Archive for the ‘Poems Mine’ Category
Holding Infinity? For how long?
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 24, 2020
How can you hold Infinity in the palm of your hand?
–William Blake
“Know what it is to be a child . . .
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
And I say:
Is life that chose me and made me survive all the hurdles and illnesses?
Are events that directed me in the alleys of life?
And guided me in the countless forks in my wandering?
Far away from the path that my parents wished me to take.
How many bends did I have to decide on?
Fact is they are the total strangers who came to the rescue
Strangers with plenty of pity to fellow man and living species.
Without their pity how could I have summoned the remaining energy
To move forward and leave an imprint on this chaotic earth?
Ease up your judgment on your fellow neighbor.
He might seems a tad luckier
He could look not so lucky in the opportunities he had in his life.
Both of you share this common characteristic:
You both had to struggle all the way
And try to grab the few moments of satisfaction, hope and happiness.
Why now and then, warrior colonial powers feel the urge to go hunting?
Why a few animal species are preserved, while underdeveloped people are still ripe for extermination?
Going Hunting (first posted in 1998)
1. I’m going to war.
My government has decided.
I need to release my animal instincts.
For economic reasons,
For political reasons,
For religious reasons.
I’m going to war, today,
For no reasons:
Just kicking butts.
2. What animal instincts do they fear in me?
I’ve never seen animals killing others
From miles away.
I’ve never seen an animal
Who has just gorged
On hamburger and pizza,
Going a-prowling,
To kill and maim.
3. Never seen an animal
Returning from the hunt,
In clean and spec fur,
Shining from shoulders to boots.
Never seen an animal
Returning from the hunt,
To eat more and get drunk silly.
They used to find themselves a cool shade
To rest and sleep off the feast.
4. What animal instincts do they fear in me?
I had a dream of cannibals at war
And I was a reporter of this war.
Once a victor felled his enemy, he would kneel and achieve him.
The victor is serenely and religiously eating his enemy flesh, raw.
For him, the war is already over: He stops killing other victims,
He is not helping his tribe warriors to overcome more enemies.
His enemies will not interfere with his eating;
They stay away from this pair,
Both finally at peace.
5. For both the victor and the victim the war is over.
When the dust of war settles down all the living warriors,
From both waring camps
Prepare a joint bonfire and finish off the remains of their victims.
They leave the battlefield in peace.
They don’t carry any leftovers:
Nature and its beasts need to take their shares of the slaughter.
What animal instincts do they fear in me?
Underdeveloped people are still being exterminated
By preemptive wars, mass killing weapons,
Medical experiments and testing of vaccines
Mass transfer of people to less fertile regions
Burning of virgin forests
Private acquisition of fresh water sources
Polluting rivers and lands with their poisoned waste…
And they are still warning us of climate change
And the colonization of space and other planets
How come Colonial powers keep fearing my Animal Instincts?
Avatars getting shielded by their Gods?
Posted by: adonis49 on: August 20, 2020
Avatar getting shielded by their Gods?
Puny avatar; why in the name of God?
Show me a single religion condemning
As blasphemy, the biggest sin of all,
Speaking in the name of its God.
Puny avatar;
Why in the name of God?
Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, Buddha…
Show me a single religion
Not inaugurating a President
In the name of its God.
Not haranguing the troops
In the name of a God.
Not persecuting other religions
In the name of a God.
Puny avatar; why are you hiding your weaknesses
In the name of a God?
Are you scaring me with eternal fire?
Is a candle burn not bad enough?
Are you frightening me to obedience by eternal pain?
Millions are suffering constant pain in hospitals, tents, in open air;
Of curable diseases, famine, thirst,
No pain-killer powerful enough to let go in peace.
Isn’t a single case bad enough to you?
Are you enticing me for immortality?
Anything scarier than boring immortality?
Puny avatar; why are you heaping your ignorant arrogance on me
In the name of a God?
Is there a single religion with enough imagination?
A total silence preceding a major cataclysm as God.
A complete darkness, not a candle flickering.
A world devoid of the feeling of touch;
Not a single soft breeze, not a wet loving kiss.
A world odorless and tasteless as God
Any one of that kinds of Gods would scare the hell out of me
And you won’t have to preach in his Name.
Puny avatar; talk in the name of God
And stay a dwarf: petty, mean, and coward.
