In Response Your Poems…
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written:  February 20, 2005

With the exception of “For Hank,” your poems are very quiet. Like small
droplets of water in a slightly irregular rhythm. If my poems push the
reader out, your poems are quite the opposite – inviting and open, and
not simply because they are less oblique and more narratively driven.
It’s about the pacing, the space left on the page etc. I love “Good
literature/Is Well equipped/With miserable endings.” It’s a great
example of how to say so much with so few words, and how to set a mood
in three simple lines.

If there is an aspect of these poems that needs more attention, it is
the small details – punctuation, capitals (why begin each line with a
capital…unless your Word program automatically did this on your
behalf)? I think that the use of capitals at the beginning of each
sentence disrupts the flow of a piece like “Growing” or “Sunsets.”
Since one of your strengths is the ability to economize the number of
words you need to use, I think you could exploit the use of
capitalization and punctuation to say even more in a limited space.

I have two other suggestions that you may want to consider. The first
is the extent to which one should “sign post” in poetry. There is a
very fine line between intertextuality and name-dropping, and one must
be careful that references to other writers, philosophers etc. are not
simply sign-posting or attempting to position one’s own work inside an
existing canon. The other way in which sign-posting crops up as a
problem is through over-statement. For example, I think that the final
stanza in “Sunsets” is about our inability to control circumstances, and
as a result, is already apparent in the previous stanza: “The author has
a false/sense of control over/his poem.” Would the poem lose anything if
you ended it with the stanza and lopped off, “Today the sun is
setting/someday, everyone will die”?

In some cases, I also think that you could experiment with the long
line. Take the end of “Poem into the Future.” The title already is
projecting something, and a few longer lines might enable you to enact
such a projection on the page. I’m especially thinking about the final
stanza:

Consider:

In your arms
My life has an end
In your arms
I am carried into the future
In your arms, my life has an end, in your arms
I am carried into the future.

This is rather crude example of how this stanza might be reworked. But
placing the “my life has an end” between your repeated “in your arms”
enacts something on the page that is already lingering in the text. I
think this kind of writing can be over-worked (I’m guilty of it), but in
your case, thinking more about line length, punctuation and spacing –
but not at the loss of cadence – could be very productive.

I hope this is somewhat helpful?

Ambulance
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: February 20, 2005

The tragedy lay not in the death of the trauma patient but with the driver who, after his wife left, hadn’t been doing his laundry and glanced at his mismatched socks – one brown, one black – as they turned the corner (it was still they at this point) and just before “patient” became “victim”, he realised that although no bullet wounds or third degree burns to show for it, he had died the day she left him.

The victim attracted mourning friends and family, while the driver, attending his own funeral, read a silent eulogy that lasted until the day he died.

Poem For You
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: February 8, 2005

i have been questioning
what good is poetry
but to tell you
that when I see you
it is like a poem
my first Leonard Cohen poem
the reason I write
is to make something
as beautiful as you are,
he said
and here I am
trying hard
if only for that reason

Death Of Someone You Don’t Know
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: February 7, 2005

No more pretending
Smoking on your front poach
That overlooks the street
Without streetlights
But the night will not hear your excuses
It is only dark
And will not comfort
Unless you answer

Tomorrow is the death
Of someone you don’t know
You feel sad
Always have
But didn’t until know
You came in from the dark
Looked at your wife sleeping
And began to cry
Quietly
For you knew
That someday
Someone will be you

Annanda’s Work
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: February 6, 2005

Apr. 10, 2000
I imagine you
with your white
button-up shirt
to have black
raven-angel wings
hiding there
shining with darkness
after the dust quivers off
and the crackling of a forgotten door
and the furious calming sound of pigeons
flapping up into the church rafters
has hushed.
You tell me my hair
reminds you of the dark forest
where stars and fireflies sleep
and that my shoulderblades
are the beginnings of wings

Apr. 26,2000
so ravenous
are the syrupy rays
which spread themselves thick
upon your lashes,
paint themselves
sumptuously onto your skin
and drip from the end of your fingertips
like they drip from the sun itself
My hunger
is for the same privilege:
to paint myself onto your skin
warm and golden
and to be the last drop
of light
before beginning a warm blink.
To be the cause of
the slow blink of sensual overdose
a multifaceted prism spinning on a thread in the window
a stretch
an eyelid–
tangerine bright and flickering with
trees and swings and other slow blinks.
Those rays who traveled so far to find you.

