?

What deadly quagmires lurk around us
As faulty torches, barely flickering,
Leave us stalking fears, while dreams caress us
Beneath steel towers, looming, uncaring?

Surreptitious glances scan each shadow,
Meet only with mirrors too fogged to read
And whereof, pray, this breath? Above? Below?
Which blurred each image, then blindness decreed?

After the abandon of summertime
Comes winter’s burning breathtaking horror.
Bully boys preparing fresh pits of lime.
Hear them sniggering in the corridor,

~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~

“On April 4, 1945, soldiers from the U.S. Third Army freed a camp in the town of Ohrdruf, in central Germany. Tech. Sgt. Eugene Luciano later wrote about the experience:

‘Many prisoners laid in their bunks too weak to move, but raised their arms in thanks. Bodies were piled high on the ground; others were in pits covered with lime. There were rows of ditches filled with buried bodies with an occasional leg or arm protruding [sticking up] out of the ground. The stench was intolerable.’ ”

– The Free Library by Farlex.

Of course that kind of thing couldn’t happen these days could it?

Holiday In Berlin: Republished

HOLIDAY IN BERLIN

The slow times between afternoon traffic
Cold coffee on bungalow verandahs
May sometimes serve to remind
Silk rustle of passing clouds
How once in laughter jetting
Above frail flutes of the ocean’s smile
Wan Europe and far away

To gray freeway boulevards of Berlin
For afternoon walks ginger-soft as cats
With smiles ever less frequent
And for some reason more and more drinking
Dwarf fools in a sad circus
Creating the right spectacle for them
Lay readers of the lesson

Stumbling the important words
Unsure repeating such words each morning
Parodies spraycan the scent of daisies
Chinese whispers total loss of meaning
Carrying it between two
Nervous to the breaking point
Too fragile a vase to save

From arrows of sleet or rain
Through dagger edge adventures
Between avenues of trees whose tired leaves
Only appeared distantly
For to disappear again
Though a tree is dead fungus will survive
Sitting through the dusk of putrefaction

Mildewed walls of cafés and hotel rooms
Daily decomposing and composing
Faded brown and smudged copy
Needed for long past deadlines
Like reporters of the nineteen thirties
Recording one another
In desperate impatience

Dumbly fumbling a bedroom door handle
Until sad days of doom now really dawned
Forced empty slipstream Atlantic returns
Where vapor trails reel two times
Across tangled cotton clouds
Three days apart and strangers
And the wet runways of final descent

Do glisten whose tyremarks are like tears
Descending the handshake passengerway
In the drizzle scarcely shaken from sleep
Opening eyes to look up at the sky
Just as now from bungalows
The sky will never seem the same again
(And of course it never did)

~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~

This poem has a soundtrack! It was composed while listening to the track sequence ‘Holiday In Berlin, Full-Blown > Aybe Sea’ (from Frank Zappa’s “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” album) set on ‘Repeat’. If you don’t own the album you can find the tracks on YouTube.

While listening, it’s not too hard to work out how the stanzas relate to each section of the music and vice versa.

Really it’s just your typical boy meets girl, boy loses girl scenario. Same old same old. (Or boy meets and loses boy, as there’s a nod or two to Christopher Isherwood.)

A verbal/musical movie for the mind (and heart). Enjoy.

Only For You

ONLY FOR YOU

Do not bewail your fate at crossroads
Nor shirk the choice of either/or
But singing both/and search for the lost notes
The key to pick is neither/nor

Let us pray for the seasick sailor
Stormswept, becalmed upon the sea
The hero’s bold venture doomed to failure
As Jonah also tried to flee

Uncertainty made him a dancer
Who once had been so far from shore
And no single key can be the answer
Just as no road can be a door

The crossroads never have a signpost
The ship that sinks will reach no quay
The road is dark – devils take the hindmost
And Know Where is it plain to see

I do not write to give directions
The distance or the trials in store
These are the milestones of my acceptance
And they pretend to be no more

Strider: Reposted

STRIDER

Striding on through the world
Drawing it close around her
Like a pair of old slippers
Worn smooth by tireless pacing

Striding on through the world
Drawing it close around her
Like a comforting cloak
Proffered in a time of poverty

Striding on through the world
Drawing it close around her
Like a stuttering lighthouse
Glimpsed at the edge of revelation

Striding on through the world
Drawing it close around her
Like an envelope addressed to the future
Scrawled in an unknown tongue

Pusillanimity? … Or Wisdom?

