Passion-II

Passion-II 

She told herself that he was worth no more

Of all her tears and unrequited love,

Remembering the many scars she bore—

Betrayals, witnessed by the gods above,

That she had only learned of later, yet

So painful then, with wounds she’d buried deep,

That even now she still could not forget

Those gifts of venom that were hers to keep.

And yet, she loved him, more than honor, life—

That man who would not take her as his wife,

But stole her heart as none had done before

Or ever since.  She only wanted more

Of what he’d tossed her, knowing she was his.

So love was hate, as passion often is.

2016 May 14th, Sat.

Brooklyn, New York

----------------------------------------------------

For perhaps a more pleasant note, see:
 
Passion
  
http://thedailypoet.blogspot.com/2013/05/passion-i-heard-evening-moan-in-deep.html
   

What Still Remains?

What Still Remains?

Whatever be your credo or belief,
At times, you'll need some solace, some relief,
For that, on which you based your hopes and dreams,
Might be, in time, your aspiration’s thief.

For who can live for long without a loss,
Or never, racked and torn, tormented, toss?
Whenever we may think we’ve mastered life,
It turns and swiftly shows us who’s the boss.

The very things for which we’ve labored, fought,
Have focused on and all the rest forgot,
Those things, as life unwinds, may turn to dust,
And all our strivings then be set to naught.

And what remains, when all appears amiss,
When we, who’ve labored long, are still remiss?
Remember then, there still remains the dawn,
And in the darkness, smile and blow a kiss.

And when a faker, in a tie and suit,
Demands accounting, in his mad pursuit,
Then bow and hand to him a chit, on which
It says, “We’ve quit the race, so all is moot.”

For when our life’s account is drawn and closed,
Then what remains, of all we once supposed
Was worth the life we offered as its price?
“This question,” we are told, “is poorly posed.”

What then remains is still the work we did,
Though this, with time, will be in cobwebs hid –
But more than that, and lasting still a while,
The love we offered, though we weren’t bid.

Though falsehoods live, while truth appears to die,
And most accede, and few still question why,
And though the cause appears as hopeless, still
The truth remains the truth, and not the lie.
    
Let all coercion and compulsion be
Dissolved by that, which lives within a tree
And lets its branches, in the sun, delight,
That joy that makes us each, for a moment, free.

So in the valley deep of sorrows, sigh,
But never, to your courage, say, “Goodbye.”
There lives, in us, the stillness and the fire,
And these will live, though you and I will die.

2013 December 6th, Fri.
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
 

Her Secret Vice

  
Her Secret Vice
  
“What's your hobby?” asked her friend.
“You heard me. Speak, and don't pretend.
I told you mine was postage stamps,
A pastime I acquired from gramps.
But you have never told me. Speak.
I've asked you several times this week.”

She could not speak, for quite a while.
But then, she tried to force a smile.
“Your game is up.” She told herself.
“It can't be kept to just yourself,
This thing you do, your secret shame.
Perhaps she'll understand, not blame.”

And thinking of her secret pleasure,
She found her courage, in some measure.
She'd bowed her head – and looking low,
Had studied well, companion's toe.
But now she tried to meet her eye.
“It's mathematics, on the sly.”

She'd murmured, what she could not shout.
At last!  Her secret now was out.
But searching in the hearer's face,
She saw the worst – a maid's disgrace.
And flustered, she looked down again,
While feeling, in her heart, that pain...

She'd hoped her friend could take, what men
Could not divine – or ever ken.
And so, she'd spilled her secret vice.
But see, her friend had turned to ice.
She saw her look of shock and horror,
And so was filled with sudden terror.

She wondered if she might be blamed
For feeling frightened and ashamed.
She wondered how to fix, what she
Had done – or how and where to flee.
She even wondered, if her life
She now should end, with pill or knife...

“But no,” she thought, “that's foolishness!
Let others think their nastiness.
For if my hobby gives me joy,
Why should I not, this gift, enjoy?
Was I not made by the Creator
To be, like Her, a calculator?”

And saying this, to soothe her pain,
She thought of pleasures past again.
The calculus was exquisite
For those, with skills prerequisite.
But even novices find joys
In playing with their basic toys...

