Whither-II

 
Whither-II

The clouds were racing past the moon
that shone within a halo.
“Oh whither are you headed, clouds?”
I asked, in fascination.
They answered not.  They never do.
Such questions go unheeded.

I asked them once, I asked them twice,
I asked them yet again.
They did not answer—whither, whence
Or why—but raced ahead—
or was it back, or sideways?  Do
such things, for clouds, have meanings?

I wandered to the highway.  There,
I saw the cars were racing.
“Oh, whither, cars—and why this haste?”
I asked, in consternation.
They answered not.  They never do.
Such questions go unheeded.
 
2018 May 30th, Wed.
Brooklyn, New York
     

Prayer-on the Chinese New Year

Prayer—on the Chinese New Year

Arjun, being attacked by a lion—that has been distracted by big WC
photographed by Wai-Sin Li, 2018-02-16

Deliver us, oh gods, from competition
Between yourselves—and also that which rages
Between us mortals struggling on this Earth,
And especially between us humans, who
Are racing so that banks and profits grow—
Deceived by those who’re surely human too
Yet feed off human labor, spreading ignorance—
And cheering as their shares of madness climb.

So on this day, as lions and dragons dance
And crackers burst and strew their colored shards,
And coins and notes are wrapped in red and passed,
We do beseech you, move our foolish race
To pause from racing—and to then reflect
On where your Mammon leads the ones who race.

Arjun, survived, writing, "Prayer..."—with CP taking a break and little WC cut off
photographed by Wai-Sin Li, 2018-02-16

2018 February 16th, Fri—Chinese New Year
Chinatown, Manhattan—New York, New York

Packaging

Packaging 

  

 
So you're the one who's just been hired
To do the jobs of those who're fired.
Their number? It was two or three.
From work and income, they are free!
But you are now our newest slave
And you'll survive, if you are brave—
But not in speech or action, no!
But rather, in your letting go
Of all the stuff you'd nursed before—
Your scruples, fuss, and all you know
That you had learned in school and college
And also, maybe, in your village.

For here, where cars and humans jostle,
You’ve got to learn, kid, how to hustle.
We've found out—that all we'd learned
We might as well have tossed and burned.
For that was all about the stuff
About which folks have had enough.
Who cares for how or why or when
Or even what? It’s now, not then!
What use is there in understanding?
The profit comes instead from branding!
For in this world of marketing
What matters is the packaging.

So fie with focus on content!
On selling, you should be intent.
Do not be Santa's slaving elf.
Go sell the goods—and sell yourself!
And if you'd like to cut your losses,
Then always bow down low to bosses.
In offices, do not be bold.
Do not question. Do as told!
Be sure to cover up your ass
And smartly then salute the brass.
If you're savvy and survive,
Perhaps you'll be a boss—and thrive.

As it's in sales, so it's in all.
Do not drop, my friend, the ball.
And if you do, then hide it well—
Or you'll be in for bloody hell!
In this place, you've got to run—
And those who do, can have their fun.
Do not sweat the small details.
The one who does this always fails.
Well, that is all for now. Good luck!
Remember—do not care a f**k!
No matter what the tint of the collar,
It's all, at the end, about the d****r.

2018 January 26th, Fri.
Brooklyn, New York

Maya’s Mist

Maya’s Mist

It’s claimed that humans have advanced and those
who dare to question this are filled with gloom
for reasons other than reality—
that they have conjured, out of progress, doom.

Are there directions, foreordained by gods,
or chosen as the “forward” ones by those
among us who are wisest? Or are we
conditioned by what those, who gain, propose?
 
For we’ve been told and told and told
so many lies, and lies on top of lies,
that we confuse the true and false, and so
we rarely bother still with asking whys.
 
The empires rose and fell and yet the lives
of plants and beasts and humans still went on.
It’s only now that works of men devour
this planet’s life and threaten humankind.

We live in cities, filled with strangers, yet
we see the remnant tribes as backward, lost.
For much that’s primal and is gentle, sweet
we’ve now discarded—and we pay the cost.
 
Which emperor could gain the peace that is?
Which painter could replace the changing sky?
We sense that we have lost the art of bliss.
But who can tell us when and how and why?

Will we awake from this, our troubled dream,
and rub away the sleep, so we can see
that we’ve been racing on the way to hell,
while heaven waits for us to pause and be?