PUSILLANIMITY? … OR WISDOM?

I don’t hoard any furtive hopes
Beneath my cosy feather pillow
Nor dreams, nor wistful wishes
For fear they will make it lumpy
And give me a pain in the neck

Red Light

Updated. Only Betty from among today’s followers has seen it before, I think. Sadly the “reblogging” process has clipped off the final two lines and the “Notes” so you need to click on”View original post” to get the whole thing.

Ben Naga

RED LIGHT

Driving in to work this morning
Up by the traffic lights
There they were

Still in their teens looked like
And between them
Covering both ends of the spectrum

Perfectly staged archetypes
Artfully fashioned
To hit all the right buttons

One with the ample coal black curls
The easy grace, the confident stride
Already marked down, I’m sure

To receive a special mention award
For her outstanding contributions
Come Breast Awareness Week

The other with the straight hair
The slightly dippy look about the eyes
And the face furniture to die for

(Did I mention my thing for glasses?)
Christ, I’m nearly sixty
Will this never end?

I remember years ago
When Pain first moved in with Desire
Until now they’ve become inseparable

They tell me I’m only the landlord
And can’t do a thing about it
Something about an assured tenancy

Told myself it didn’t matter anyway

View original post 134 more words

Roll Up, Roll Up, The Circus Is In Town (Republished)

ROLL UP, ROLL UP, THE CIRCUS IS IN TOWN

Deafening election ballyhoo
A further relapse into insanity
Louder, louder, worse and worse
The lies … The misdirection

Like the two sides
Of the same bad coin
Turning up over and over
Heads I win, tails you lose

Like a rancid smell
In the soggy walls
And rotting floorboards
Of the Off-white House

Don’t flatter yourself
You have no real value
To the puppet masters
Who possess you

As they have none to you
The dupes who ticked your box
They’re used to tests from school
This one’s a gullibility test

The Legend Of The Moon’s Reflection (Republished)

THE LEGEND OF THE MOON’S REFLECTION

Deep in the Northern mountains’ silence
Once long ago
Far from the lands of men there lived a Prince
Cold as snow
All day long he would wander
Like a man possessed
As he went he would ponder
His life’s helplessness

Why it was that what he loved the most grew old and died
Why he found no place of rest however hard he tried
And he threw himself upon the mountainside
And knew himself to be alone and bitterly began to cry

And in his misery he saw
As if in a dream
That where his tears fell to the ground
There sprang forth a stream
And the stream fed a river
That flowed glad and free
From the hills to the lowlands
And so reached the sea

River and seawater
Flowing down together
Though the river ends
The sea lives on forever

And by means of this vision
The Prince was set free
And in his dying moments
At last he could see

Why it is that what we love the most must disappear
Where that place of rest is that is always free from fear
And he flowed into the river with his tears
And knew himself to be the sea without a knower or a seer

And if you gaze far out to sea at night
So they say
Sometimes you’ ll see his face shine in the moon
Far away
And the river still flows
From the hills to the plain
And the sea feeds the river
With drops from the rain

River and seawater
Flowing down together
Though the river ends
The sea lives on forever …

IYOUMEUS AMAREBEIS (Republished)

IYOUMEUS AMAREBEIS

………………………I

In all the time of breaking fast together
only chance decided how the food was shared,
what became the eye looked into,
the hand the other held.
And so we are as one
and yet by chance divided.

How so near?
How so far?
Ah love,
for whom else should I eat?

………………………II

In thoughts that turn
to love and loving
(the eye looked into):

“A sphere
whose circumference is nowhere,
whose centre is everywhere”;
a panoply of nodes;
an exercise in isometric tensions
(the eye looked into).

The sleepy snake is opening
(the eye looked into)
and you will meet me again at last,
here where the four winds dwell.

~~~~~ ~ ~~~~~

For extensive notes, go to https://bennaga.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/inner-workings-for-sarah

Lightly Felt Tips (Republished)

LIGHTLY FELT TIPS

When you learn to distinguish
between what is truly good in poetry
(especially your own)
and what is – shall we say – not so good
then you are almost there.

The rest is just practice, daring,
risk taking and self confidence.
Satisfying yourself is the foundation.
Rules are there to follow or break;
pleasing others a welcome bonus.

So leave the back door wide open
and invite the Musey Lady in for a brew.
She loves to take a load off.
If she’s silent, it’s only ‘cos she’s thinking.
She’s just observing, sipping her tea.