And for the ones, who're more advanced
And have, in rings, with tensors danced,
Or played with algebras of Lie,
They know, what glory this can be.
What joys compare, upon this Earth,
With proofs – or giving theorems birth?

And so, with bashful, downcast eye,
She took her pleasures on the sly,
Remembering her sessions past,
In fields, with groups, that seemed to last
Beyond what humans could endure
And yet emerge, in essence, pure...

But glancing at her shell-shocked friend,
She knew her respite had to end.
But how, alas, she could explain
What she had done, escaping pain,
She did not know. But should she try,
Or wait till other asked her, “Why?”

2013 July 8th, Sun.
Brooklyn

Radha-Krishna

Radha-Krishna

The rain clouds – they have gathered and they've blotted out the sun.
The rain clouds – they are gathered but the rain has not begun.
It is warm and it is humid, and the cloying air is still.
So the breezes are not blowing – but we hope that soon they will.

We wait in expectation of the breeze that ruffles leaves,
We wait with skin that's fevered and with mind that still believes.
We wait in meditation for the rain that's coming soon.
We wait, with perspiration, on this torrid afternoon.

Will the god of thunder, lightning bless the city with his rain?
Will our hopes and our beseeching be regarded – or in vain?
Will the tempest shake the branches, will the heavens break and pour?
Will we only sweat and suffer, unrequited, even more?

So the maiden waits for lover, who is tardy in his love.
So the shaman does his rain-dance, for the being up above.
Yet the leaves are still in silence, and the tempest is deferred,
As throughout these heated islands, all our prayers go unheard.

Will he hurry to his Radha, who is waiting for his touch?
Will he answer adoration?  Is she asking for too much?
She is parched and she is fevered. She is restless and in pain.
Will her quencher, who is Krishna, be her jilter yet again?

You can hear the flute he's playing, in the distance, in the dark...
To the tune that he is playing, with his Radha, we can hark...
But alas, she is uncoupled – and she waits for him in vain.
He has found another gopi.  There is little to explain.
























It is summer – and we swelter, here in Brooklyn, in the Bronx,
In Manhattan, Staten Island and in Queens  – as do the monks,
Who will suffer and be silent, as they offer of their hurts,
While we suffer as did Radha – as we offer of our words.

2013 June 24th, Mon.
Brooklyn

Note:     gopi:  cowherd-maiden / milkmaid
 

Passion

Passion
   
I heard the evening moan in deep delight,
As the sun went down and the day gave way to night.
And later, I could hear her beating heart
That raced as she succumbed to her lover's art.

Pregnant, with the sightless seed that grows,
Nurturing that child within her dark,
I heard the evening, turned to night, that keened
As the shining moon arose and sailed, serene.

And through the night, I woke and slept again,
Until the light of dawn gave birth to day.
So Winter's passed un-mourned – and lusting Spring
Has wooed and won the Earth in the month of May.

And as the sun mounts up and sends his shafts
To pierce the Earth that's moist from the evening's rain,
The root will delve, the stem will seek the sun,
As the sighted child is born from lust and pain.
   
2013 May 11th Sat and 12th Sun, 
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
(some definite articles added 2016-05-21)
    
1st stanza and 1st 2 lines of 2nd stanza
  – May 11th, Sat. evening, walking east along 67th Street
  – and then south-east down New Utrecht Avenue, beneath the elevated D line
2nd stanza (last 2 lines) & 3rd stanza 
  – Sat. night, at the asphalt playground by the 71st Street station
4th stanza 
  – May 12th Sun, early afternoon, at home

Four Avas and One Holly

  
The two poems below were inspired by real women, Ava and Holly, whom I knew and admired from a distance.
 
I have put the two poems together here, because both were born rather spontaneously, and both have persisted for a long time in my mind. When I wrote them, it seemed to me that the poems already existed, in a platonic, non-material sense, and that I was but the vehicle, by  happenstance, for their materialization. Yet, no doubt, both “Ava” and “Holly” were examples of my own unconscious mind at work, with the language and sentimentality reflecting my own limitations. 

==============================================

Holly
  
Lonely Holly, sad-eyed Holly,
Share with me your melancholy.
Speak no words -- but let your eyes
Speak to me and make me wise.


