All posts by imransaleh

Poem For The Future

Poetry

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written:  May 24, 2005

Dear,

Life will probably be a series of looking for a good amount of control, and you will always be meeting new people, some good, others not so good, but you are a loving and smart person, and you have something a lot of other people are short on — wisdom. You have it in you to get what you need and want, to meet other people just as great as you. Think of how lonely they are tonight Think of how lonely I used to be, before I met you, and how very lonely you used to be before you met me, writing dark poetry in your basement. But now you are starting to live in the moment, and you have a world of wonderful things to learn, we will learn them together, you will learn with others. And most importantly, you will learn them on your own, and then share them with lucky people such as me.

Poem To Be Forgotten

Poetry

Poem To Be Forgotten
By Jehangir Saleh
Written: May 17, 2005

You say you love me
But it is nothing I can hold
Those times when you protect me –
Protect is definitely the word I want to hear –
I believe you, softly
But doubt myself
Have a [I] created something
At the expense of writing the story
I always thought I was meant to write

But I regress1
It’s what we do2

Your arms around me
Like a national flag
Of a war torn country
The deep eyes of its peoples
Well [will] never really see again

I will send you

1regress verb – to return to an earlier or less advanced form or way of behaving
2In this stanza you are saying that you are returning to a previous point or feeling, but I don’t understand how the line “It’s what we do” fits in here

Off from these lines
With a fading of your memory
There is a way on
But contrary to what he will tell you
We are the enemy

The intellect persists
Where the heart is destroyed
Like a tortured animal
Left to die

So promise yourself
To remember nothing
And come with me
There are3 many lives
To destroy
With what we thought
Was love4

3there was an extra space between “there are”
4Poem To Be Forgotten is really good. I feel it becoming stronger at the end. I love the wording of the last two stanzas. It seems to send the clearest message to me.

AMENDMENT TO WHAT WAS FORGOTTEN

This is a fragment
A moment separated from the rest of time
Which occurred tonight on a5 the westbound train
platform
A kind solemn gesture
In a time of war

I rode the train to my home
Forgetting
But this time the more thoughts I let decay
Into the air
The more I was filled
With a wholesomeness and awe
Like those moments when you see a tree
And try to imagine its creator

I felt
I felt
War is so numb
Forgetting the mama’s
Skull I cracked with her sons hammer
Unused life and rice spilling on the kitchen floor

5“a” or “the” should be removed

There6 lines are not violent
They are as real
As I can be

They are trying so hard
Inking7 bleeding through the page
Trying so hard to be free

In a place where
We have no concept of that word
F r
E ee8
It falls apart
A time where bad poetry is still poetry

I will be punished
For these false stolen moments
For these false lines

Run with my words
See how far you get

6did you mean “these lines are not violent”?
7“Ink bleeding through the page”?
8I love how you did free, but why is there an extra e, and why is it capitalized?

Before you
And these lines
Are
destroyed9/10

9I love the last two stanzas!
10Amendment To What Was Forgotten seems more even in flow than Poem To Be Forgotten. The darkness in both is apparent. Is the message of your poems that love destroys words?

Another Piece Of Writing

Poetry

Another Piece Of Writing
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: May  5, 2005

I’ve already written so much about being alone. How many more times can the same theme be re-worked until it drifts into a nameless fog, or worse, popular culture?
But tonight feels like strange dark and silence. These themes deserve to be waken is for no other reason than they provide a temporary solace to those who they effect. It is true we have been here too many times. “Move on”, they say, remember there is so much more than this. And yet here is where we seem to return.
Writing makes you feel better because it reminds you of someone listening. In a way, you never wanted anyone to listen, just to be listened too even when they pretended that somehow they were helping you, it was always you who had to make them feel that you were more than worthy of being listened to.
This isn’t anything in particular, just something to help me understand what you already do: that inside me I have everything I have been searching for. This isn’t a poem or a story. It is a search.
You aren’t a lover or a friend, you are a moment existing throughout time which I come back to that reminds me of what I am searching for.
I am not really searching. I am killing time until the day when I get over the fear of self-realization.
You aren’t really reading this. You know what is it because you’ve heard it before.

