Home page • Table of Contents • Send your writings and e-mail to: Editors@tanbou.com



Poetry in English

Poem by Jack Hirschman

A lone farmer, photo by Don Gurewitz

A lone farmer —photo par Don Gurewitz

The Apocryphon Arcane
I.

So Gestell
after all
does root down
through the Greek
to the Hebrew/Aramaic
verb Shin-Yod-Tav—to place, set, put,
the root Shin-Tav-Lamed meaning:
to transplant.

From which the Nasoreans (still
in the lowlands of southern Iran)
derive the name Sitil (Seth),
the transplanted soul,
who was the 3rd son of Adam
and the genus of the human soul,
archetype of a spiritually perfect
human personality,
sometimes seen as religion itself
greeting souls on route
to baptism in the Jordan.

That hole of hopelessness
before which the lips tremble
and memory masadas

“rather than surrender”.

Now, once more
suicide flowers
blossom
in religion’s pure shit,
and from the smearasure
of ideology

the dumb doom dam of blood in the stools
bursts,
and the human dice cast in stone
gaze at each other with snake eyes:

to murder,
to martyr,
so close, the two

collapsed

the Twins in New York
to avenge and destroy
what capital’s technology had framed,
what the Jew had

(this being-against-the-self
at last essentially manifest),

oh, and under both,
the smoldering roots
stating hate and want
of State, hating the triumphing
State triumphantly.

II.

For cometh the 4th,

the secret language
despite being utterly
thrown open

concealed as it’s
revealed,
an apocryphon,

a naked kiss behind
the ear whispered into
the depths of hearing

by Aleph-Daleth-Mem,
which is red,
the secret Adam Kasia
made of the future before
even Adam and Eve

and now as the ether of Death
nevermore mournfully
alive at suicide’s side
like straight ahead info
that gathers to itself
and challenges with:
Ayat Akhras is going,
Ayat Akhras a beautiful Palestinian teenager,
Ayat Akhras is going to murder herself
for her people
and for ten thousand
or twenty-five thousand
dollars for her family

and what can be said, since, after
being hung from ceilings and whipped,
after having a ball-point pen filler
shoved into his penis, after having dragged
his broken blue body to the toilet bowl
for water for the first time in a week,
after having been spat and pissed upon
and forced to lie in his own vomit
for hours on end,
after having seen every atom in his body
shattered and wailing out of a billion voids,

is it any wonder his daughter
one day straps
god to her waist
and blows herself
and 10 Israelis up
in downtown Tel Aviv?

III.

O unutterable Must,
O orgasm of the western dildaic
midnight in reverse,
putting all violin solo suicides
to shame,
overturning the jug
and inundating the world
with baptismal fire!

Death has connected.
Death is whispering under the skin:
Eat my heart!
Circumcise the foreskin
of my heart!
Arcane from the inside,
explode and be

dead reckoning
RKN,

think in roots,
and of a people suicided,
who bring their chains
to funerals that are blasts

of a resistance
everyone understands
and everyone resists understanding.

Nor is there height of song
now that Ground Death
has been founded
in every frame,
in everyone framed,
passing before one’s own
hanged/hung
(well-cocked)
gun

with a withering now in the gravemost

when she detonated with
the weight of the world
strapped to her waist

for humiliation is a burning
only Death
can put out

between kadosh and kaddish
between holy and elegy
between dimyon and medammeh
between imagination and the daemon

Death’s eggs are being broken
on the head of the world
laughably if our stitches
weren’t of wounds screaming
as they’re torn

by the darkness
ex-ing the future
as soon as the Ef button’s pushed
like a fuck-forward

with its burning ice-cold,
its freezing piece of glass
skoptzying through
the gonads of a mishnah,

with that blessing by curses
that lives the suicided
life we still remember
in the partisan woods,

the foreskin of the heart
in our mouth,
and no going back until the return
and no turning back except
to turn again.

—Jack Hirschman, 2002

Poems by Suzy Magloire-Sicard

Sadness

A country in the world
a town in that country
a street in that town
a sidewalk on that street
blood on that sidewalk
a slain man in that blood
a crowd around that man
a child in that crowd
a heart in that child
sadness in that heart!

Don’t

Don’t try to stop me on my way to love
for I have fruit to harvest,
some flowers to plant
and someone to kiss

Don’t try to stop me because
I love
the tamtam
of the rain on the hot tin roof
the song
of the birds in the silent dawn
the whisper
of the wind in the untended grass

Don’t try to stop me from living
because you are
dead!

If I jump to
a drum
and you turn to
a waltz
my hips
swinging
and your feet
waltzing
can meet half way and we can at least be
friends.

Don’t try to stop me on my way to love

Don’t try to stop me!
Don’t!
(1998)

Because I am a poet!

I can make you see the moon in the middle of the day
I can make you see mountain where there is just a molehill
I can make you see elephants where there is nothing but flies
Because I am a poet!

I can make you feel warm in the coldest winter night
I can make you feel cool, walking on the hottest bricks
I can make you feel the sun in the coldest winter day
Because I am a poet!

