You Said: Why Can't I have My Day
a cherished paper-cutting
for
those who forgot to care
and for you
too late
a cribbed account
in pale bold face
on some crowded backpage
which lapped up the soya stains on the takeaway counter
some faded picture of you
crammed in nubile twists of fronting elegance
in meagre-columned glossy pages
you said: why can't i have my day
why should a destitute Greek prince
lord it over the world
just by tying a knot with his regal cousin
your eyes recognising too late
a world you may never see again
a world you may not be seen in again
all your self-suffocating words
and all those poured in contempt
on you
through you
for you
to feed those who grudged your fleeting glory
Now now that all may be forgotten
now that no bile inhabits this carcass
over some too pulpy a fruit
a taste of you
from freshly-turned earth
bloody juicy earth
our teeth caught
clinging to your bleeding shredded flesh
of cells into cells
of us into our selves
___________________________________ _________________________________________________ ____
(© T.Wignesan, Paris,1987; from the collection: Poems Omega-Plus: a less than obvious sequence,2005)
poem by T. Wignesan
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Related quotes
What Time Are We Living In
It's not if but since the future can be told
To a broadly verifiable degree
What time are we living in: present old
Future or has it all gone past already
Don't tell it for honours to politicos
They hanker after two-bit history lines
Don't even whisper it to military macros
Lest generals decorate brows with vines
Don't spill the truth to those who slaughter
With God on their bloody bleeding minds
For they will leave none alive hereafter
And lease Heaven out to kith and kinds
Time is but a ruse of passing moments
The more it unfurls the more the laments.
© T. Wignesan - Paris,2005-2012. (From the collection:
Poems Omega Plus,2005-2012)
poem by T. Wignesan
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Block Fall from the Zyklon Door
When you have passed nonplussed
by rumours
of ovens
of being burned alive by the horde
calcinated bones in torrid ashes
teeth without a name
pebbles in the sands of hate waves
When between you and the other side
is the block-flesh thrust through to Himmelweg
too late
you smell the Zyklon trap
about to be sprung on your innocence
your children looking to you for a way out
not daring to believe
you have left home without an answer
You can only wonder at how they led you
each child's hand ensconced in its mother's
the old and the infirm weeded out
the pill in the nape
of men rushed ahead from their charges
huddled
slapped jostled
whipped
for daring to ask with rifle butt
whacked
jabbed bundled
trundled
the eye searching hazily the breach under the helmet
benumbed fate
squashed hope
in the last faltering meek steps
It's only
when you're on the other side of yourself
between you and the block-flesh
forming on the other side of the zyklon door
You may wonder why you let your anger go
in safekeeping
Dedicated to those sacrificed in Concentration Camps during World War II.
(© T.Wignesan 1987: July 2,1987 [from the collection: back to background material,1993])
poem by T. Wignesan
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Embryo
You who sexless heard the pounding of the sex
nerves conditioned to the tune
through all the slushy push of distending flesh
in the ooze slime of semen vaginal fluid
Your eyes turned inward
heart brimming to the flush
fed by your central runaway generator
though
your frail limbs were hardly sketched
in the clasp of a Reichian curve
through all the terrifying pounding
More terrifying still
Now YOU see the crook of the aborting metal
the surgeon's staff
dig into your behind
puncturing
the gossamer sack of your promised dream world
avoiding at every thrust
the inevitable dismemberment
charred chicken wings coming apart in cinders
JOLT of the bend in the crook
your eyes to the back of you
a ninja without arms or legs
whirling upwards
flying in the face of crookish metal
by the grit of your teeth
FIRST your spine goes
shrivelled skin over mashed bone and marrow
the nerves a calligrapher's skein
vaguely stretched over your incumbent's drawn face
TILL your seminal fluid
stains the blood
splashing through every thrust
of the abortionist's clinical will
YET you resist
STILL clinging to your umblical chord
the silent screams of your unformed mouth
reaching no where
the mother sprawled on the trolley etherised
In the distance a faraway distance
a vague throbbing
away from prying eyes
a ringing call unanswered
and you let go...
see your will turned to mash
Only your long sleep nurtured your dream
a singular dream of a snuffed world
YOU HADN'T EVEN BREATHED
Notes
On seeing an ecography of an abortion on the FR3 French TV programme: 'La Marche du siècle: Contraception et avortement', March 4,1992 at 20.40 hours. Professor Etienne Baulieu, the inventor of the oral abortive pill, was the guest of honour.