Poem After A Long Time

Poetry

Poem After A Long Time
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: April 24, 2005

After too much time in reality
His eyes became very dark
Gained weight
Lungs like children’s party balloons
Success made his health suffer
Sitting down to write a poem
It was quite
Felt different
Strange
But welcoming
Not attempting to say
Anything in particular
The act was selfish
But it never occurred to him
He just wrote
A poem
Any poem
To take a short breath
And hold back the night

Poem

Poetry

Poem
By Jehangir Saleh
Written:  April 1, 2005

My wife
Wanted me to write a poem
To purge myself, essentially, from myself
For what is this poem
But a shield
As every tree is a signal
Towards heaven
The question of the reader is to ask
What is the poet trying to hid
I have compiled a list to make your job much easier:
Victim hood
Helplessness
Love
Idealism
Romance
The answers to the questions I complain about
Have I mentioned love?

Where do we keep the houses
That we build up
Around ourselves
Once we are done hiding from who we are
And decide to emerge?
The sign of a person such as i
Is that he complains that the sunlight’s too bright
Or the trees too high, the sidewalk too paved
Until he learns to spot these same suppose irregularities in himself
And begins to ask questions like: show I plant lower tree, leave the sidewalk unpaved, learn to knit something so I can go outside, sit on the bench and enjoy the sun.
This is a poem I write late at night when I miss my wife and really just pretend that I am the victim of a car crash where only the driver dies, but the passengers suffer injuries to the ego.

The tortured artist button in my back side was jammed, but you held me anyway, even though the guy who usually repairs me in on holiday. There is something unusual and sophisticated about us together. Alone, we are total fuckups. But together, somehow, we can manage to hold on.
So hold me. I am broken. That line is so overused. But you hold me anyway.

You Tell Me That The Universe

Poetry

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: March 17, 2005

You tell me that the universe
Has been made for you
But you can’t move
As usual, I say
And we both remain in denial

This is a bad poem
But it doesn’t matter
And that’s something worth thinking about
If you continue
You will notice that wherever you are
You want to believe that you are right
But you know that you’re not
And when you go to sleep
Everything re-arranges, again, and again,
Until it finds it way back to the way it was
Before you when to sleep

And after reading this poem
You’ve decided you’re ok
So you’ll continue
Take a walk
And keep on living
Until you die

Listening To Men Sing In Praise Of Their Creator

Poetry

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: March 5, 2005

Listening to men sing in praise of their creator
And there is a storm starting to blow through your home
Once filled with quiet
Is it now filled with that feeling
When your body is so heavy and mind so full
You can’t cry
It’s all you can do,
And your body has failed you again
At least it was your this time

You see us as giant blocks of sandstone
Over time, we are craved out, trying to smooth ourselves
But the forward we go, the more of the stone has been gone
And you have less and less to work with

Poem For Elisha Wagman On Valentines Day

Poetry

Poem For Elisha Wagman On Valentines Day
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: February 25, 2005

Dear Ms. Wagman,

Please marry me. I don’t believe in marriage, and I
strongly suggest neither should you. Therefore, it
should work out perfectly.
The men you have touched, they come to you saying, We
were wrong. We have become new again. Come inside us
and we will serve you.
But you are alone in the cave, on the mountain. And
that is where you are meant to be. And I, your
hermitted neighbour, praying to a different, but quite
similar G-d. Come visit me. And we will marry. I’m not
good in bed, but I make a good cup of tea.

In The Worst Of Times

Poetry

In The Worst Of Times
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: February 21, 2005

Today was our Anniversary
And I did something terrible – exposed the weakness
In you, which exposed the weakness in me

It is cold outside
As it usually is
But this is not love poem
So this time
It really is cold, and dark

I sit here in my basement
And think about you
Knowing that one day
You will die
And I will too

When I cry for you
Tonight won’t matter anymore
It will be just a another mistake
That we learned from
When I cry for you
Press my nails deep into my palm
This night will not compare

There is something to be said about love
It doesn’t give a shit
Persisting in the worst of times
Like tonight, or so we think