Category: Poems
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The wind
“So high I almost touch the sky/ Thank you, thank you/ Thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings” – Bette Midler Have you heard of Kaladin Stormblessed? The slave who became the storm, defied the odds, and overcame everything thrown his way? One with the wind, nearing godhood, enduring death-dealing […]
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Tradition
People are always talking about tradition, but they forget we have a tradition of a few hundred years of nonsense and stupidity, that there is a tradition of idiocy, incompetence and crudity. – Hugo Demartini Jimmy comes to my corrugated shack every weekend and shows me his poems, asking for constructive criticism. He treks five […]
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Artist
After failing as an artist (a synonym for unemployed), I worked in a mine in rural America. Not much in those badlands, except weeds the colour of my skin, jingoists who loved guns, and Confederate flags. There were some good people like the ones who left me alone as I […]
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Free
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. – Albert Camus The wind soughs through the wayward pines, past the dilapidated mines, beckoning me to join it, to walk away and admit my need to be wild and free, […]
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Benny’s
There’s ash, destruction and dust, the colour of red ochre coating everything and everyone — The crumbling brownstones, the weeds and thornbushes, the rocks and us pilgrims, as we make our way to Benny’s. The serpentine path breaks in places, and we have to wade through muddy water and climb cliff faces. Benny’s in the […]
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Endless
I’m meeting an acquaintance in the Metaverse at a virtual café he’s trying to get me to buy. The possibilities are endless, he says, and then launches into a spiel about the money I could make hosting parties and concerts, inviting musicians, displaying digital art. I look at myself in a mirror opposite us in […]
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Work
I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. – Vincent Van Gogh We can’t work anymore — father’s old and anxious, staring at excel sheets, mother’s arthritis restrains her, praising God, her only succour, and I have shadows enveloping thoughts as I type this, forgetting […]
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Fire
They lived in a shabby trailer close to the Church of Sweet Revival where he served as the assistant pastor. He always wore a mask of mature righteousness, pretended he was compassionate, soft-spoken and in a pensive mood, but it gnawed at him that the pastor gave him a measly salary and rarely let him […]
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August
I no longer like the August rain, gone are the days when I sat in my apartment and made the monsoon my muse, going on and on about silvery streaks like the tears of benevolent providence coating the cobblestones, and flooding us with eunoia, making us pursue our passions with meraki, the song of the […]
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Beginnings
As I look up at the spinning ceiling fan, memories drift in my mind like moths flitting about in an old attic. I think about when we met at that quaint bar with wooden tables, chairs, and liquor bottles shelved against a wall. I watched you climb the rickety staircase, and wondered what you’d think when […]