[© T.Wignesan - March 10,1992, Paris, from the collection: back to background material,1993]
poem by T. Wignesan
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Oh The Poems
OH THE POEMS AND THE POEMS AND THE POEMS
Oh the poems and the poems and the poems
Oh the love of Literature
Oh all that stuff
I have given my life to-
Words and meanings and feelings
Pages and pages and pages –
What it is all this literary life for?
When out the window out the door
With our eyes we see in an instant other worlds other dreams?
I don’t know and I will never know
And Literature is certainly far more than I can say it is-
Oh the poems and this poem and this day turning grey
And all my life old and old and more old and more old-
Oh why oh why oh why
And always back to God
My last rescue and refuge and escape
I who have read so much Great Literature
And can only write this-
Oh the why and the oh oh oh and the words
And the whole world of Literature
I would belong to and do not.
Oh the words oh the world oh the Literature
Oh God help me please can’t you please help me a little or not?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Komori
The komoris' eyes fix the camera
from around
and in the straining double bandoliers' hump
the babies shaven heads strain
The body dares not face the camera
The frontal posture is not for the servant
heads turned bent regards meek and in stress
hair hastily gathered in the dark
now straggly with their loads
and in the eked-out smiles
the years of sleeplessly fading pallid faces
the rough cotton kimono
drab thick resistant to baby-faeces and crachat
And in their stilted sandals
their meagre dignity in a stoop
the bare adolescent feet still showing
Whose mothers are whose children?
Notes
'KOMORI is a generic term that consists of a noun, ko (a child) , and a verb, moru (to protect or to take care of): Japanese use it to refer to any person, male or female, old or young, who takes care of children. (...) Like their European counterparts, nursemaids and nannies, komori began to appear in what Michel Foucault has called the 'discourse of power' in the late nineteenth century...'
from Mariko Asano Tamanoi's 'Songs as Weapons: The Culture and History of Komori (Nursemaids) in Modern Japan', in The Journal of Asian Studies,50, no.4 (November 1991) : 793-817.
[© T.Wignesan - March 9,1992, from the collection: longhand notes: a binding of poems. Paris: 1999]
poem by T. Wignesan
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Obliterated
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice
your lives full of desire
your world turned over twice
i am yet what i am
none cares or knows
The world is lost
in a long forgotten snow
Earth like a raisin in the sun
drying up tears running down its face
Tomorrow ill be at the edge of the earth
a cross traveling overhead
protecting my place of birth
THe flick flick fire licking at edges
A tick tick of bombs hiding in hedges
let it be forgotten the earth turned to ashes
let it be forgotten earth enveloped in trashes
into the nothingness of scorn and noise
who will procure me
Into the land of girls and boys
who will secure me
i remember sounds like that from my childhood
laughter from no cause
i remember towns full of people
from my childhood
bustling with no pause
A wins that wips at my face
a kin that sips at my place
we belong
we belong
Twinkle twinkle little star
Do you see earth from so far
twinkle twinkle little earth
do you see a stars rebirth
My eyes are open
my eyes are shut
i see a trail of tiny duck
my feet are cold
my hands are clammy
i miss my little dog named sammy
what earth once was
is no more my birth once done
is practiced more
so why is it earth has left
No cries are heard
upon a breast
poem by Alexis Gallagher
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In My World
In my world
Its heaven on earth when youre close to me
I could see
That moment of truth when you spoke to me
In my world
Its never too late we can both be free
In my world
Its heaven on earth when youre near
If you knew
The changes I feel that you put me through
And you do
I see in your eyes that you really do
And its true
It happened so fast that it must be true
In my world
Its heaven on earth when youre near
And Im only just beginning
To believe what you have done
How you turned it upside down
This world of mine
And it seems while I was looking
It was right in front of me
All the time
In my world
Its heaven on earth when youre close to me
I could see
That moment of truth when you spoke to me
In my world
Its never too late we can both be free
In my world
Its heaven on earth when youre near
cos Im only just beginning
To believe what you have done
How you turned it upside down
This world of mine
And it seems while I was looking
It was right in front of me
All the time
If you knew
The changes I feel that you put me through
And you do
I see in your eyes that you really do
And its true
It happened so fast that it must be true
In my world
Its heaven on earth when youre near
song performed by by Moody Blues
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Sara in Her Father's Arms
Cell by cell the baby made herself, the cells
Made cells. That is to say
The baby is made largely of milk. Lying in her father's arms,
the little seed eyes
Moving, trying to see, smiling for us
To see, she will make a household
To her need of these rooms - Sara, little seed,
Little violent diligent seed. Come let us look at the world
Glittering: this seed will speak,
Max, words! There will'be no other words in the world
But those our children speak. What will she make of a world
Do you suppose, Max, of which she is made.