Arjun Janah <  sjanah@aol.com  >
College Park, Maryland, 1970’s
  
Notes
  
The four lines that make up "Holly", above, entered my mind one day --  almost readymade, as it were, in the 1970's.  The lines seem to have been jingling quietly inside my head ever since, since I had no difficulty, today, recalling the words, written almost thirty years ago.

Arjun Janah < sjanah@aol.com >
Brooklyn, New York. 2006 March 4.
============================================== 
   
Below is a poem, "Ava", that has been rearranged into four parts.  These four parts were originally one poem, entitled “Doggerel for Ava”, written around 1991.
 
At that time, a colleague, Ava, and I came to have a friendship, almost as if of cousins. Between us, there was a connection, or recognition, that both of us acknowledged, but could not explain.

The spirit of the poem below, if not the actual language, seemed to come from this temporary, shared connection to something beyond our temporal selves.  As is clear in the poem, a memory seems to have been awakened -- a memory that was not of our present conscious lifetimes.  Was it an unconscious fantasy, a memory of a dream, deja vu, or something else?  I do not know.
  
Ava, Part 1 -- Recollection
  
On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

At dawn, up on the mountain,
In the mist you passed me by,
I saw the wind lift up your headdress,
And your eyes were like the sky.

That morning, on the meadow,
Whose feet, so wet with dew?
I lifted up my eyes and saw
That selfsame, smiling you.

At noontime, in the forest,
I felt your presence near.
You turned your head and saw me,
And startled like a deer.

In the silence of the desert,
I saw you from afar;
And lost you in the shimmer
Of sand and heated air.

At sunset, by the river,
With waters turned to gold –
The sun was on your skin and hair,
Your eyes were laughing bold.

On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

***********************

Ava, Part 2 -- Presumption
   
Were you once a priestess,
At an ancient shrine?
Did I come to you to ask
If you would be mine?

Did I ever kiss you?
Did I hear you sigh?
Did I hold you in my arms?
Did you watch me die?

On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

***********************

Ava, Part 3 -- Longing
   
Summers come and summers go,
Autumn winds and winter snow
Yield to springtime’s gentle rain.
Will I see my love again?

Will I see you once again,
And look into your eyes?
Will I see you smile again,
And see back into time?

On what forgotten planet,
‘Neath what forgotten stars,
Did I first hear your footsteps,
Approaching in the dark?

***********************

Ava, Part 4 -- Faith
  
Yes, I shall see you yet again,
And look into your eyes.
My heart will stop, then beat again.
And I shall see you smile.

Arjun Janah < sjanah@aol.com >
Brooklyn, New York, circa 1991 
  
*************************

Notes
  
The only poetry that I can recall writing prior to "Ava"  are:  (a) the four line piece called “Holly”, which I wrote in the 1970’s; and (b) a few things that I wrote during my first summer in New York, in 1988, while recovering from my first year of teaching in the public schools. These last appear to be lost, and I cannot remember them fully.

One evening,  in or around 1991, after returning home from work, the whole of what I have now called Ava 1, above, and parts of what I have now separated out, and called Ava, II - IV, came to me, quite out of the blue.  I wrote it down,  quickly and effortlessly --  in one sitting, almost as if taking dictation.  Later that evening  (or it could have been the next day), I added small pieces to the end of “Ava”.  This I did more deliberately.

It is now 2006 – about fifteen years later.  I no longer have any records at hand of the Ava poem.  But its first few quatrains have run through my head periodically.

Years after writing it, I remember e-mailing “Ava” to my sister, Monua, after she had moved from New York to California. I did this in response to a wonderful poem that she had composed and e-mailed to us.   Unfortunately, both Monua's computer and mine went through crashes subsequently.  After Monua's passing in January of 2004, I inherited her last laptop, and began using it about a year later.  But there is no trace left in it of either poem. 

Remarkably, as I sat down at Monua’s laptop, today, to type out the poem that I had written fifteen years ago, it all seemed to come back – even the pieces I had added subsequent to the initial “revelation”.  

I decided to separate these added pieces, plus the end-part of what I wrote at first sitting, into three other parts that follow the first;  and  have done this above.   I have tried to tie what are now the first three parts of the Ava poem together, by repeating the first stanza of  Ava 1 at the end of each of Avas 2 - 3.   I do not know, however, if this artifice does more harm than good.

Arjun Janah < sjanah@aol.com > Brooklyn, New York, 2006 March 4.