For Most People

Samina Shah,

I see what you`re saying; guess I must have misunderstood the first time. Yes, writing can be risk business though I think your own conviction of what you have to say helps to alleviate the anxiety. But yes, it is a gamble, for in the end we are only working with, and on, human beings and we know from experience, recent and remote, how fickle they can be.

Regards,

Aamir

Aamir Ansari,

Perhaps my phrase did not communicate what I meant to say; fragility, care and the act of writing meant that writing, really good writing, is an act of risk and daring for many people. The act of writing is reach for the ``blue``, the shadow life outside of what we control or understand...kind of reminds me of Stanley Kunitz`s rule: A poem without secrets is dead on the page, and another one (Frost or Williams) : no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader...thus leaping for the unknown part of our words and psyches...thanks for the Gwendolyn Brooks poem.

soysauce

sounds interesting...

Babypea:

just asking

ref #62:

``who wrote it?``

Santa Claus. Why as it freaky?

If i may be a bit self indulgent...

I have been thinking about this epic poem that is yet to be written. Circa Y2K, a lot of friends and relatives left secure jobs to join the gold rush. I too had a whimsical idea for a ``product`` i`d make. The important part was that i`d become filthy rich just by announcing that i was starting a company. Anyway, got stuck after the first 2 stanzas. If anyone wishes to take it further feel free. Here goes:

A lowly academic

at parties i meet

women who seek

men with bigger feet

A fast convertible

an apartment in frisco

with a view indescribable,

men who own the next cisco.....

Samina Shah,

Do we really write, craft and balance words, because we`re lonely, blue and vulnerable as brittle china? I don`t think so; not all of us. Thank you for the poem. It was well-written.

I don`t know if you`ve read Gwendolyn Brooks (I`ve just discovered her recently). Here`s one of hers. I hope you, and all the other Chowkwallahs reading this, enjoy it.

Corners on the Curving Sky

Our earth is round, and, among other things

That means that you and I can hold

completely different

Points of view and both be right.

The difference of our positions will show

Stars in your window I cannot even imagine.

Your sky may burn with light,

While mine, at the same moment,

Spreads beautiful to darkness.

Still, we must choose how we separately corner

The circling universe of our experience.

Once chosen, our cornering will determine

The message of any star and darkness we

encounter.

- Gwendolyn Brooks

Aamir Ansari,

Fragility and care and perhaps the act of writing;

The Man Who Never Loses His Balance

He walks the high wire in his sleep.

The tent is blue, it is perpetual

afternoon. He is walking between

the open legs of his mother

and the grave. Always. The audience

is fathers whose kites are lost, children

who want to be terrified into joy.

He is so high above them, so capable

(with a single, calculated move)

of making them care for him

that he`s sick of the risks

he never really takes.

Every performance, deep down,

he tries one real plunge

off to the side, where the net ends.

The tent is blue. Outside is a world

that is blue. Inside him

a blueness that could crack

like china if he ever hit bottom.

-Stephen Dunn

Samina Shah,

A ghazal in English? That was a first and charming. Here`s the flip side of poetry in India. . .

Poetry in India

I`m in India

feeling more secure

and less likely to get chinned `ere

I made friends with a steam-train firemen

who asked how long I would stay in his country

`Two weeks,` I replied

`Very short?` he probed

`I`m a very busy man.` I joked.

`What is it, the you do?` he probed further.

`Poetry!` I announced.

`Aha!` he pounced,

`Now I understand you,

my brother does the same.

Yes, very hard work:

the feeding, the cleaning, loading all the eggs on to

the lorry.`

- John Hegley

Aamir Ansari,

Another great one! Here`s a ghazal by Rafiq Kathwari that might fall into a similar theme:

In Another Country

In Kashmir, half asleep, Mother listens to the rain.

In Manhattan, I feel her presence in the rain.

A rooster precedes the Call to Prayer at Dawn:

God is a name dropper: all names at once in the rain.