poem by George Oppen
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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A Pallet of Thoughts
A Pallet of Thoughts
by
Barnali Saha
A pallet of thoughts
A garland of emotions
A thousand imagery of faded dreams
gloat like dried leaves of winter
I have a world to care about
Thousand feeling to heed to
But often in the middle of the tale
I forget about myself
My own identity, specter thin
sick and ill with ignorance
As I care about what is around I forget about myself
Soon I will breathe the last breath
Soon to rest I will go
Caring about the universe
While forgetting my own place.
People will come people will go
But the earth will never stop the eternal flow
My cells will turn to dust in time
My identity lost and gone
In the cold bed I will think of forgotten pleasures and my broken dreams
My xanthous features bedaubed with painful pleasure
I may repent, I may whine
While cold death run down my spine
About how I cared for the world while she thwarted me like that broken toy
A toy is what I have been, a playmate to this world
To its desire I gave in, to its pleasure I yielded
I thought about it day in and out
But in the end when my heart pound
The world will move on relentlessly
I am but a passing fancy.
poem by Barnali Saha
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Between the pages
Between the pages
~
between the pages
we line ourselves in verse
where we play out a story
of our own making
the turns and twists
brought through words
etched upon the page
ink flows to its own beat
like a raging heart
pouring out before the eyes
a world becomes forgotten
lost in the celebration
between pages
each line shared
written
in its own breath
creation begins
time lapses
into our verse
poem by Matthew Holloway
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This World Is Magic
Dreams can make you fly
This world is magic
Rainbows in the sky
This world is magic to me
Dreams can make you fly
This world is magic
We need peace on earth
The second birth of paradise
This world is magic
This world is magic to me
This world is magic
What is the magic of this world
What is the magic of this world
What is the magic of this world
What is the magic of this world
What is the magic of this world
What is the magic of this world
We need peace on Earth
The second birth of paradise
This world is what we share
The nature and the air
Life could be paradise
Eternal peace is what we need
To live in harmony
For human history
Pray for a better world
When you close your eyes again
Planet Earth, that's the name of my place
I'm born in this world, in the entire space
Planet earth, is my home, is my face
Follow your trace embrace this human race
In case, there's a new decade in human history
I'm talking about respect this is my destiny
Feel free, and stop running away
From the doubt in your mind,- never fade to grey
Planet Earth, gentle and blue
Then cold as a rock, or ice without a hue
Planet earth, made out of dust
A big ball of metal, condemn to rust
Pray, let your soul be free
Find out how to heal a bleeding wound don't stand around
Life could be paradise, peace on earth is what I found
All around in a magic world from the air to the ground
song performed by by DJ Bobo
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Give me back my name
tell them i'm gone
tell them i'm gone to change my name
give them any name
i'll not give them another name
tell them i'll not take my father's name
no more father than i'm my own
i do not create
i'm not responsible
i have no ownership over my makings
so i'll take this name i've got
for the moment
tell them
and i'll go short-changed to be cast again
yes
tell them i'll go and change my name
not have my name changed
and come out again unchanged
tell them again i'll not take my father's name
yes
tell them that
tell them i've gone to change my name
my very own name
and yet keep the name i've gone to change
yes
tell them that
tell them when i'm there
i'll see why josephus broke the essenic law
