By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 17, 2004
Tonight we talked about death
And you when you cried
I sort of felt that I had accomplished something
Finally
I had done what every poet longs for
To transfer whatever is spinning around in our heads
To another people
However difficult it may be
Poem For A Night And A Nation
By Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 12, 2004
Though we are made hard
And I believe that there is no hope
Let me sit and listen to voices
That say they are wise
And tell me to believe
If you read this poem and you think
It is a bad poem
You’re probably right
If it were a poem
But it is a cure
Tonight is thick black silence
And the world is full of terrible things
Most of them already inside
There is nothing to do but wait
And not resist
I believe that one day the sun will rise
And followers like me will feel redeemed
But until that day comes
There is not possible world like this one
There is not man a brave as me
For a sit here
Writing a poem
Knowing I will die
And still writing
How many can say as much
Growing
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 12, 2004
Today
We are standing still
Tomorrow
The walls will begin to shake
We will move from our spots
Long enough to take one
Good look at each other
Affirm our positions
And come back to where we were today
Standing still
Poem In My Bed
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 10, 2004
I promised you
That I would come to bed
Buy my mind wants to keep searching
I am writing a poem
In a bed that is threatening
Because you are not in it
Whose breathing
To calm me if I wake
From the nightmares of my childhood
There are no arms to hold me,
Only a mind that searches
Writing this poem
Sleep in my bed
Without you
Untitled
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 9, 2004
What if I wrote
A poem
With no title
And told you
Everything you will ever want
I have
Here in these lines
You might say
I cannot see any truth
Or beauty
It seems like another poem
That you wrote on the subway
Depending on where
I am in the cosmos, whether
I woke up with nightmares
Or thinking of you
I might agree
Or I might disagree
But, dearest
That doesn’t matter
The important point is this:
Everything I have ever wanted
Is tumbling around
Inside me
You remind of this
When I forget
Marion
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: November 6, 2004
it’s the killer combinations
that does it:
the name alone
pure as the bible read aloud
on New York’s sultry 7th avenue
the quirky blips erupting
from a formidable presence
of controlled cool
fashionably adventurous
grade four goodness
with a twist
an unfair amount
of intelligent
and oh my god
that smile –
never felt as happy
as that smile
like a perfectly shaped moment
like ‘round midnight
played solo on the vibes
like falling into a ruby pile
of autumn leaves
like being seduced by
ee cummings
like nothing
I’ve been able to describe
my ability will always fail me
I can get so close
but never quite there
there’s the brilliance, and beauty
and then something else
I can’t explain
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: September 13, 2004
Your mind is a creature who runs madly
Through the streets screaming
THERE IS NOTHING
ONLY INSIGNFICANCE
Take away the human life world
And the essential emerges
Strip symbols away
And everything becomes stale
Aeneas is one man
Like every man, who would
Have done the same
Given the opportunity
Poem 5
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: September 12, 2004
The floor
Is cold, hard but not supportive
My body
Is steadily shutting off
Above there is a ceiling
A blue sky
Deep space
And a universe that travels forever
But I forget this
When the floor is cold,
Hard, not supportive
Right now
I can only wish
For the beauty in poems
To be true
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: September 6, 2004
There are those who
Are in a state
More terrible than you or I
But do not understand
The beauty in tragedy
Our fate
Let’s assume
Has already been thread,
Spun, and cut
And where will you be
When your wife betrays you
For your son’s suicide
When all that you held true
Is broken
Again
Believe in the beauty of loss
A universal bad first time
And, friend
Everything seems to fit
Neatly
Into place
Homage
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: September 5, 2004
Jesus was not elected
But proclaimed himself to be
Regardless of what you think
About the will of God
He thought he was the son of God
But let’s assume
Nietzsche was right
What is left?
A man who shaped the world
Started and ended and continues war
Taught healing, forgiveness
And humility
He might as well
Has been the son of God
There might as well
Be a God
Although that’s
Still enough to convince me