Posted in Art Scene, Current Affairs, Literature, Nature, Philosophy, Poetry, Social Commentary, Society, tagged Africa, all, animals, avant garde, avenge, Babylon, bleed, build, cents, chair, challenge, clothing, coal, coarse, cold, collect, commercial, cost, cover, crazy, culture, curtain, definition, dig, domesticated, earth, embellish, exist, fabricate, facade, Far East, feeble, feel, feet, fiber, find, fingers, fire, floor, fond, forest, furnace, generation, glass, grass, grave, greed, handwoven, hard, hides, hour, hundred, hunger, impoverish, jungle, kinesthetic, kingdom, kryptonite, left, limestone, little, look, loss, majestic, meat, men, moon, more, mountains, musk, natural, nomads, olfactory, organic, permeate, pluck, poem, poetry, points, polish, prick, prize, quarry, realm, rest, rivers, sake, satiate, savannah, scent, scour, see, separate, sharp, shelter, Siberia, silicate, skin, slab, stain, stair, steel, stip, sweat, temperate, ten, tombstone, touch, trade, Travel, unique, vanity, walls, want, white, will, winding, wonder, wooden on September 1, 2009|
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The walls are coarse to touch, hard and steely,
it was a challenge not to see but to feel with our fingers
sharp points that will prick a skin and bleed. By then
the grave of the earth has avenged its loss. The stair
is a winding wonder of wooden realm. Forest scent
permeates like sweat staining musk to the olfactory.
Curtains we plucked from the fibers of the grass
that exist in some temperate savannah, polished
and handwoven by the nomads of Siberia.
The glass came from the silicates we scoured
from the rivers of Babylon, coal-fired in a furnace
by a hundred men impoverished with ten cents an hour.
And the floor is a polished limestone quarried
from some majestic mountains of the Far East. White,
cold slab, for our feeble feet resting on a tombstone. The chairs
are fabricated in hides separated from the meat of animals
domesticated and cultured for a trade in an African jungle.
We commercialized the organic in the will of the greedy generation
crazy for the avant garde. We are fond of collecting. Prized.
Natural. Unique. All, for the sake of a want that cannot be satiated.
And at a cost, we hunger for more as we build our little kingdoms,
looking for some definition. Until we find that there is no more left
of the skin of the earth, we have stripped of its clothing
to cover our shelters. Unless we travel to the moon
digging kryptonites to embellish facades of our own vanities.
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Solitude Amidst the Maddening Crowd
The Trader
Posted in Architecture & Design, Books, Current Affairs, Film, Literature, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Social Commentary, Society, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged Africa, ancestor, ancient, antiquity, anxiety, appear, brick, brittle, call, caravan, cigarette, city, clay, collection, constant, cushion, desert, down, dry, escape, excavation, face, faded, flood, fragile, fragment, glass, glow, gold, house, ink, landscape, leave, light, linen, living, mangle, manuscript, map, maze, mind, modest, money, mosque, mud, mull, page, parchment, passerby, past, poem, poetry, prayer, puff, reading, riverbank, ruins, salt, sand, scribbling, seams, season, sell, sheaf, signal, smoke, snake, social commentary, tourist, trade, trouble, turban, unfurl, wait, wall, weather, wilderness, wind, world, years, yellow on January 8, 2011| 16 Comments »
His face is a map of caravan years,
weathering the desert sun and
the seasonal flood by the riverbank
which brings in salt for a modest living.
As the sand windblown and collected
in the seams of his linen turban,
anxiety constantly snake through
the mazes of his troubled mind.
He needed money.
Like how the puff of smokes
from his cigarette escapes
are fragments of his ancestor’s past
excavated from walls of antiquity.
He is mulling to leave the landscape
of ancient ruins, the mud-dried bricks
and clayed houses and desert wilderness
for the glowing lights of the city.
The mosque signals the call to prayer
and he sat down on his cushion
unfurling a sheaf of parchment,
reading through his mangled glasses
the fragile scribbling of faded ink.
On its brittle yellowing pages appears
like gold. This manuscript he wants to sell
to tourists he is waiting to pass by.
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