Posted in Art Scene, Books, Current Affairs, Film, Literature, Memoirs, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Religion, Science, Social Commentary, Society, Travel, tagged ancient, answer, army, astrology, battle, belief, bibliophile, blessing, book, break, brink, buckle, bug, calligraphy, census, chest, civilization, classic, clue, commentary, conservation, continuing, copy, culture, decay, demand, diary, earth, essence, exact, extinction, fiber, find, forgotten, fragile, fragment, generation, gold, guide, hand, heat, hours, humanity, inventory, juvenile, labyrinth, last will, leather, legacy, letter, long, magic, man, map, marauder, mosaic, muffle, muscle, mystery, narrative, notations, oblivion, pages, passion, piece, piles, pillage, poem, poetry, practice, precision, proverb, reading, receipt, recipe, religion, remembrance, rot, scholar, Science, secret, silence, silver, sinew, slow, small, Society, song, spell, spending, stretch, text, theology, time, tome, tradition, training, translation, treasure, unpopular, voice, volume, wage, warrior, watch, wealth, weapon, weight, wield, wisdom, wood, word, words, written, young on March 4, 2011|
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His muffled voice breaks
the long stretches of silence
while his hand guided
young and untrained hands
practicing calligraphy.
Watchful and demanding precision
of copied texts exacting translation.
As he unbuckles the leathery tome
of secrets in a wooden chest.
Tradition, theology and religion.
Diaries, recipes, scientific notations.
Inventories, census, receipts.
Readings of narratives and poetry,
astrology, proverbs and magic spells.
The volumes of letters, last wills,
songs and words of blessings.
Spending hours and hours sitting
among the piles of pages digging
for clues and answers to mysteries.
The labyrinth of a culture. A treasure.
Each of the fragile pages a wealth
weightier than silver and the gold.
Piecing each fragment in a mosaic
mapping an ancient civilization
long forgotten. He believed, it was
here in his hands lies the fiber, sinew
and muscle of generations of man-
the society is ought to remember.
So he became a warrior, obsessed
with the written word wielding
weapons of passion and wisdom.
With his small army of juvenile scholars
continuing an unpopular legacy.
Waging the classic battle against time,
earth bugs, heat, rot and decay
slowly finding its way like marauders
pillaging the essence of our humanity
into oblivion and brink of extinction.
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Specimen
Posted in Books, Current Affairs, Film, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Relationships, Religion, Social Commentary, Society, tagged authority, awaiting, benediction, birthright, blindside, blood, born, borrow, bow, break, call, class, come, competition, crab, crowd, culture, curse, dare, dark, defy, dirty, down, envy, fanaticism, fate, first, fist, force, forward, freedom, gap, give, God, grab, hands, hard, house, humanity, ideals, imitator, labor, land, language, leap, life, lifetime, little, master, measure, millions, minion, misplacement, money, number, oil, One, other, pale, palm, people, poem, poetry, prime, privilege, pull, put, question, raise, religion, reservation, rule, scent, seat, seethe, self-worth, servants, silence, skin, social commentary, soil, sound, space, speak, specimen, stare, statistics, struggle, subservient, supremacy, swollen, syllable, synonym, tall, teaching, tell, time, tongue, tree, want, wide, world, worship, yardstick on March 21, 2012| 2 Comments »
We lived in a world where
statistics is synonymous
with being number one.
Measuring up in a yardstick,
struggling our lifetimes
competing for spaces
reserved for subservient
imitators of culture and class.
Like crabs crowding and grabbing
and pulling each other down
wanting to rule the world. People
above people. Force against force.
For those who dared raising a fist.
For those who questioned authority.
For those who defy their masters
raised from the land they call-
the first world. Their birthright.
Is it about what you’ve been taught?
Is it about how you’ve been raised?
Have I been misplaced by fate?
My skin’s darker, hands dirtied,
swollen by hard labor. A gap
so wide I couldn’t leap forward
a privilege’s bloody to break.
The one with the skin much paler
has the prime seat in the house.
The one whose ideals are taller than the tree
had their palms oiled by the scent of money.
And their minions bow down in worship.
Supremacy over self-worth. Fanaticism
over humanity. Millions, blindsided
servants to little gods awaiting benediction.
I can’t do but keep silent and curse
the soil in which you were born,
giving you a seething stare in envy.
Shall I borrow then, your language
slipped out of your tongue? For I will
put sounds to the syllables of freedom
to speak and tell you, “our time has come”.
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