Must Write
(c) Famida Basheer
Because people live
in the incongruities of their existances
believing things will change.
Because happenings occur side by side
state by state nation by nation
because the News is ignored
because governments that can handle the madness, dont,
so poets must write anyway and be ignored anyway.
There is more sanity in a thorn
than in a rose that adorns a graveside.
There are answers in each street
to questions that a priest
would never dare to ask.
There is more music in the breath of an atheist
that cannot make itself harsh enough
to breath fire and brimstone
or turn tables in a synagogue.
Unawares things creep up on the unsuspecting.
They see rules and lines that they will not dare to cross.
So poets must write anyway and be ignored anyway.
A dream written ages ago
is studied in classrooms by teenagers.
Some poetic thought from a century ago
is memorised and whispered by lovers.
Some old reminder of a dilapidated morale
triggers off a response
in the conscience of the present.
The possibilities are ominous,
the responsibilities are a whole new religion
so a poet must write
and keep on writing.
The Wasting Ways of War
(c) Famida Basheer
They all weep.
War poems,Documentary scripts
File pictures, all cry that
War is about the men;
(sometimes women)..they dont seem to see a child
With auburn curls and gaping eyes
Wide.. not in wonderment
At sight of angels or reindeer skies
But startled lashes that flutter
At Daisy cutters.
War is about the children
Who cling a security rag
That sweeps their earth of its history
And writes a whole new geography
In a stranger's script.
.. Is about the child that learns to hide
Not at play to be sought and found with glee,
But with terror in his eye.
Is about the unhoned brunt
Of a psychosis yet unborn
For those the Red Cross slipped.
Is about children at home
With Papas in the air
Short-lived heroes.. alive or dead.
Is about children in the streets
Who cannot recognize their mothers and fathers
Among the splash of red.
Blood is lighter than water here
Water solidifies yet thaws unflawed to flow again.
Blood clots and is interred if the body is fortunate.
Blood is thin with fatigue;
Thin with the manipulations of thickset minds.
Thin and clotting and powerless.
As powerless as startled children.
Norwegian Woods
(c) Famida Basheer
So they give him more age and take away his memory
what did it matter; it was just one more toy
that wandered down the stairway stopping now and then
fingers feeling for ruptures in the banister.
Lennon , Iskon , Harrison and all that
wonder why he loved them
They were only people or something
Here comes the sun
Popcorn never tasted so good.
the feel of new jeans
wafts of grass sweetened air
cloying with rapturized bodies
Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best
love me do or dont
it dosnt really matter
Yesterday today or tomorrow
It's still all dense
Norwegian woods.
After The Highway
(c) Famida Basheer
Around his car the old man cares
step by step his buffing rag
polishes it into a new day.
Still, it dangles the happenings
of yesterdays drive.
He remembers the children
who ran up to see
the dying dog , dark as asphalt
that locked eyes and a last canine breath
with their angry grief;
its parting energies melting in their bones.
A Walk In The Woods
(c) Famida Basheer
Festered path
Deep dark and promotional
Pits and prickling underwood
Balking at their own temerity
I grab a swollen club and I am Moses
My breaths spill
To cleave the denses
I am pursued only by insipid
Pungencies of thought.
They chase on Egypt's mares
While I trot
Into April that adamant salvation army volunteer
Who clothes all winter's starks in fresh.
Her cartons acquit the season.
Everybody gave green.
Converse with me squirrel
In that tongue that you and I share
A controlled diction
A startled squeak
A muttered prayer into paws
For the passing leaves
And for the new.
Polygamous springs meander in ecstasy
Swilling its ancient promiscuities.
Rasputins smile severely.
Their reds startle the stun of a sun.
Take it away Abba.
Late as slate you made better commies
With fire inside your souls
Among an arena of ashes.
Getting home.
(c) Famida Basheer
The facts of a kitchen sink
The eventualities of a wok
The affirmations of two-minute pasta
The latitudes of an Iron box
The awry laundry jungle
The occult dances of a broom and pan
A hairdressers' hallucination of a mop.
The dooms of a trusting garbage bag asking to be walked
Only to be deserted in a strange dump.
The afterlife of yesterday's books
The delusions of today's newspapers
Software downloads email backlogs
Grabbing at crawling eyes
That hesitate to look
Towards the negligence of rugs and beds.
The amoebic smudges on doorknobs and fridge
The camaraderie of electronic accents
Beating in tongues against a breathless clock.
Such pledges and more await
Like ravens on an elastic line
As I set my key in the door to my home.
I should have titled this poem Impend.
Woody lanes
(c) Famida Basheer
Lazing through these woody walks
Raptures and skills chill-stilled among the
Bracken crackle of childhood warmths
Arraigned into a crumbly mess
And I am fast adult
Gaping past locked window branches
Seeking sky through thicket drapes
Escape the realms of spluttering laughter
Left behind like awful dreams
They are not true
Nor this nor these
Each step in ginger stealth I guess
Unsavoury unease
And yet such bravado is born
Of nought but childhood dreams..
