Poem Where You Move Forward
By: Jehangir Saleh
Written: March 23, 2005

Slightly behind
Because I have pushed you ahead
Hoping that life would take over
As it is suppose to for all of us

For now on
I will have watch
Like a soccer mom
But you are my husband
And you are trying to grow

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

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
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
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

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.