In truth, there is no bliss that lasts for long,
and neither do our heavens, hells exist,
except that we create them, through our thoughts
and words and deeds—while lost in maya’s mist.

2016 November 9th, Wed. 6:36 pm
Brooklyn, New York 

  

Time Again to Run

 
Time Again to Run

There are nuances in nature.
There are shades within ourselves.
But it's "winner" and it's "loser"
For the Donald and his elves.

You are for me or against me.
We are born to run, compete.
So it's victory for the winner.
For the others, it's defeat.

There's a better way to do things—
And there always is the best.
To be quick and more efficient
Is the teaching of the West.

And how the East has taken
That message to its heart!
They will take that style of running
And make, of it, an art.

In the cities by the seaside,
You can see the women run.
They have little time for leisure,
They have little time for fun.

And the leisure they're permitted—
It is not what it should be.
By the shore, the waves are breaking.
But who is there to see?

It's the leisure for consumption.
It's the tour of packaged fun.
It's the holiday that's over,
So it's time again to run.

They run in Hiroshima.
They're racing in Shenzhen.
And in Ho Chi Minh City,
It is time to run again.

2016 October 30, Sun.
Brooklyn, New York
  
https://www.facebook.com/riaz.quadir/posts/10155361065997678
  
https://www.facebook.com/riaz.quadir/posts/10155361065997678?comment_id=10155373674602678&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R%22%7D

  

Slowing Can’t Be Right

 
Slowing Can’t Be Right 

How much of all our suffering is due
To speeding when we should be going slow?
We work and eat and couple now at speed
And rarely notice all the harm we do.

So some can thrive, with sense and conscience stilled,
While others suffer from their actions or
Perceive the things that go unheeded while
We're busy rushing through our hectic lives.

******
 
We live our lives of loneliness and fear
And seek our consolations where we can.
The sun may rise, the little birds may sing
And yet we sleep or go to work in dread.

We live in isolation, torn apart
By all the tempests blowing through our lives:
The storms of Nature and the works of Man—
What others do and what we do ourselves.

We’ve lost the arts of tolerance and fun.
We turn away from relatives and friends
And seek our entertainment and our worth
In things and places distant from our earths.

We learn to race, forgetting how to slow.
We spend our lives acquiring knowledge, things—
While losing wisdom and that freedom true
Of living like the ones still human do.

You’ll find them in the forests and the hills,
In regions far removed, on arctic ice
And in the places of the scorching sun,
Beleaguered now as they are pushed to die.

They do as belly and as conscience bids.
They live and die in goodly company.
They have no money. Their possessions, they
Can carry on their backs as lightest weight.

They pay no rent to landlords or to banks.
They answer to no bosses, being free.
There is, among them, neither “high” nor “low”.
They’re born, they smile and weep, and then they go.

And some might say that I romanticize
The lives of those that dwell in poverty.
But I reply, “What wealth could ever buy
The gems of love and of sincerity?”

And others still might say, “We disagree.
We would not trade our lives for such as these.
Besides, there isn’t room, upon this Earth,
To live as once we did, in misery.”

So each may view the grass that’s distant as
Of greener hue or less than that beneath.
And we might say, “The world is changing, so
We cannot now remain as once we were.”
 
But should we then surrender to the flow
That takes us where some others want us to?
Or should we say, “We still are beings free,
Who choose our lives to be as they could be?”

******

The one that halts, when all around stampede,
Might well be trampled on—and even die.
But when the wiser start to slow and turn,
We slowly could return to clarity.

The question is, “Will sanity prevail
Before our madness breeds catastrophe?
And some might say, “We’re told that’s happened, yet
We do not slow, for slowing can’t be right.”

2015 August 30th, Sun., 3:28 pm
(first two stanzas added Sep. 2nd, Wed.)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York
   

In the Rapids of the City

   
Note:  The snapshot pictures in this post were taken with my new cellphone, which is still an antique. The pictures may be viewed as in a gallery, in a somewhat larger, clearer format, by single-clicking on any image.  To return to this post, click on the white X at the top right of the black background in the gallery view.
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In the Rapids of the City

  

Tilted tower and traffic, Whitehall Street, Manhattan
2015 August. 13th, Thu. evening  © A. Janah

In the hubbub and the hurry, we might lose our peace of mind.
Yet when time is ours in plenty, then that peace is hard to find.

For the trauma often lingers—and corrodes us from within.
So our Ava’s long departed, yet we’re paying for her sin.
  
