Four Decades And A Poem

by Lencio Rodrigues

  and geologists’ knowledge will thrive,

  on this, once loaded land.

  Ivory heads of those that walked here,

  are hoisted like scarecrows,

  in boundless barren fields,

  hollering at those traipsing their land,

  Who hungered and struggled,

  for molecules of survival,

  Smirking at the horizons,

  a fading reek of rotting leather

  rises and meets the ochre sky…

  Arabian Sunset

  In the midst of the vast Hatta desert,

  Sky stretching as far as the sand

  as if the earth is made up of

  just two elements.

  The sun descending,

  with the tunes of the Oudh,

  changing the blue into mackerel,

  and shading it with dusk.

  This beautiful sun, so alive,

  Regal, a rich crimson red

  Mystic and reverent

  makes all cares of the world

  seem so trivial.

  4WDs resting

  at the calling of the maghrib,

  as it goes down, slowly, demurely,

  beyond every horizon

  watching a thousand eyes staring at himself.

  Come With the Wind and Dance ~ For Rouvier

  (Written in the Autumn of 2008)

  Recollecting:

  We went to bring you home one last time,

  And the first thing they did was hand over

  your wedding ring from your finger.

  We sighed in unison, gasped a little

  thinking how more cruel this world could get.

  No one cried.

  We looked at your once huge body,

  young, so young, lying in that massive coffin,

  which I thought was only meant for people whose time is up.

  We kept looking at you,

  now small, shriveled beyond recognition,

  dressed as if for a grand occasion.

  After lowering you to where your body belonged,

  We came home and wept…

  Your room was still filled with the

  traces of chemicals they injected into you,

  without any outcome.

  But that was how it was s’posed to be.

  I shall miss you at my wedding,

  Everybody in the family will be there…Except you.

  How you would have danced to a song or two,

  only after making sure all went well.

  Your name exists on the “guests expected” list,

  For I know you’ll be there, present.

  Wherever you are, you’ll surely come,

  So, in the wind I send you the invitation,

  For how else can I reach you?

  Trolley Jam

  insert

  a coin, grab

  your trolley

  push it!

  No signal lights of red and green,

  No rules at all in these crowded lanes,

  Disorderly drivers pushing their trolleys,

  Folks not apologizing for all their follies.

  Promotions, discounts, Oh what craze!

  Shopping is such a pain these days.

  You can’t horn, can’t overtake as little imps graze,

  Older kids pushing smaller siblings who inside laze,

  One struggles to push, while other enjoys a joyride,

  Adding to commotion, no one hears if they cried.

  Then rolls the vacuum machine amidst the crowd,

  Pushing people aside but no one screams aloud.

  You end up rolling your shopping trolley to and fro

  Wasting time as trouble in your knees begins to grow

  With yet another ordeal of the queue at checkout counter,

  trying to recollect if you missed out anything, made a blunder,

  entertaining yourself sometimes as cashiers catch some fraud,

  happy by the time you’re home, your chicken is thawed!!!

  ***

  The Truth About my Land (Double Rictameter)

  My land

  Oh I hear thee!

  Calling my name aloud.

  When I step on your sacred soil

  The smell keeps me safe in your warm embrace.

  You sent me to this foreign land

  To find myself the truth

  That vanished from

  My land

  The truth

  Peace, harmony

  Prejudiced government

  Where all the evil creeps and seeps

  As hearts watch thousand tears silently shed

  Of a mother whose child is snatched

  From its nursing breast

  Pleading to see

  The truth

  ***

  Junk

  I ruffle and shuffle

  through things I have accumulated over the years.

  Like a collector

  of pointless pens and primitive picture postcards,

  Key chains and hopelessly twisted keys,

  Suitcases and locks of suitcases that don’t travel anymore,

  Old radios with rusted circuits,

  cassettes and watches that have run out of time,

  crockery and cutlery: my reputation would be at stake!

  Magazines telling stale tales

  and empty diaries dating back to the 80’s

  with plain cardboard paperbacks,

  (not that I’d make a wallet if it were leather)

  Clothes that don’t fit me

  and I know I will never wear.

