Cinnamon Hearts
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written:  February 7, 2001

I am bitter
Quite bitter in fact
Not like the skin of a grapefruit
A taste closer to those tiny cinnamon hearts
Curved satanic sweets
That stain your lips pink
And inflame your taste buds
Tiny manifestations of affection
That rape your oral receptors
And say
I Love you

I have been sucking
And sulking
My cheeks are stained
With roses
I’ve had one too many red tablets
From the opium jar of lust
My addiction
It ruins me
For love
Is the only cure

These given to “lovers”
On the Day of Valentines
Valentines Day was aroused from two sources. One being two legendary Christian martyrs whose feasts were formerly observed on February 14. Historians can only speculate to whether they were in actual exsistance or whether the two martyrs are really the same person recorded twice under two names.

The second being the Roman festival of Lupercalia believed to have been in honor of Faunus, the God of flocks and fertility. Celebrated on February 15, the festival was supposed to ensure fertitlity of it was intended to ensure the fertility of people, fields, and flocks for the new year. After sacrificing goats and a dog on the Palatine Hill, young men called Luperci raced around the borders of the hill striking those they met with whips made of the goatskins. Women who were struck were ensured of fertility and of easy delivery of children. The festival survived until the 5th century AD

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: January 17, 2001

There is a frail homeless man at his deathbed lying in the center of the town. A gentle and learned scribe is writing in his journal unaware of the condition of the person beside him.
A greedy king is taking his usual stroll around town. The town’s peoples bow to him as he crosses their path.

Jehangir: Oh lord, a dirty street person, the filth of my marvelous city.

Jacky: Please your greatness, if you could just spare some food?

Jehangir: Refrain from speaking to me! You and your kind are a shame and disgrace to my city.

The young scribe who was writing a poem begins to read it out loud.

Haris: The shooting star sails across the sky,
It’s eternal beams every glowing,
It travels far within the night,
Never stopping nor slowing.

Jehangir: Pipe down scribe, if I wanted to hear rubbish I would summon my mule to speak.

Haris: Your highness, please do not speak of my work in that manner.

Jehangir: Who is going to stop me? You (laugh) you are no match for my guards.

Jacky: Please your royalness, I ask you again if you will spare some bread crumbs?
Jehangir: I will not tell you again, do not speak to me!
Haris: This poor homeless man, he is dying of starvation. You are the richest man in the country and yet you turn down his plea for a piece of bread? What causes you to be so cruel?

The scribe takes a piece of bread out of his pocket and hands it to the homeless man

Here you go my friend

Jacky: Thank you sir, you are most kind.

Jehangir: How dare you question me! How dare you defy me!

(He snatches the bread out of the homeless man’s hand and stuffs it in his pocket)

Haris: This man is dying of hunger, you are dying of wealth. Why don’t you two trade?

Jehangir: Are you trying to tell me what to do? I can have you hung!
Haris: The people of this town used to pray to God. Now the people of this town and God pray to you! You have lead us to live in poverty raising the taxes and giving all the money to yourself. Your highness may I ask you what you do with all the wealth?

Jehangir: A raving idiot certainly will not lecture me! You will receive the punishment of death!

As the king called to his guards the scribe began to speak.

Haris: I am afraid an innocent man has already received that punishment.

The two look down at their feet and there lays the homeless man that had stopped breathing.

Haris: (Bends down for a closer look)

He is dead. We have killed him.

Jehangir: What do you mean WE have killed him. You have killed him.

Haris: We both killed him. You took away his bread and I didn’t stop you.

Jehangir: I would choke the lies out of your dirty mouth. I banish you from this land forever! Leave now.

As the scribe leaves he recites a poem out loud.

Haris: The devil is bright in this land,
In the form of a king he does stand.
Lusturous gold, riches and wealth,
His cast iron heart refuses to melt.

The king carried on with his daily stroll. No one bowed before him.

The Trigger Effect
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: December 8, 2000

With one gun shot,
How many dreams can you kill?
How many people must you condemn?
How many hopes are you sure to crush?
All of them, when you show people their
Reality.

Chestnuts
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: December 8, 2000

Troubadour’s and illusionary’s wilt
Before bass bowls of mahogany stones
Nature’s testicles
Castrated off the tree in my neighbors yard
Like the eyes of their cat
Full of evil inspirations
The eyes of my cat

Receiving inspiration form a nut

Similar to the eyes of my neighbor’s cat

World upon world of meaning
Careful Eve! This might mean an allergic reaction to the world.

A Wednesday Afternoon Math Class OR The Marshmallow Poem
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: July 22, 2000

Thoughts, like dormant clouds, cluster around my head.
The air is being slowly pushed away, my ideas are drifting with it.
Unable to think my mind has melted away into a soft white pool,
this pool crystallizes and the mind connection stops.
A permanent sugar sensation circles the room in waves,
I am floating in the boredom sea.

Backdrop Addresses Cowboy
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: December 13, 1999

Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,
tugging a papier-mâché cactus
on wheels behind you with a string

you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets

Your righteous eyes, your laconic
trigger-fingers
people the streets with villains:
as you move, the air in front of you
blossoms with targets

and you leave behind you a heroic
trail of desolation:
beer bottles
slaughtered by the side
of the rode, bird-
skulls bleaching in the sun.

I ought to be watching
from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront
when shooting stars, hand clasped
in admiration,

but I am elsewhere

Then what about me

what about the I
confronting you on the border
you are always trying to cross?

I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso

I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells
the litter of your invasions

I am the space that you desecrate
as I pass though.

Margaret Atwood

Joy Sonnet in a Random Universe
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: December 4, 1999

Sometimes I’m happy: la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Tum ti tum. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Hey nonny nonny. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Vodo di o do. Poo Poo pi doo. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Whack a doo. La la la la la la la. Sh-boom, sh-boom. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Dum di dum. La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la. Tra la la. Tra la la la la la la la la la la. Yeah yeah yeah.

Helen Chasin