Peter Manda - Poetry: 2011

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Spring Morning Haiku ©2011

cold morning rain in PJ
wife running to train
son on sofa chair, pondering
shall i play a game?

Friday, January 7, 2011

いきる

the homeless man who lays out his sleeping bag

underneath the church columns

pizza steak from frankos

the sunsets over the new jersey state capitol building

the sunrise over new jersey network

midnight walks along the assunpink

chatting with our barber in the morning when no one else is on the street

habib’s protection

the smiles

the sense of belonging

the view of the delaware

watching trucks removing snow from state street roads

while city streets remained just plowed

laughing with maintenance about the heat

and joking with the landlord about the cold

and fighting with the owner about the tobacco smoke

and

Ohm - a homeless fragment

OHM

I wrote about

- "home

- less

- ness" -

and

realized

it is .....

Our Modern Holocaust.

Black Coat

"Black Coat" from 'homeless fragments'

battened coat

dust encrusted epaulets

solipsistically grayed and parched

"water" was here once

maybe have some

nomad trails enshroud me

brown hats with wings stand

tall in gray

sheep rushing bells

tar fields hold no grass

while up in the highlands

the waters melt

winter

"winter" from homeless fragments

What is that screeching

sound the bow makes

when it laments across the

violin, like vivaldi or stravinski

or is it beethoven in a pastoral

when the clouds are blue; gray

and the trees barren, reflecting those

skies their limbs covered in a

touch of white?

the empty houses in the Northeast

stand desolate while in the

suburbs the plain boroughs are

filled with the wealth of color...

is it, then, that we fear winter

because we fear to face its poverty?

A Room in Trenton

remnants of rice and shredded chicken

strewn outside the sheltered glass --

a bus-stop.

while mother lay,

her wool-mit hat against the plexi-wall

enwrapped and comfortably resting

for the night inside

A room in Trenton.

As the Kingfisher Stood

ich wahr at the Central grave

yard ein Oberst in der Reichsarmee

flicking his Merit,

younger than memories

of those whose graves lay still now

against bomb craters carpeted across the path

leaning toward the hangars

at the airport

sloping against the crest covered in

grass and turf now finely laid maintained

= in memory of “what they did” =

a bureaucrat lay, a higher member

administered – articulated staff

position just before

Flanders rose

in gestures, pointing toward

depth

he drosseld slurred words but stood

determined to teach

ideas the young man

already dismissed impossible

ignoring what he was seeing as his future

a future of lock and key – of chamber and chamfer

of periodic tables and calculi

grappling against the neighbors’ curves

lusting for the breath of dignity

that held – a moment’s distance

from death

... the gate yawned

as a jet glided to landing

in the distance

against Napoleonic fields that tore across

the crested hills against the Danube

and beckoned along a chestnut crested path

where third men also gathered clues

of pasts rendered

present and beckoning

to futures unanticipated yet

“There, do! the scientific research!,”

he murmured

I saw it while riding a Tiger

There! in El Alamein

they coursed The horizons of empty desert and

in a cheese sandwich

I realized

The true heart and feeling is

Not here

in your chest; its here …

Down by

the sole of the Liver,

where you feel the warmth

flowing as … I feared --

The beer he was holding.

-- the gusher; Would spill.

And thought. Froze in foam.

“Now that

“would be

"What a waste.”

And “What bad breath.”

And “What a loser.”

And “How can I extricate myself from this?”

And “Is this guy for real?”

And “What an utter joke?”

And …

I was sitting

at the river looking down

in the distant crest

The ancient ruins of palaces climbing out of the

vine-entangled Swamp-infested trees,

and wondering why

Stomach was

empty

As the Kingfisher stood.

"Finance in the Inner City" from 'homeless fragments'

* a version of this Poem was published @ Penn in 'Philomel'

Finance in the Inner City

He sleeps by 30th Street

There, by the SEPTa entrance;

A wool banket like

in high

school enshrouds him.

Last week.

He was sitting there at noon,

appetizing a discarded wrap;

chicken? with a smile.

Other times.

He lies there surrounded by what seem belongings

as if the concrete floor

were his bedroom

and.

We RESPECT his privacy.

Tonight.

he reached up

and quickly pled.

His eyes, blue, silver, grey

bulging out of a

deteriorated, falling body

desperately, silently

claiming a wish

and I passed him like my classmates

studying community development and public

Finance in the Inner City.

i am unloved

It is the violence of contempt

That condescends on me …

it freezes my senses in its harshness:

like the frozen waters of Lake Michigan

eating at the hardest shell of those streams

that descend through depths darker

than their soul that entangles me

It is the insecurity of the moment

The fear of scrutiny, the irony of •

Arrogance that ignorance cries

as it dangles its hope on dissimulation.

No moments live here

than those in our hands that have been

held.

and yet that violence grasps ; it

clings, it surrounds, it compels, it consumes

it devours, it challenges, it engages

and then … it defeats.

It. is the defeat of that moment,

when an attempt has been made

at conciliation and togetherness and

- that moment – shatters.

- Shatters against the glass of wind-sweeping

frozen waves; ice lieing on ice;

snow heaped on snow and a

frozen loneliness of outside ; a waiting

for a snowman, for a clause, for

a pumpkin, for an image of how it should be and

have been.