  

Man on cellphone, walking dog
New Utrecht Ave., Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
2015 Aug. 14th, Fri. afternoon.  © A. Janah

    
There are things that we have hidden, where we cannot see or hear,
For we sense they are forbidden or impossible to bear.
  
There’s the horror that is wartime, there’s the horrid state of work.
And we need from these our distance, or we’ll surely go berserk.
  
So the answers we are seeking, to the questions never asked,
We have found and then forgotten.  Let them never be unmasked.
   

Two towers, Whitehall Street, Manhattan
2015 Aug. 13th, Thu., late afternoon.  © A. Janah

The summer sees its end, as on the streets
The browned and withered leaves foretell the fall.
While walking long through Brooklyn, I have paused
To sit in light and shade within a “park”.

A bit of green, a glimpse of blue is all
It takes to soothe a weary, harried soul.
They bring the walking dead to life again.
And yet, how many are denied the two!

Branches, leaves and sky, Milestone Park, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
2015 August 14th, Fri. afternoon.  © A. Janah

A wounded dog, escaping from its plight,
Will pause, if given a chance, to lick its wounds.
So humans do as well.  And yet we know,
A wounded mind might best be left alone.

I sip my tea and chew my pretzel as
I mull on my defeats.  When victories
Are gone, philosophies are left—along
With all the aches of body and of mind.

Veterans' memorial, Water Street, Manhattan 
situated, interestingly, right by the Teachers' Retirement Service office 
2015 August 13th, Thu. afternoon.  © A. Janah

When in Manhattan, in the city’s roar,
I thought I heard a little, quiet sound.
But that was yesterday.  In Brooklyn now,
I sit upon a bench and look around.

I see the little sparrows hop. They pick
At seeds, and quickly dart aloft in fright.
A pigeon flies across—a blur of wings.
A squirrel climbs atop a green-lit tree.

The little children run around and play.
The adults group themselves at cards or chess,
Or quietly walk around, or sit like me—
Contented, for a while, to simply be.

Girl riding a bike, Milestone Park, Brooklyn
2015 Aug. 14th, Fri. afternoon. © A. Janah

 
A taste of peace, a sip of quietude—
And I am rested.  Yet I wonder still
About that sound I heard but yesterday—
That seemed so close and yet so far away.

When we’re defeated, then we might perceive
The shadowed things that we had overlooked.
Amidst the gemstones, lit with wisdom, are
The scorpions that we fear to understand.

 

Shadows from the elevated D/M track, New Utrecht Ave.
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 2015 Aug. 14th, Thu. afternoon
© A. Janah

At times like this, my life, from birth till now,
I see as in a slideshow on a screen—
A sign, perhaps, it’s time to stop and then
Begin anew, until this comes again.

Our lives have acts and scenes, as in a play,
Or else it seems we’re authors—and our books
Have chapters that have ends we can’t control.
Yet end we must, while leaving loose the ends.
 

Bench, Milestone Park, Brooklyn
2015 Aug. 14th, Fri. afternoon. © A. Janah

     
In the rapids of the city, when the roar was all around,
I had thought I’d heard a tinkle—a whisper of a sound.
  
In the shimmer of the summer, I’ve been sitting in the park,
And the whisper in the silence is the calling of the dark.
  
  

At Milestone Park, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn
2015 Aug. 14th, Fri. afternoon. © A. Janah

     
There are things that we’ve forgotten, so we cannot see or hear,
For we sense they are forbidden or impossible to bear.
  
There’s the shame and guilt of childhood, there’s the hurt and rage within.
There’s the grief and there’s the sorrow that can issue from our kin.
  
So the answers we were seeking, for the questions rarely asked,
We had found and then had hidden.  Give us strength, when we’re unmasked.

  

Two towers, Water and Whitehall Streets, Manhattan
2015 Aug. 13th. late afternoon.  © A. Janah

      
2015 August 14th, Friday, around 5 pm.
Milestone Park, Bensonhurst Brooklyn, New York
(fourth, twelfth, and twentieth [second from last] 
stanzas added Aug. 15th, Sat afternoon; cellphone
images added August. 16th, Sun. morning)
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Note:  The snapshot pictures in this post were taken with my new cellphone, which is still an antique. The pictures may be viewed as in a gallery, in a somewhat larger, clearer format, by single-clicking on any image.  To return to this post, click on the white X at the top right of the black background in the gallery view.