Cherish ( For Mummy)
(c) Famida Basheer
And all else is farthest from my mind
except that distant memory
vivid with smells of touch
tracing misty sketches
with what today charged with hindsight
I recall as the fathoms of love
Not then... oh then I was a greedy recipient
rocking myself in your locked arms
seeking only to recieve
as you gave and gave
and gave...
I cherish for you a cradling hug now
I save in it a million thank yous
I lock within it all the truth
that there is between here and the hereafter
for you are in that place in time
when it is just right for me
to mother you back Mama.
The painting on the wall
(c) Famida Basheer
The wall stares me.
In its cyclops eye a landscape
a picture of a moment
embraced by swollen redwood
more fussed and bossed to glow
than Alladin's lamp.
All else is matt
oil shine in urgency trapped.
Cool hues of sky and earth
of river ripples and the overbright high
that manouvered it to be day
where herds had browsed and hungry shepherds dreamt
and all around the hills unperturbed
went visiting the valley
bearing gifts of streams
and sulking fish and reeds.
A foot stool rests my feet;
stub toes point to green
and truant leaves and one bright red roof
and I am drowsy tonight
in an afternoon setting.
Up until now
(c) Famida Basheer
I have a vase, I have some pretty flowers
I have some fern and leaves of shape and size
nestled between florist's foam and baskets
But how do I arrange them to a mime
Of natures pure that lilted them in beds
that spotlighted their petals against greens
that dabbled there in lime and here in darker
from bud to bloom in tune with astral clime?
For me they wait with patience that is hurdled
by fates that plucked them off a swaying thought.
Hibiscus,Roses,Lilies, Gladioli
Each termed for various life spans in a pot.
Where should I point their sighing faultless faces?
East to hope and longing; or the west
where sunsets promise dawn; or skyward whence
warmth lingers on the brow till dew may bless?
From history to history their graces
have spanned the globe in un-mysterious charm
their blushes and their aspects framed by painters
into some still-life art of untrue calm.
They know they seduced bees and sulking beauties
They watched new buds and urged them to a bloom
They counted leaves as yellowed down they wandered
among the breezes eager for their doom.
I cannot put them back from whence they came from
Or hope to stop their death before their time.
Nor give them back the dreams they lost forever
or put them in a safer light and clime.
I know now why the flowers held in vases
never smile the way the garden does
or why Refugees smile no smile in strange lands
Or why they lack that element of trust.
Core
(C) Famida Basheer
And sleepless night is here again.
Within these woods I lose myself
And seek between the dark and deep
of stippling lights,an unsure sketch
those hidden mysteries that were the soil
that fashioned a thing called Man.
Within this stippled darkened light
This I seek in truth
To take to canvas that primordial core
that harks within its tardy self
a spirit of kind lure.
To lay bare for him his basal truths ;
To strip his base coats peel his whims;
To display aloud his true cements;
To view his self without that self
of primitive pretension or procured pelf.
I avoid his abstracts.
But where there is light I would seek to find
him shorn of Fear and Guile;
Those two bastard offspring
Of his own frailities
that are second nature in awhile..
I would that I could see him
noble and in command
Of all the senses that conspire
Within him, and against him.
A Gerent of gentility, a Slave without servility
A Thinker of effective thought
A Philosopher too his charges shorn
of illusions of obscure fantasy.
His nature thus braced
I would see him fit with easy swing
Within each role of social loop
A rationale of flexi- mind
An earthy Earth-man of simple truths.
He is no dreamer this human I envision.
He builds his sights around his facts
He simply is, as is, is is.
he has no court with what is not.
And no desires blot the path
to his boundless horizon.
But these are worldly woods that I
have grappled and am lost;
I consider then in anguished debt
my Maker who so mighty and true
to strive to rein that Core in man
did barter with His Son.
Refugee
(c) Famida Basheer
Returning March
The grains of sand drier
between our toes.
The waves warmer.
What destiny can hone a time
more sacred in its indecision
than a year gone by?
Ravens take flight
and sparrows from convalescing trees
where something is sprouting each day
after that painful shedding. Much as we shed;
our inhibitions, our more stringent rules,
our severe thoughts, our passions, our misgivings.
Yet those birds fly back each evening.
Only we the lesser who walk on darkest wings
must carry on walking
leaving behind our homes
breeching our tomorrows
with the cling of our yesterdays.
A Brand New Eden...
(c) Famida Basheer
one goes in to buy a second mink
a garment with an European look
and a delicate French wrapping .
return the bundle
before talking of refinement,
for who can complain if you are not included
in the profit return.
none called me to provide guns
to make a new deal spread
to record the felling of a tree;
to wash some underwear in the sea
but I am a creature in the nude
that took a bitter drug,
determined to lend support;
wading through a sea of humanity,
bathing in their interchangeability
between the tapered points of diversion
on the beach.
i never undertook to start
a piece of amusement
with something dubious gained
by hideous mind manipulation,
but to appear in court
ever so briefly
to eat and drink with,
kiss and transform,
Sodom and Gomorrah;
to head off the beasts
of another kind;
to create a brand new eden
and there to rest!
Insomniac Carbons
(c) Famida Basheer
It is nicer really to walk
alone and in the dark.