Mankind! Stand up. Wake up.
Dare speak in the name of Man.
Take on your responsibilities in the name of mankind.
Embrace your countless limitations;
Develop your limitless potentials.
Pray your God in the solitude of your heart;
Give grace to your God in the many ways to enjoying life;
For the opportunity to working with passion and sweating labor.
Puny avatar you were and is
In the name of God.
Try speaking in the name of man
With respect and humility to your fellow co-survivors
Sharing the same boat, the toil, hardship, and labor.
Sharing the smiles, joy, laughter, and compassion
Sharing what earth has in reserve to us all.
Singing with birds, the breeze, the sea wind.
Avatar you are and will be
And puny no more.
Have you ever felt you are walking on air?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 23, 2020
Have ever felt you are walking on air?
Note: this is a long story/song that spanned almost 3 decades. I cut it short in this post.
I should have told Barbara (Written in 2003 and posted on 2008)
I called up Barbara and I invited myself to stay overnight at her apartment.
She had many friends.
She was attached at the moment to a fashionable young man,
Working in fashion and with fashion, but they had problems.
She appeared depressed and disappointed and not in the mood for me.
Her TV was on 24 hours. I slept and woke up with the TV on.
I visited her six years later during my second extended trip to the USA:
Barbara’s sister Sue had told me that Barbara was married and living in Oklahoma City.
I met Barbara at Thanksgiving and she did not look the Barbara of my vision.
Her skin looked darker, her face emaciated,
Down to earth, resigned and decked in simple blue jeans and an old black sweater.
She was married to a full-blooded American Indian, herself a half-blooded,
A soft spoken husband, a polite artist who toured the USA exhibiting his paintings.
She stayed at home designing jewelry and managing her man’s business.
I accepted her invitation for a Thanksgiving lunch.
I went down to Oklahoma City for an important and specific purpose of mine:
I was determined to tell Barbara my secret.
I went down with my steady girlfriend at the time.
Barbara’s eyes had an ironic shine looking at my oriental short friend.
She asked my friend all kinds of questions about our relationship,
How we met and what are our plans.
She said to me: “You know, someone needs news about your friend”.
She meant that her sister needed to know the whereabouts of her ex-husband.
I had lost track of the whereabouts of my friend too and could not be of much help.
Barbara was entitled to know the truth,
That the first time she walked with me,
She made me feel that I was the most glamorous guy in town.
But I did not tell Barbara the truth.
I don’t recall that I talked during my two hours stay at Thanksgiving.
Maybe it did not feel right at that moment
But I should have persevered on my initial decision:
This truth was hers no matter what.
She could be eighty, but age does not erase the feeling,
That to my young eyes,
She was the most glamorous woman I set my eyes on.
She could be a hundred, but age does not change the fact,
That Barbara made me once walk on air.
No Palestinian babies?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 23, 2020
No Palestinian babies?
The peace makers with Israel are Egyptians, Jordanians, or Moroccans.
Their “leaders” are: dictators, absolute monarchs….
Who cares if they are dictators or absolute monarchs…
Who cares for the opinions of masses?
One of their leaders, the Egyptian dictator Sadat, was awarded
A joint Nobel peace laureate with the famous assassin Begin.
Menachem Begin, this prime minister and a staunch Jewish Jihadist, the precursor of Bin Laden.
Assassinated British soldiers and UN chief Bernadote…
That is beside the point.
The enemies of Israel are “Arabs”, not their leaders.
We have high hope in the people.
The criminals of the Oklahoma City bombing
Should have been Arabs.
Exceptions do occur. Human nature you know.
Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Robert Kennedy. He is a Palestinian of dual citizenship.
No motives: Just bad “Arabs attitude”.
Not that Robert promised exclusive support for Israel in his election campaign.
If push comes to shove, if a motive is needed,
Why, Sirhan is a hatemonger of the defenders of Civil Rights!
The most famous heart surgeon, Michael Debakey,
The poet of “The Prophet” and much more, Gebran Khalil Gebran,
The founder of St. Jude hospital for children with cancer, Danny Thomas,
Said they are Arabs from Lebanon. The media beg to differ:
They are all, at best, of Lebanese descendants.
The bombers of the World Trade Tower are the Arabs, Not from Saudi Kingdom.