why marx the mighty essene changed his name
and note
why the ribonucleic-acid embargo in between
why the dna father-son short supply
i am a cell lodged in the molecular-memory-millennia
i'm the agent of growth and decay
i see the cells strung out in an embryonic fantasy riddle
while intercourse was still permissible
i proclaim
i propound
in my genes the spermatic stimulation
the evolutionary process
the woman the link-breaker
keeps it all going longer and longer
until i stand and transmit
until we reach out into the micro-wave length
listen in on ourselves
in the multi-macro-cosmic network:
the tv stations
the electronic transmitters
the nether-world subliminal messages
all shall interlock
and we remain tuned in
sitting bolt-tight-up
in our nudging squeezing cells
no more afearing nor doing
no more no less that is
than sucking a python diet
we'll do without rousing sex-play
courtship nor foreplay
or even sans monetary excuse
we'll do it for ourcells
in ourcells
by ourcells
then i'll not have to go away
nor will you have to tell them
‘he thinks he's gone to change his name
his only name
and quite probably not take his father's name'
rendes-moi mon nom unique
(©: T. Wignesan,1965 - London, from the collection: tell them i'm gone. Paris: 1983; rev.2012)
poem by T. Wignesan
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Enough Money Spent On Wars
What agony; accumulative emotive costs;
feed needle; soul destroying drug addictions?
What monstrous greed
cloaked in racial hatred;
fed with religious hatred
feeds covert wars justified?
When will we; with humanity feed;
with compassion; brothers sisters imprisoned;
in race conflict; poverty dying discarded;
in ignored horrors; extant third world?
Ban every earth war feed our poor
not capitalist corporate baron robbers;
glutted on global sly sweat shop wages
slum lord rents death reaped war profits?
Misery is waste residue of souls
which seek self pleasure materialism;
instead of gift of giving to others
oiled crimes greases palms capitalism.
It is still universally eternally true
it is better to give than to receive;
to sow sacred love not bile hatred
sow prosperity not starvation greed.
Enough money to buy drugs
to support epidemic addictions;
who will feed our suffering world?
Enough money spent on wars
to house all our earth's homeless;
who will house humanities homeless?
Who will feed the poor?
Ban every war feed the poor.
No need to ask who will bank on feed;
crime world exploitation materialism?
Spend money spent on wars
to house all earth's homeless;
feed our poor do not feed wars.
Souls who feed world materialism
will not house human immortal souls;
while flesh rots in blown away dust
in greedy winds of war greed lust.
poem by Terence George Craddock
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Born to die at Stromboli
« Think, the world remembers only the poets. The name of a country depends on how its poets behave. »
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the Philosopher-President of India*
Whoever dies at his Stromboli
needs no excuse to be born
as those who sail their ships
to the farther regions of the mind
even if they lose their way
finding their way back to sanity
While those who invent the Soul
construct pyramids
cathedrals
stupas
to raise those royal patrons
who raised them
to the skies
or even
those who lived to soothe others
with televisions
cars
innoculations
like those who raised townships
settled industries on reclaimable land
Much like those who gave their names
to bills of rights
to streets
faculty buildings
political dynasties
All these and more may need no excuse
Such even centuries hence may not accuse
But where alas is the poet
the painter of million melodies
assailing the living tastes of times
and bounded traditions
they that need to be examined
explained
exclaimed
declaimed
Men who have strayed from the volcano of their birth
For fear of leaving no revenge nor challenge on this earth
Note
* The philosopher's parting words to me in New Delhi when he was the vice-president in May 1961.
