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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Flood
Posted in Current Affairs, Literature, Nature, Poetry, Politics, Social Commentary, Society, tagged above, afloat, ants, away, bailout, bell, blab, body, breach, bring, capture, cards, carry, chew, clock, constant, corporate, days, deadlines, deep, detergents, doomsday, down, downsizing, drain, dreams, drown, enjoy, excitement, fade, figure, file, fill, filth, flood, flotsam, forgetting, glide, gossip, habit, hidden, hope, hours, how, hunger, keep, labor become, laundry, letter, levee, limbo, line, machine, minutes, miss, morning, mountain, myself, necessity, news, next, note, numbness, oblivion, out, overflow, overtime, paperwork, people, pick, pile, poem, poetry, press, punch, race, ranks, rat, resonance, rim, rinse, ritual, rolling, rush, sandbag, silence, smell, soak, soap, sound, spell, stains, straw, stream, suffering, tap, termination, thank, thin, think, tick, time, train, treatment, tub, wait, wash, water, way, weekend, whine, worry, yesterday on June 7, 2013| 4 Comments »
The hours tick like sound of punch cards
in this corporate machine treating
people like ants filed into ranks.
Mountain of paperwork piled up
into sandbags. Bring it on, breach
my levee and let me drown forgetting.
Labor becomes a habit. Of numbness
and enjoying the suffering.
Like the sound of water from the tap
during a morning ritual in oblivion-
silence resonates like a hidden bell.
I wait until it fills the tub overflowing
down the rim and the clock raced
to the minutes rushing for the train.
Like the way the thinning soap glides
my body and the necessity to wash
away yesterday’s worry-rat smell-
that doomsday spell. A thank you note
and the termination letter. The downsizing
and the news keep rolling off the press.
People pick up some gossips to chew
and I am excited to blab my hunger.
Like the constant whining of the weekend
laundry, hoping detergents rinse the stains
and filth of missed deadlines. And overtime.
And I got the time to soak away thinking
about the next line to a poem, capturing it
before it goes down the drain. In limbo.
And I hope to keep afloat above it
like a flotsam of dreams in a stream
carried away in the fading of days.
Figuring it out how to bailout myself
like a straw in deep water.
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