No Moon, no Stars;
only the hum of Lucifer snoring
in the overhanging branches
and the crackly mists of day-memories
assume a night light whose silhouettes
are too dark to view against the dark.
External blindness is not a dark place.
It is instead a senseless light and to be avoided
just as one would the overbrights of reality
that ooze out of too much knowledge
to seep into your psyche
to play Pretend
and not much investment of thought.
Oh turn away then Halo flashers!
The trouble with you is
that there is more enlightenment
in the stark of night
than the musings of your day
can even begin to fathom.
Wake up Lucifer. Shake up man!
You dont want to miss the ultimate dream!
Mailman
(c) Famida Basheer
Walking his zig zag path
like an ant lost in a drawer
the postman knocks to drop in a letter.
They know all about each other in these parts.
They have read each other's
wedding bans birth announcements
even helped write obituaries.
The mail though is a personal thing
to be welcomed into its own little container
engraved with a door number
and a decorative pattern.
Letters are such a close experience
that may get tossed into a waste bin ;
or read many times, then folded gently,
kissed and laid carefully within
the wilting pages of an ancient Bible
filled with ignored Holy Words
bulky with others papers more esoteric
than the Songs of Solomon.
The postman too gets mail.
His wife reads them out aloud
as she frowns on his dusty shoes.
Still
(c) Famida Basheer
Here we go again
lined up like crows on a telephone line
never facing
nothing of meaning to say to each other
In the market place that is life
there is cacophony
The haggler and his vendor
have bought and sold
and nothing really said.
There are delusions of conversation
among the chatter on buses trains
planes waiting rooms telephones.
The silence is deafening.
Beneath the Glaze
By Famida Basheer
Thus then among each faltering footstep rides
a will to stride to march to tall to fly
unfazed by all that bogey-trails the eye.
To sit beneath a tree that lasted well;
lean gently upon gnarl of bark and swell
the breath to breathe each waft of leafy sigh.
Such infants roam the grass of nature's bind
they crawl in insect form and human kind
Their eyes seek truth, the ears a new birth cry.
Yet gently each must pain the tryst to be
alive and well in that old realm of known;
to live one life.. to calm..not seek to die.
Door
(c) Famida Basheer
They are paltry translations of distant songs
And yet I know they ooze from a woman's heart.
The words are familiar; the implosions palpable.
Bound to someone she loves, the 'L' word
flattens her dreams against herself.
She who lies starkly awake
leaves her thoughts naked
in a house choked with sleep.
She sleeps within herself
in places you cannot see.
They say she has lost it
beckoning passing people from her window;
chatting with the sky.
I say she has found it.
The promises of passing through a door out
to reach a whole new world, are many.
To stay fixed and view the world
through a private window are fewer.
Yet a woman's love is stronger than any door.
She is bolted to the floorboards of her home by it.
Did I hear you say that that is her weakness?
Almost
(c) Famida Basheer
They all bring bad news,
Letters , Love and War.
There they are,each surfacing when the other two descend.
And actually all I meant was to take myself for a walk.
Love, in the commonest sense of the term
drags back on itself with a will
that cannot be anything that could stand up
tomorrow and say I did that.
That can say we are so acheivers of the unacheivable.
Like the Wars they invent that keep coming back
again and again in different forms for different reasons,
not all of them totally unacceptable.
Most of them hang back and pull
and a part of the world succumbs.
And all the while what is promised is Freedom.
Freedom is a lost assumption.
It can not mean a good thing anymore.
Freedom means the plucking of someone else's freedom
in order to find your own.
Freedom is a lost sense of purpose.
It sleeps when the world awakes
and wakens when the world is beginning to yawn
all the while chattering about itself.
That is one reason why we have war.
There are other reasons
but they sleep under the tables of congress.
That is why peace is advocated as better than Freedom.
With freedom one can use all those delectable warheads,
then send letters of condolence.
Love the man after he is dead.
And Peace? One can talk about Peace.. Ad nauseum.
The Arrangement
(c) Famida Basheer
Perhaps the dimly lit street that walks home alone
ponders at how our lives
have played hide and seek with angels
among a forest of Trees of Knowledge,
whose branches mutter and sigh incessantly;
where a human whisper is a cacophony of awareness
startling between the spells of wisdom's silences.
Like the arrangements within a raindrop
that only a snowflake would know
angels palm our breaths and carefully pattern them
beneath those trees.
Trees that bear fruit which we must devour
in order to be raised into that perfect circle
of light, that is only one of the many promises
for the hereafter to keep.
Cached
(c) Famida Basheer
Among the taverns of literature
within the pubs of prose
sitting squat legged under the village tree
making sense of its idiot
whispering under tables
in exchanges around the world
standing aside as the beast of rhetoric
struts down senate corridors
flexing its power muscles
to an assemblage filled with
the dumbed,
Among celebrations
among moments unsaid
among bridal wear
in baby cribs
in the silences of a chapel
in the cacophony of a bazaar
in little drops of ink
in the flutter of a keyboard
in the rustle of new paper
between sips of tea
hot sips of glorious tea,
is where poetry hides
clutching at the bars of its imprisonment
awaiting a key that will fit a lock
that never was.