Forsythia shrivel in a glass vase on her nightstand

On my windowsills, wilted petals, petulance in the rain.

She must wonder when he will put on the kettle

butter the crumpets, offer compliments to the rain.

She yawns, performs ablutions, across the oceans

water in my hands becomes a reverence in the rain.

At Jewel House in Srinagar, Mother reshapes my ghazal,

``No enjambments!`` she says. ``Wah, wah,`` I chant in the rain.

``Rafiq``, I hear her call over the city din

The kettle whistles; my mother`s scent in the rain.

Prem #65,

u ok?

Some of the lines posted here almost brought me to an orgasm...

Samina Shah;

Thank you for that. Very evocative; I liked the use of the colors. I`m afraid I haven`t read any of the writers you wrote about. Have you read Patrick Kavanagh?

Innocence

They laughed at one I loved-

The triangular hill that hung

Under the Big Forth. They said

That I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges

Of the little farm and did not know the world.

But I knew that love`s doorway to life

Is the same doorway everywhere.

Ashamed of what I loved

I flung her from me and called her a ditch

Although she was smiling at me with violets.

But now I am back in her briary arms

The dew of an Indian Summer lies

On bleached potato-stalks

What age am I?

I do not know what age I am,

I am no mortal age;

I know nothing of women,

Nothing of cities,

I cannot die

Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges.

- Patrick Kavanagh

Aamir Ansari,

Thanks for the excellent poem! I`ll have to look the poet up...Have you read Marilyn Chin, David Mura or Li Young Lee?

Yuba City School

From the trunk I shake out

my one American skirt, blue serge

that smells of mothballs. Again today

Neeraj came home crying from school. All week

the teacher has made him sit

in the last row, next to the fat boy

who drools and mumbles,

picks at the spotted milk-blue

skin of his face, but knows

to pinch, sudden-sharp,

when she is not looking.

The books are full of black curves,

dots like the eggs the boll-weevil lays

each monsoon in furniture-cracks

in Ludhiana. Far up in front

the teacher makes word-sounds

Neeraj does not know. They float

from her mouth-cave, he says,

in discs, each a different color.

Candy-pink for the girls

in their lace dresses, marching shiny shoes. Silk yellow for the boys besides them,

crisp blond hair, hands raised

in all the right answers. Behind them

the Mexicans, whose older brothers,

he tells me, carry knives,

whose catcalls and whizzing rubber bands

clash, mid-air, with the teacher`s

voice, its sharp purple edge.

For him, the words are

a muddy red, flying low and heavy,

and always the one he has learned to understand:

idiot, idiot, idiot.

I heat the iron over the stove. Outside

evening blurs the shivering

in the eucalyptus. Neeraj`s shadow

dissapers into the hole

he is hollowing all afternoon.

The earth, he know, is round, and if

one can tunnel all the way through,

he will end up in Punjab,

in his grandfather`s mango orchard,

his grandmother`s songs lighting

on his head, the old words

glowing like summer fireflies.

In the playground, Neeraj says,

invisible hands snatch at his uncut hair,

unseen feet trip him from behind,

and when he turns, ghost laughter

all around his bleeding knees.

He bites down on his lip

to keep in the crying. They are

waiting for him to open his mouth,

so they can steal his voice.

I test the iron with little drops of water

that sizzle and die. Press down

on the wrinlkled cloth. The room fills with a smell like singed flesh.

Tomorrow in my blue skirt I will go

to see the teacher, my tongue

stiff and swollen

in my unwilling mouth, my few

English phrases. She will pluck them

from me, nail shut my lips. My son

will keep sitting in the last row

among the red words that drink his voice.

-Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

babypea:

that was for some reason freaky

who wrote it?

babypea:

that was for some reason freaky

who wrote that?

Scout;

Hmm. . .where are we going with this one, I wonder? Please clarify.

Regards,

Aamir