Monday 14 November 2011

The poems of suspicious men





Some nomadic idea storms in, rushes out,
Pitches its tent with small mesh windows
On the splayed open books, the meanings sucked off
From fruit segment blanks, words rounded like mangoes.
Every hour, on the hour, the news pours into the room
In thin trickles of blood, sometimes a red torrent
Splashes the dark outside, makes the roof
Sag and cave in, beaten and bent.

I’ve been reading the poems of suspicious men
First aloud, and then in headless whispers.
A small pebble of loneliness rattles around
A tin-can of silence gripped by uneasy fingers.
I can’t call any of them my brothers or my sons
Because I don’t really know how their body fluids compare
With the thickness of water.  Just that an arterial sheen
Pours into my spaces everywhere.

I’ve been listening to the delirious murmurs
The senseless shredded silence within walls of prisons
Sometimes a crisp sound stops the feverish memoirs
And smoothly eddies around ideals of freedom.
A tin-can jail and the high-shiny walls of suspicion.
Thickened trickles of fluids. A few pebbles of poems.
The thickened trickles of voices of those men
Clattering in the deep emptiness within them.

Some speck of an ideal jerks like a mote of dust
Trapped in a sunbeam slanting in through doors.
Bangs the high-shiny light-walls with its balled fists
Touches the pock marked table and the pitted floors.
The news comes in bursts of staccato fire
In the sounds of torture, the twists and turns of mayhem.
Small flares of defiance stamped out everywhere.
The sheen of fluid on a pebbly poem.





Linked to : Poetics @ dVerse 




 

4 comments:

  1. fascinating poem...it made me thin about poetry as being dangerous...with the poets being the suspicious ones....authority trying to keep subversive word under lock and key.....but they can't...like you say...thy creep out in the dust trapped in the sunbeams of the prison doorways....loved that line btw...i read this a few times...so engaging

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    1. Poetry is dangerous at times...it can motivate people to rebel....there has to be a huge cultural imapact to the worldwide unrest of 2011..I wonder sometimes how many suspicious/rebel poets have written amazing poetry sitting in prison and raging against their respective systems...thank you for reading and the feedback

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  2. oh snap this is good...its got an immediacy to it and great rhythm as well....I can’t call any of them my brothers or my sons
    Because I don’t really know how their body fluids compare
    With the thickness of water...nice really like that part....and the news coming in staccato burst...yikes....the ideal jerk, ha nice word play...

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    1. yet they are my brothers and sons....we are linked by the commonality of our respective prisons...thanks for coming by

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