#52
April, 2007
Sentinel Poetry (Online)
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POETRY & GRAPHICS...since 2002
ISSN 1479-425X
Laila Haidarali
lament
girls go crazy in their heads
rapt seekers troubling the waves
of west indian idiom
droll in their soft leather smiles
speak nothing of love
or false resemblance
to prophets & posers
dark-haired men wringing square
white hands measured & dry
plump-ning pink embryos with ease
mathematical
this madness of girls
contained in the garden
of brown round eyes.
affront
rarely secures my memory
of you, too kind i fear
generous in the brush i draw
filling in indigo auras where
white ice should do
heats up each time i fetch
the moment or slip by
a soliloquy lilac in its dirge
purple when i cross
the other side. hello, goodbye
you fragmented lie.
slice
loss is like that, you know
simple sudden clean
white icing licked from the spoon
a child’s mouth holding all
that can decay
the moment dis-appreciated
later long for more
less than you say now:
this moment all that you can bear
forgotten memory
re-calling the words
i love you: you are gone.
revival of santa (at 28)
nothing subsides the sorrow
massive tides
of tired angst
wash the blues of my sea
white edges capping the tempest
like childhood sleeves
my mother puffed & pulled:
innocence framed for posterity
did not know at 28
this day would come
that foreign histories
& fabled glories
would challenge
the centre of self
never bargained
bought whole the sale
of equal pay for equal work
believed my colour & country
complemented the mosaic
find fractured tiles of lies
lining
my immigrant path
i am fading
in the shadow of my twenties
& the thirties
a trying decade
hover homelessly
awaiting new prey
prolonged adolescence complete
in debt in doubt in defeat
i am 28.
love poem
on soggy saturdays
when nothing relieves
the nite’s past trespass
& wet silent corners
rub & cut the quiet despairing tongue
i am still
still in the moment of this
when you realize
that you do not love
me enough to love
the me i am i who can
be no different
dumbstruck too in the silence
of this saturday
rolling in like dumbo
on his way to the parade
thump-thumping his heavy hope
along
a well-paved way
all those years of quiet musings
& missing your nite time touch
dream only of a loving
man who loved me:
you are angry
disappointed in a moment
that does not translate
to gondola rides & picnics
in hidden coves where lovers sip
& slip champagne
between soft laughing tongues
you are disappointed : my beauty
no longer worthy of hard labour
grace-less love
burdensome now
to soft white shoulders
deep into pockets that hide
you reach & i refuse
not knowing how to say
hold me please
& know this moment
of mundane
urban living
lived courageously
with you
is the real value of love.
Laila Haidarali