The perpetrators of the Achilles Loro are the Arabs.
Literature Nobel prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz,
Says he is Arab. Ask him.
The media insist that he is just Egyptian.
Those who shoot down commercial airplanes are Arabs.
Israel strikes Arab/Palestinian refugee camps.
Israel retaliates for Arab suicide bombings.
Israel lodges a cannon shell, inadvertently, on a UN compound in Qana of South Lebanon.
About one hundred “Arabs”, mostly Lebanese civilians, died. Give or take fifty Arabs.
Apology to the UN.
Arabs/Palestinians/Lebaneses were massacred in the camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut.
Arabs killing Arabs. Israel could care less.
How dare you blame Israel Defense Force!
They just happened to be there;
Completely cordoning off the Palestinian camps of civilians.
Freeing Lebanon by devastation, crimes against humanity and highway robberies.
No, there are no Arab babies. There are no Arab youths.
Just Arabs. Bad. Arabs.
Definitely there are no Palestinians to bad mouth the people of Palestine.
Note: Since I wrote this poem in 1998, many atrocities came alive.
The attack on the Twin Towers, the preemptive wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israeli genocide in the Palestinian camp of Jenine, the barbaric preemptive war on Lebanon in 2006 that lasted 33 days, the genocide war on Gaza, the embargo on Gaza, the building of the Wall of Shame in Israel…
Have you seen a Palestinian baby living in Israel?
Note: re-edit of “There is no Palestinian baby: Going Easy…(Written in 1998 and posted on September 21, 2008″
Easy Going: There is no Palestinian baby (written in 1998)
Part I:
There is No Palestinian baby, no Palestinian child.
There is no Palestinian youth.
They are “Arabs”. Bad Arabs to boot it.
Indonesia is mostly Muslims. They invaded Timor, East and West.
Murdered a couple million of communists
Indonesia is not on the Blacklist. It is a big nation. Huge interests, stupid.
Bosnia has suffered immensely. Peace missions finally in place.
War criminals? La Hague tribunal is ready and waiting.
We don’t meddle. They are no Arabs.
Somalia is mostly Muslims. At long last, compassion landed.
Starvation ended. Can’t talk bad: they are blacks.
Farrakhan is black and a Muslim. He is no Arab, yet.
Bantustans in South Africa are no more “A la mode”.
Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Human rights, please.
Bantustans in Palestine are essential, and created for all the above values.
Security and Safety of the Jews in Israel are at stake.
The Chosen people, remember? Surrounded by Arabs, mind you!
The harem of the Sultan of Brunei is, technically, not one.
The girls are, mostly, professional consultants for tourism.
The bad harems are purely Arabs. The Sultan of Brunei is no Arab.
The original American Indians were bad.
Wish they were Arabs. Still, No clear conscience.
The Mexicans in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico… were bad too.
Wish they were Arabs. Conscience a tad clearer.
The Iraqi people are bad: they call themselves Arabs, not our media.
The Iranians are not really that bad:
They are too proud and Muslims all right, but no Arabs.
The Turks are a little better now: Certainly not Europeans.
Not as much as the Israelite. Definitely No Arabs.
Part II:
We in USA and Europe are compassionate people.
We adopt babies from all over the World.
From Latvia, Estonia, Romania, even from Africa and Asia.
“Arab” babies are off limit; off the media.
There is no Arab baby. No Arab child.
No Arab youth. Just Arabs. Bad. Arabs.
The Jewish American rapist is socially dysfunctional.
The genuine rapist is Arab.
The Jewish American Baruch, of the Hebron massacre, is a madman.
A nerve snapped.
Arabs nerves can’t snap: made of stainless steel, tightly wired,
For mischief.
The Maryland Jewish murderer chopped a man’s head.
He is a juvenile delinquent and a psychotic.
Arabs are born, adult criminals.
I like my relatives. The us clan
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 19, 2020
I liked my relatives, us
I Like Nous (Written on Nov. 2002)
I need nous (“we” in French), of yesteryears,
Together, an extended family.
Living close to one another
And hopping on a bus for a tour of Lebanon
At a moment notice,
I liked nous, children and growing up.
Way before we became professionals,
Married with children
Scattered in the five corners of the world.
