Poem At The End
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: June 13, 2005
it’s still all about me
or you
Yet
Everything in-between seems so dark
Basement still cold
Children don’t play outside anymore
Not because they’re scared, but due to the natural progression of things
So I’m going to stop right here
This is a bad poem
But the author recognises it as such
So don’t panic
You’ve only sort-of wasted your time
Alone
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: June 13, 2005
I wrote my first poem
About being alone
As we know
The best verse is written
In or about isolation
I recall
That I personified the walls
They screamed silence
Tonight
Everything has changed
And nothing has changed
The universe deepens
While I age
Alone again
But you are alone with me
You say
That we are our home
Build our own foundations
Sometimes strong, sometimes not so
But still
Everywhere we are together
We are home
I imagine myself walking in the door
And there you are
While I sit
Cold in my basement
Alone
Evolution
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: June 12, 2005
When I hold your body
It is not just you
That I touch
But histories
That bare their strength in my hands
Many revolutions
Simple ones
Of moon and sun
Woven into the scar on your back
Which my hands find in the dark
The hope of our ancestors
Carried by your feet
Your breathing like tiny dinosaur
As we dance
Holding each other like
Two soldiers before a battle
This is our story and everyone’s story
Our moment, like every moment
Until the end of time
When I say I love you
I mean:
I am comfortable with my place in the universe
And I know that I am decaying
Moving forward toward death
Like those
Who came before me
After The Evening Poem
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: June 7, 2005
lake be still
wait for the rain
one tear falls
another dries, and you kiss my eyes
whispering
Do not be sad
I am going to die too
death in mind
we move closer
somewhere, something
moves apart
Abraham Carried The Light Of God
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: June 7, 2005
Abraham carried the light of God. As he walked to Mt. Moria with Issac, he could not explain what he was doing to his wife. He could not explain what he was doing to himself. Abraham, the first prophet, sacrificed his only son in the hope that somehow, everyone would be ok. And when I young, I often wondered what would have happened had Isaac not turned into a goat.
Poem On Bus
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: June 3, 2005
Moving toward home
On the same bus
I took to school everyday
The night was gentle
Other passengers non-threatening
And for the first time
I allowed myself to say
I was free
My left arm is numb
I feel my veins narrowing
Soon the left side of my body will lose feeling
Except what I choose to remember
To re-create the feeling of touch
Feeling will be memory
A passenger stabs me in the arm
Old Russian woman to my left screams
red of my life stains her hand made dress
as if he womb was bleeding
As my left arm become a piece of meat
And the ambulance arrives
I remember what it felt like to be happy
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
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
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
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