Mother, since you left this world
my life has not been the same
like a dying rose
that has not felt sun nor rain
My heart longs for healing
for sadness seems to be winning
Like a dying rose
happiness has become a stranger
to my soul
Like a dying rose
......
They sent me a salwar kameez
&nb sp; peacock-blue,
& nbsp; and another
glistening like an orange split open,
embossed slippers, gold and black
&nbs p; points curling.
Candy-striped glass bangles
&n bsp; snapped, drew blood.
Like at school, fashions changed
&n bsp; in Pakistan -
......
Gassing the woodchucks didn't turn out right.
The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange
was featured as merciful, quick at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.
Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
......
1992
1) I was born in a Free City, near the North Sea.
2) In the year of my birth, money was shredded into
confetti. A loaf of bread cost a million marks. Of
course I do not remember this.
3) Parents and grandparents hovered around me. The
world I lived in had a soft voice and no claws.
......
Half squatter, half tenant (no rent)—
a sort of inheritance; white,
in your thirties now, and supposed
to supply me with vegetables,
but you don't; or you won't; or you can't
get the idea through your brain—
the world's worst gardener since Cain.
Titled above me, your gardens
ravish my eyes. You edge
the beds of silver cabbages
......
it never came with conclusion as how the night took its time to raise a sunshine
to survive in the wild makes no sense for such a young wolf
to be part of a pack , to learn how to defend , avoid danger , hunt — crushed hares , bison , and moose
much more to be close to them all
blood dripping all the way to my mom’s home
at heightened peril of death , all lone and numb from hunger
wandering through unknown terrain , limping , some bones broken
no such scheme in mind for how the high spirits turned way upside down
to ponder why it unfolded just as it did
......
April Brooks was four years old, prattling a blue streak, like comets;
Or backwards walking time, seizing swiftly, days of golden promise.
April lived with parents and older sister, in the sunshine of a valley;
And petals wore dew pearls and fragrance, all along the green alley.
April and sister, Dawn, loved horses, though still too young to ride;
But, they adored fairy-tales about them, like lilac, at rose's bedside.
Fuchsia was the color of fall skies, and the fun year was fading away,
......
My children tell me of a mystic
Living by the lake
In a green and purple house
Surrounded by gardens of giant flowers
Who takes small dreamers
On uncharted adventures where
They choose their directions and she
Finds their way
My children tell me
......
Here I sit
On my mother’s tomb
It was only yesterday
I was in her womb
She was here
One minute
And then
She was gone
It is here
......
Gratitude knots in my throat.
I am surrounded by the bounty of her sacrifices, yet I let it slip through my fingers.
My heart aches with the weight of her expectations, each one a burden I fail to shoulder.
I am the idle child in the garden of plenty, the squanderer of every gift bestowed upon me.