I am cozy within my new nous;
Of a newer generation:
A very restricted family
Of a new generation who abhors extended families.
A new generation who gets busy when called upon to be visited
By an older generation.
Some hide in the attic finishing a much delayed project
A few are locked in the computer room,
Riveted to a stupid monitor.
I woke up at 4 am in the morning, read a book for an hour
And I went back to bed.
I’m now dreaming.
I read the title of this poem and its first “stanza” in my dream.
I remember in my dream, the four of us cousins sitting around a table,
Jihad, Hassib, Nassif and I.
It was morning in a well lit room, pretty untidy;
I think we were sitting in the kitchen.
Jihad was reading a newspaper, sipping his cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette.
Hassib was at the other side of the rectangular white table, a pipe helping his readings.
He was restless, acting unperturbed, aloof, and English.
Nassif was cheerful, carefree, not self-centered, an uncharacteristic Nassif.
Nassif is reading in silence, on a white napkin, a piece of poem.
A napkin like the one used in Pizza Huts.
Nassif might have guessed the poem was meant to Hassib and written by me.
Nassif handed Hassib the poem who faked to be unconcerned.
While I was chatting with Nassif, the “English” surreptitiously read the poem and sets it aside.
Nassif is flipping through reams of computer pages,
Printouts we used ages ago, computer statements inputted on punch cards.
Nassif says “This is beautiful” and let me read a few scribbled lines
On one greenish printout.
I said “This is my handwriting. I don’t remember having written these lines”.
I was reading the title and the first stanza.
I woke up from my dream.
A sweet dream, sweet nous, of now grown ups.
Note:
Barely meeting altogether, or part of us, once every decades.
Even those living in the same town, we barely meet or visit,
Even before the covid-19 confinement.
During this pandemics, we installed a Whatsapp group to connect every day.
Pretty soon, all overseas cousins disconnected.
As I say: the past is a phase to grow up, Not to dwell upon.
You moved forward, keep moving onward.
Just hold your thoughts a few seconds
Once I sneak into your consciousness.
Oh c’mon, where’s your Compassion?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 18, 2020
Oh c’mon, where’s your Compassion?
Note: Re-edit of “A Gentle Touch. (Written in 1997 and posted on September 20, 2008)
A Gentle Touch (1997)
Prettier than white dust
You shall never be.
Uglier than a skeleton
You can never be.
Toward the scared souls, scared of death,
Scared in living,
Let your stretched hand
Be gentler, your voice softer.
The right to end your terminally miserable life, out of constant pains?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 17, 2020
The right to end your terminally miserable life out of constant pains?
Feasting on Gore (Written in 1999)
1. X-rays don’t hurt: no pain.
Chemo is different: You lose your mane.
Cancer, hospital appointment, hospital confinement, terminal.
Convicted criminal, prison, delayed execution, terminus.
2. Dressed in apron, back naked, abandoned, and forgotten;
Robbed of your money, robbed of dignity, and robbed of life.
A case study you are, for all to learn from experiments.
The more cases the better the knowledge.
3. You lived; lived enough.
Let others learn and live, a while longer.
The “right to live folks” need to hang the Kevorkian’s,
Every single one of them:
Those who aid the terminally ill to die with his own choice.
4. Pain, constant pains, no end in sight, no cure.
Wait till the healthy, spineless soul of the “right to live” maniacs
Needs a Kevorkian,
But will be surrounded with pale faces feasting on gore.
5. I have the power to predict the end. I know the odds:
You either die instantly or you live,
In the mind of all you know,
A half-man. Abandoned.
6. You may listen to the pillars of moral characters,
You may nod to the Talking Heads: They talk well.
I have decided on my destiny.
It shall be quick.
Monkey businesses?
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 15, 2020
Monkey businesses?
Note: Linked to the current financial crisis
Nutty Monkey Business (2002)
1. Some tribes catch monkeys
Using a nut business contraption.
Other tribes use a banana’s contraption.
A sturdy box is firmly planted in the ground
With a nut or banana inside.
A hole is made large enough to let in the monkey hand
And small enough for a clenched fist out on the goody.
2. Survival is a chance happening
Favoring the cowards or close,
Until we learn a few dangers
By trial and error.
Apparently, greed is one danger
We are not fit to learn to relinquish,
Monkey or no monkey.
