#52 April, 2007 |
Sentinel Poetry (Online) THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POETRY & GRAPHICS...since 2002 ISSN 1479-425X |
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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.
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Laila Haidarali |