Poem For You
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: January 22, 2005

It occurs to me
So deeply, profoundly
That I wouldn’t be alive
Had I not loved you

For there is nothing else
Only space
And time I keep running from
And you
Who quiets me
In a different space
Without time

You are silent
I ask a question
Your body responds
There must be something greater, I think
But before I get too far, you hold me
As if tonight was the last night
Your body is warm
We sleep

I know nothing

By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: January 16, 2005

When I get up, I see the world as it should be. It is almost like a super power. I cannot bear to look out the window, even if there were windows. I cannot look at things that grow. Trees, flowers, grass, children. I am terrified.

I think that maybe there was once something to my madness.

I think maybe there was once something to everything. But now I am convinced there is nothing more to us than efficiency and decay. How efficiently we decay ourselves and those we claim to care about.

It is the great paradox of my existence. I write to you dear reader about wanting to end my life, to suck the back of a refrigerator, to have a giant farm animal crush my to death in a terrible and somewhat comedic spectacle that is broadcast on the national news leading to the ban of whatever terrible cow, or perhaps overweight pig was responsible for my death. The local farm where Billy shovels hay is now a death trap. And yet, here I am, writing to you about it. Why? Don’t you ask yourself, why am I wasting my time with this selfish idiot. He speaks about wanting to run away, and yet here he is, still. He is no better than a ideologue who cannot translate his language of ivory tower theory into something that effects peons of the real world. What good is an idea if it cannot bring about the revolution?
Why? You ask, and the truth is that I am selfish. I wish to belong somewhere, I wish to suffer with some amount of certainty, than run off a cliff and let the winds escort me to the ground where I cannot know what will happen after whatever my being is sucked from my lifeless body and carried to where I don’t know by a creator I cannot know exists. I’d rather take my chances while I can count the number of feet I have.

Thursday, January 6, 2005

Dear Dad,

For your birthday, I got you THE BOOK OF SECRETS. But even if you don’t read this book – although I really hope you will – consider this a symbolic gift. The title is “The Book of Secrets”. This title is important, because it represents every story and every poem – books are filled with secrets for us to realize. These are secrets about ourselves. These secrets tell us about who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going.
One day I will not be here, or you will not be here, but this ‘book of secrets’ will still be here. And inside this book will be our story. About all the struggles we have endured. All the happiness we have felt. We are the character of our own novels. Our lives are just stories. And unlike us, these stories will never die. We leave this world, we leave behind to story of our life.
God has given us a mind by which we understand, and an imagination by which we create. And just as God has given us his books – the Quran, the Bible, the Torah – we have written our own books. We have created stories, poems, philosophies and art that communicate our ideas, values and beliefs. We have written books that document our history, and open our minds and imaginations. Every time I write or read a poem, I understand a little bit more who I am and where my place is in the universe. Books contain idea, and ideas help us understand and create change, and this helps us live better, more fulfilling lives.
Please read this book, and many others. Please write your own story, discover you own “secrets”. A poet that I read when I was young wrote: Why worry? We are but leaves rustling on a tree. Let the tree worry.
I am who I am because of you and mom. If you ever doubt the impact you have had on the world, you need only to look at me. My success is your success. This is a debt I can never repay.

Your son,
Jehangir

Victory
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: January 1, 2005

Time is passing
Tonight
Things are changing
Although we still cannot see
I am loved
The violence has fallen away
Quiet, for now

I will not say
That we have arrived
That the war will not continue
Struggle forever remains
We will be sacrificed, I am sure

Let those who spill blood
Remember tonight
As defeat
And let us remember it
As our ever-lasting victory
A clenched fist held high
(this time for hope)
If only for the last time