  I moved house to house

  clearing my wardrobe, throwing tons of clothes,

  (since the church closed donations for charity)

  But much older clothes, how they lie there still…!

  one for the unavailability of color,

  and the other, my favorite,

  and another, because I still like it,

  and yet another one because it was gifted,

  and one more I think I will alter and wear.

  Blunt reasons!!! More and more reasons…

  I attempt clearing this wealth several times,

  But it all comes back and remains in drawers,

  wardrobes, corners and wherever there is space in the house.

  I look at some of the things and memories cloud around me,

  Connecting me to those times, those people

  and sentiments keep them aside one last time.

  Others are “just in case” cases, never to come to use!

  Parking Officer on Nasr Square

  Leaning against his commission,

  hand on his creasing forehead,

  one leg, bent like a flamingo

  against the tall building,

  pondering,

  with a look of a butcher.

  I wonder of his scheme today,

  as he takes one long stroll

  in grimy dust and burning sun

  Trying to catch a defaulter

  If he’s lucky to get one.

  Later

  Standing under some shade,

  receipt book in his merciless hand,

  Wondering

  about his pay for the day.

  So he takes one big walk down the road

  and tic-tac-toe,

  there you go, unlucky fellas

  this just wasn’t your day:

  You parked out of place

/>   over-parked by three minutes…

  and there’s just no excuse,

  Declares, like Pilate “what I have written, I have written”

  if you’re there, present at the fourth minute.

  Pen, out of his pocket

  and your car number onto his receipt

  tucked behind the wiper

  lies your ticket!

  Perfect Peace

  There are no broad-shouldered people

  on the escalator today,

  everyone standing on one side

  letting me walk down as I please.

  for once I don’t have to dodge and scurry

  for my morning train

  as the one going in the opposite direction, leaves,

  ~ empty as usual.

  Mine will come anytime soon,

  while my time is running out

  watching a man in his 60’s play hide and seek

  behind the information and advertisement stands

  with a little child.

  I like what I see…

  the policeman on patrol smiles at me

  I like that too,

  I wish nothing should ruin this day

  of perfect peace…

  but my train comes full

  ~ this itself being a call of duty.

  I shove myself jostling and squeezing

  against passengers with rough moods

  unwilling to move.

  As the train leaves, I see the game continue on the platform

  ~ this time, a clapping game.

  this must return the smile

  on the policeman’s face.

  Cities of the Century

  Ultra elite boulevards and roads like snakes

  Snake over and under civilized citizens of current century

  There is no time for pain: the tears of the crying would be too few

  to fill the tanks of fountains in front of plazas

  But the glint of neon camouflages those that are blue.

  Lips, in the night glitter with lip-gloss and psychedelic lights

  of Jezebels in high heels: Oh how they make the city sway!

  Envy tearing the frock of Giorgio Armani

  Gigolos masquerading, parading the sparkly streets

  With cab drivers often landing at the police station.

  Life of extravagant squander, debts, bets and credit cards

  The city needs no pillows of soft feathers: it never sleeps

  Living by day on sedatives and feasting on fast food and gourmet

  Kitchens, cleaner than living rooms for they’re hardly used…

  They never cook, but mess around the city.

  Birds, bewildered to fly over flyovers with supersonic traffic

  Or rest in lit trees: no consideration for the least of creatures

  women loving women and men doing same without being discreet

  ‘Cause laws have been made for those who changed ways

  Like love, freedom being given to those who want it.

  Nights at Casbah

  Sweet scented smoke swirls

  from scattered tables,

  and shishas in the soft glow,

  amidst shadows and dim lights.

  Silhouettes of starlets,

  crooning, grooving on stage,

  and harlots shuffling in the corners.

  Smooth Arabic fusion

  feeds his soul and fills his night.

  Without intent,

  her rhythm rocks his body

  to the ecstatically luscious beats,

  as the starlet resumes to whirl,

  With a voice that touches

  his passions, deep, deep down

  while the harlot caresses his chest,

  whispering seductively between tunes,

  until they finally leave the Casbah.

  You’ve lived with extreme

  dangers, the death-defying

  strangers, playing, handling

  crocs, arousing in audience,

  fears and shocks. With your

  unquestioned adeptness and

  charm with nothing less, all

  the creatures seemed to obey

  your “law”(?), keeping mum

  and shutting their angry jaw.

