Recent Stuff

Here is what I have written since August '08. Please, feel free to comment.

This was inspired by the movie "Jodhaa Akbar" and a dream I had:

"Freedom Walk"

Coloured glass ornaments
Darkened orange veil
Tripping bell anklets
One step to freedom

She's afraid to take it

Painted hands to wall
Painted feet touch floor

She moves


I'm having trouble titling this one. I tried "Dead" but it seemed to give away too much. I tried "Children" but that had the same problem, so current working title:

"Malawi: buried"

Ululation breaks parched
Throat, skin, earth

Sandstorm enwraps bony
Body, cuts

Words into the skin, blood
Inked names of

Sorrows, sorrows lost on
Faces blank

Numbed and rubbed free
Of identity


Did any of you watch last year's "Superstars of Dance" with Micheal Flatley as host? This poem was inspired by the solo South African dancer Mamela Nyamza and her performance as a dying swan or crane (link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AswRJtS9_eg&feature=related)- you may remember her:

"Woman"

Brown belief:
She sinks into dirt
Dirt sky she imagines
Ripping open-
Giving out under its withheld
Burden

Of hope. Soft, wet, white,
Crisp, soap-sparkle of
Snow she's never seen
Kissing the bare

Bare-boned earth
Glassed into ocean
Water still as steel-stone.
She feels like she

Is tearing open
With pain- like ripping apart
Garments- stepping free
Of herself
In a white tu-tu,

Dancing the horizon:
A crane's jerking
Movements- broken lips-
Across snowed-on ocean,

Dirt-covered folded origami
Bird in palm encased,
Encrusted jewel
Dug from earth-deep death,
Star of Africa.


This next one was a meditation on the events of my life over 2009:

"Memory Fractured"

Carcass of wingless
Black bird of prey,
Hanging,
Slit open,
Bleached white inside:
If you should find a seed within it,
Throw it down to us
To pick at,
Splinter,
Misunderstand and squander.
Aborted life-
Again.

This is a favorite subject of mine:

"The Bellydancer"

She picks at her bedlah
Checks her nails
Listens for the zaghareets
Which are her cue
Nervous, her heart beats with the drums
While she practices some of the
More difficult moves of her
Routine- just before
The curtain rises and the lights come on
She whispers:
"I dance for you, habibi"


One more that I wrote tonight while thinking of someone:

"Joy"
n. 1. sunshine in the heart 2. swaying hip shimis back to front, first the left then the right 3. cascading cresendo of beads, coins, and fabric created by bedlah while executing said move and which radiates outward 4. the state of being on your mind

It's been a dry season as you can see. I consider only one or two of these as half-way publishable. Please tell me what you think. :)