(©: T. Wignesan, May 30,1987, Paris, from the collection: back to background material,1993]
poem by T. Wignesan
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Its Too Late
Its too late now for you to say your sorry
Its too late now for you to make amends
Youre gonna pay for all the lies you told me
Well dont apologize cause its too late
Its too late
Much too late
You said those words
You said them much too late
Its too late
Much too late
You said those words
You said them much too late
Its too late now for you to sympathize, dear
The wheel of time is grinding gainst your dreams
I really wouldnt want to cause no pain now
You said those words, you said them much too late
Its too late
Much too late
You said those words
You said them much too late
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Quarter Of Seven
indirect bribery
escapes my mind
so i open back
the pages
of what he once did
when he was
on top of it all
that power that
corrupted him
absolutely
that lack of skill in
mastering honesty
sometimes these
capacities are forgotten
regret always comes late
pain sips souls on the other hand
earlier than the
cells and bars expect
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Bloody Paper Dolls
They bleed an ink of green blood
Cut them out
Faces of drawn misfortune
Bodies of frail dresses
Minds of empty blue lines
Given names of whores from distorted streets
Megan molly Shannon mind so weak
Created world of plagiarized lives
These bloody paper dolls have no eyes
They see not the tears upon her face
They bleed words onto the page
Green ink dripping
Soft words describing a life
Take there heads the lose all purpose
Fixed scissors this time ill make a man
Green ink bleeds from the cut up words
And the body it forms
These dolls aren’t real they are a shaken reality
Let her be she has dreams
And I cut the words from this page
I lost my age
I’m old... and still
I have bloody paper dolls all around
They rule my life
They are my reality
My friends
These words now just letters
Green ink stains my finger tips
My bloody dolls you are it.
poem by Victoria Martinez
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0027 In Honour of Honour and WHAuden
You asked me which of Auden’s poems
were my favourite, and I sighed
for memory’s fade, then walked to the dusty shelf
where next to those volumes of Eliot
with their brown-paper covers for those
precious wartime books allowed
a ration of Canadian paper for
fighting men to read in those
few moments of leisure for the open heart and
the vision of a peacetime world, was
‘Collected Shorter Poems 1930-1944 W.H.Auden’
which fell open at page 54,
‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats (d.January 1939) ’
‘Earth, receive an honoured guest…’;
those pages yellowed more than
the others around them as if
read often late at night
under what was still gaslight
with respectful but unwashed hands
after cocoa and biscuits with a scrape of butter
and it all came back: 1953, that was the year
when there was only one poet Yeats..
and poetry and music were the same;
I turned the pages – they fell open once again,
‘Time will say nothing but I told you so’…
So many poems there, unread, or unremembered,
how could it be that I abandoned Auden,
not hearing his music, while
other interests began to pull?
Then I sat silent at the thought
that a great poet of great mind, great heart,
was writing, writing, most of my lifetime
while I was wrapt in other things;
sat silent, honouring
what is to be honoured
as best we can;
what is to be honoured.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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This is not the world I knew,
This is not the world I knew,
This is not the world I knew,
It's a New World,
A New Regime,
Maybe Iam talking all seen from sense,
This is not that world I knew,
Probably by this self,
It's a New Regime,
Thinking that by this self,
There is the New World,
There is the clear picture,
That in my understanding,
Our life will never be forgotten,
The work that is done on earth,
It's a New World.
poem by Maxim Muyu
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Earth
Words and music by tim staffell
I might be at a table
And suddenly Ill catch
A fleeting vision of her crystal seas
Or I might be standing in a crowded dockyard faraway
Underneath the sun Ive never seen
cos I have seen many worlds
For what its worth
But Ill never see again the planet earth
My earth
I might be chasing waves of light
Out towards the rim
Where stars are sparse
And the cold of space seeps in
But I might be in a bar room
Drinking methylated gin
And thinking of the places I have been
Yes I have seen many worlds
For what its worth
But Ill never see again the planet earth
My earth
I have seen many worlds
For what its worth
But Ill never see again the planet earth
My earth
Cast adrift amongst the stars
I float from sun to sun
Dreaming of the world that gave me birth
All the places I have been
Remind me there is none
To match the green living hills of earth
cos I have seen many worlds
For what its worth
But Ill never see again the planet earth
My earth
song performed by by Queen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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