  Marvelous magician to kids

  on TV, surely missing you on

  Animal Planet & Discovery,

  where your silence shall be

  voiced forever, recapping

  your skill, incomparable and

  clever. Deadly decades of

  danger didn’t get you down

  But a stingray’s strangeness

  had your destiny bound. One

  in a million thing to happen

  to the one man in a million,

  You – Steve Irwin will be in

  memory for your Wild Passion.

  A Candle for the One in a Million, Steve Irwin

  In The Mirror

  Sunday morning finds me like a log

  I leave the breakfast table,

  drinking soda instead of coffee.

  The window

  from where our silhouettes

  took glimpse at our dreams

  and the rising sun,

  needs varnishing.

  Right now,

  I would like to see the obscurity

  dissipate,

  And more than anything

  I would like to see the birds outside,

  fly far away,

  far from the vicinity of this sadness.

  I can stay indoors all day

  accompanying Yanni’s “In the mirror”

  playing repeatedly,

  something must have pressed the remote control setting to auto repeat

  while I fell asleep on the couch,

  as the last notes of his piano

  left me looking into myself…

  Auntie Mary’s Heaven

  It would always be cool in Baga,

  even on the hottest day of May

  the woods would speak to your loneliness,

  while you replied with a clap

  or a shoo, driving away squirrels

  and monkeys feasting on your fruit.

  Always wrapped in nature

  you knew what it would be like

  and where you’d be

  when this life would be over…

  Today you’re living in no more different place

  than you had been “living”

  the only difference is,

  ~ you’re gone from human sight,

  revisiting the woods when they’re lonely.

  Your grave is a remembrance

  of how beautiful you were,

  brave and bold too,

  safely distant from trouble

  like the gravestones.

  The serenity of the cemetery

  tells of the peaceful life you led.

  If I must know what happiness means,

  I just have to visit your heaven, once in a while…

  Origami Wish

  In a world of usual day-to-day struggle and strife

  Little Boy devastates a city so large, destroys innocent life

  Leaving all paralyzed, killing some, keeping others

  to narrate their chronicles like tales told by forefathers.

  Tales of thousand paper cranes, peace and paying the price

  Tales of suffering and tales of sacrifice

  Tale of a brave little victim, a girl
worthy of praise

  Lesson she teaches us, needed for our world always.

  Thousand paper cranes would grant what she wished

  fear befell her when all of the paper finished

  medicine packing and prescriptions folded to take flight

  get-well-gift wrappings disappeared out of sight.

  How would she take a glimpse of the peace she hoped

  What’d she do if her six hundred forty four cranes eloped

  But her wish was the wish of her friends

  Though she’d be gone soon, they’d bring peace to the lands.

  And so she leaves the world with her one last dream

  Her cranes to fly throughout the world with a peace theme

  Her wish made to come true by friends finishing the cranes

  Sacrifices and wishes, washed Little Boy’s stains.

  Peace written very clearly, on every flying crane’s wing

  so we see into the highest heights, this signaling

  cranes, paper cranes easy to fold, easy to burn

  peace is all but something man has found difficult to learn.

  (October 2005 – 50th death anniversary of Sadako Sasaki)

  Driving, Driving Me Nuts!!!

  Got my hands, years ago on the wheel

  drove out of edge of roads, into the fields

  pedestrians laughing, thinking I will make it never,

  I see them thoughts, in mirrors side and rear.

  I observe every move other drivers make

  as they start the engine and release the brake

  and how much pressure they give the clutch,

  it all seems very easy, but not as much.

  So I go professional thinking it’d be easier

  They waste my time teaching me rules on paper

  With charges too high: these Motor Driving Schools

  prolonging sessions as if I am a hard headed fool!

  I drive amidst the heavy city traffic

  with the instructor by my side it’s so tragic

  Pointing several mistakes, yelling time and again

  then says “lets go driving over the weekend”

  There he winks and tells me to observe his driving

  Smiles and says, “it’s my job to teach you the best thing

  Someday, when you get your license

  you’ll be a great driver with great road sense”

  Of Old Souq and the Press

  Sauntering through the sandaled sounds