I can make you smell flowers in places where there is none
I can make you smell the sea in the driest desert sand
I can make you smell country in the deepest city fog
Because I am a poet!

I can make you hear bird song in the thunder of a storm
I can make you hear the wind in the fall of dying leaves
I can make you hear a song in the summer’s falling rain
Because I am a poet!

I can make you taste aloe and you’ll find it very sweet
I can make you taste water and make you believe it is wine
I can even make you taste mud, you’ll just call it honey
Because I am a poet!

Because I am a poet, I can make you feel
Sad, happy, hungry, full…
I can make you cry,
I can make you smile
I can even make you fly without wings
Why not?
I am a poet!

Wake up!

Have you ever stared into a little child face and
tried to make him smile?
Have you ever looked at a very old man and
wondered if you’ll live that old?
Have you ever got on your knee to look at the labor of an ant colony?
Have you ever gazed at the stars and wondered how they can be so far?
Have you ever walked in a summer rain and let it really soak
you through?
Have you ever stood on a street to admire the style of a fence?
Have you ever walked into a garden and taken time to smell the flowers?
Have you ever run, have you ever skipped like a kid?
just because you felt like it?
If not, stop and think!
Maybe “while trying to make a living, you
have forgotten to live”,

Wake up!

Waiting

November flew away, like all the other months
leaving within my hearts a deepening languor
I am alone waiting for one whom seeing me
Will then say in a breath “Now, I find you at last”
I am waiting, waiting and as days are passing
I utter many sighs.
A new wave Sister Ann I see nothing coming.
But the passing minutes, and vanishing hours
Speed up maybe the day of the great encounter.
I am hoping for that day to be a bright Sunday
A bright Sunday morning brand new, without dust.
A Sunday just open like a newly born babe
On that day I will wear the whitest dress I own
In my eyes now devoid of all the old rancors
will shine a brand new light, a light full of candor
A light you’ll give me when we meet each other
You will stop to greet me and I will smile at you.
And there will be nothing humane around us.
It will be only you, me, and the bright
singing birds who never shed a tear.
And you will hug me slowly, tenderly in your arms saying:
“Quick, let us love each other before it is too late!”

—Suzy Magloire-Sicard

Poem by Tontongi

Jenin

(dedicated to the memory of the hundreds of victims of the Israeli army’s April 2002 massacre of Palestinian refugees and national liberation resistants in the Palestinian town of Jenin)

I. Cadavers from a long time passed

They invaded in long lines
geometrical incursions
for diabolical aims;
they invaded with uproars
made of mortuary laments
Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza
had to go
along with their people
the siege didn’t last
as long as the valiant people’s quest
for Allah’s pleasing
and for freedom quest!

They invaded in long lines
of handsome commandeurs
orderly positioned
as Roman Centurions
helicopters and tanks
that demolish with skills
the best manual on hand
on how to best kill and maim
without leaving traces
except perhaps the brownish
darkened flattened houses
cadavers from a long time passed.

They invaded in long lines
of dream-destroyers
memory-erasers
the people had long veins
and deep roots;
they came in long lines
amidst the children’s cries
with goals to break the spines
of all that is still breathing life.

They invaded with intent to demise
millenaries of bond and spilled blood
for the spirit of the lost land;
they came in long lines
the people had built their own shrine
and a long line
of peace makers
and suicided-bombers
a long line
of dreamers.

They invaded
and put pain under siege
no water and no meds
no light and no sight
no life
piles of pain
under curfews that last
as long as evil deeds could.

They invaded to break bones
blow up houses and kill all living beings
seeming too invested in ideals and dreams
they came with a plan
for diabolical aim
they came with a plan
and the people had their own.

II. Real Blood For A Peace With Justice

The pavement looked like a red carpet
of real blood broken bones
seen as rocks in a surreal enclave;
houses burned and bulldozed
killing point blank
with no regrets
convoys of hurried tanks
and piles of dead rebels
and not so rebel dead
a.k.a. terrorists for the sake of the cause
the almost extinct
but always renewed clan
in Fatima, Mohammed and David’s land.

The pavement was also made of tears
on the other side of the sacrificial lamb
a proud and beautiful people
had made the butcher its savior
and the tanks its God’s prayer
the spoiler had entered the sphere
a mortal punishment.

A human bomb is always a tragedy
and denied rights are still rights
we shall heed the despair of a soul
so entangled in pain
and in giving pain
he spent his youthful age
never to see a flower;
all victims have the right to be
and being.

One shall not subjugate
and hope for happiness to flourish
the powerful state is obligated
to the sake of human wellbeing
the spoiler had entered the sphere
so had the critical conscience.

The Palestinian people will be free;
it’s the fate they had chosen
since the beginning of the fight for life;
the people will be free
that was always their call.

—Tontongi Boston April 12, 2002. Li vèsyon kreyòl powèm sa a nan Pwezi ann ayisyen

Home Page • Table of Contents • Send your writings and your letters to:Editors@tanbou.com