It is the wondering – the awe – the

perspicuous imagination – the depth

of the realization that sitting here at two

in the morning in the freezing rain …

i am unloved.

i heard him vomit

i heard him vomit
~ from homeless fragments
© 2010 Peter Manda

i heard him vomit

as i was applying pressure to the last memories

of the night before against the plasticine edges of this, the precipice,

against the sacrificing ponds

Wretch! – don’t you remind me of myself

in late night train stations, clinging to the rim;

clinging to the memories of what I had wished the.

evening be! Hopes for love, happiness, carrying, singing, the mother’s .

Wretch! – i see you sleeping every night around the corner

under the 1970s teller window of the abandoned drive through drive by bank

under the blue glazed airport tower shaped glass reflecting my light to me

gathered in blankets accumulated from contributions taken.

Wretch! – your dependence on this edge, this pressure compelled moment

defies the silence I wish and the acrid smell of vegetable soup reprocessed

consumes me in memories of bathing

the day after in my fingers, glutinated between streaking hair across the concrete floor.

Vera's Last Night

Vera’s -- last night

it’s dark tonight.

and my hunger starves me – while.

outside the furnaces roar;

–

and ashes strewn flakes

of snow white

ossifications

–

Falls – or so it seems to those –

of my mind

–

it wishes.

my mother’s arms; and it wishes. –

and a cup of

coffee with my father

Schlag –

And yet. I carry not this Star

because of Them;

but because I know that

without my witness

–

of those their final moments, the night

of my eyes, those

here in these berths with me

-- --

choking.

from the final futility of

fate fostered upon them

–

would never be known.

and they would flow …

like --;

–

warmed up cavemen

dangled into their hands over

and into,

the gaping holes of His-Story.

When I rode my bike through the sun baked streets, the wheels molding gently into the melting tar as if gliding over some type of sticky water, she would be there too. Her doe like eyes, whispering softly that I was to be the one who would always take care of her, provide for her; stating wistfully that I would always be the number one in her collection (where the girls would sit on cushioned salt bags and adeptly crack the roasted watermelon and cantaloupe seeds between their sharp but glossy white teeth and wait for their man to come home from a dusty day’s work among the poorer peasants. They would come to read poetry.).

She was there too when I saw her married off. Sitting on the throne in the center of the garden in front of the elevated patio. Sitting there. Looking at me, as if to say “It should have been you this time. How long should I wait, then, huh? You think you’re going to be forever young?” Her to be consuming husband chomping on dried chick peas in his rented tux – a measure too small – already drunk on the wine and beer hidden in the other room behind the maid’s quarters. Covered in a lace white wedding dress she was, as if SHE were the Queen and that that Diba too was the usurper’s usurpress. She made me believe even then that she was the only legitimate heiress to the glories of the Empire and the world. Heiress, she was, with her cow-like eyes, rounded. And later, in the stillness of her room she lay there awaiting the penetrating and repeated sharpness of union to last into the dark recesses of promised wedding bliss.

She was there, too, when I was looking down at the mounds of centuries covering Istakhr and Firouzabad, the wind blowing across the parched and dusted soil with conk-shell whispers gliding over the long-now buried monuments. Gliding to her – looking down for coins or shards or relics. Once, up on the table mountain when I pulled out the corner of the grain pot from the ashen white soil, she too was there, marveling at what I had dragged out – the pot marked with the measure of what she was to receive; the ear of wheat that was to be hers and that now was mine to dole. Yes. She was there on those reliefs, silently etched behind the King, awaiting with fixed certainty the promises and abjurations of the Princely and his ministerial Honesty: “Yes, your Highness. I swear. We all left her untouched. Her fruit is as fresh as it was before you left our Homelands on your mystery campaigns.” Smile she did then, and oggled me she did, with that her antelope-like gaze.

She was there, again, in the early morning, as Venus still hung in the sky and the dawn had not begun to change its shading from purpur-lilaced royalty to its daily novel redness. There, after her nightly sharing of the waters, there after her watchful gaze, there after her gentle stroking of my hair. There – her lover and beloved, her crazy little boy, her warden and her guard – the one who provided for her in her present future, the one to whom she brought what he needed when his mouth just thirsted for more – there, even when he didn’t quite yet know what more there could ever have been. Yes, she was there as we rose from the plain into the still cool mountains, on our way to fortresses still standing watch over meandering canyon walls. She was there under the pomegranate trees, the orange blossoms, and the persimmon. Sharing her watermelon with me as we hung our feet into the cool waters of the brook and spewed out our seeds with the wisdom of true love. Many years later, when we finally held hands, I didn’t need to look into her eyes anymore. I just knew it was her. That one. That girl who had fidgeted with me as our parents sat on the carpet and mimicked world leaders with their importance. Back then we just looked at each other, knowing that union was our certainty but uncertain of its achievement. Yes, even then, she was there. Like the morning Dew, spread on freshly watered leaves of grass in the well trimmed plots that surrounded the gold fish pond in our garden.

My father sensed it always of course. He sensed that she was there. When I looked at myself in the mirror recently, I could see his cool green eyes staring at me; as if to say: “You, my friend, are nothing like me and I will never permit you my pain – that pain that made me see how it was that she couldn’t be there for you, ever, even if she promised to be. Because? Because I will make it so that no one can be better than me, nor can anyone have it better than me. I. I will assure it. Me. For I am. The King. The King of Kings. The Emperor. The Divine Royalty, who looks over the good of His peoples, as long as they are not of his family.” It was that same attitude that brought the lizard eaters and camel milk drinkers into the palaces that had been built for eternity. Once, an Empire would last for a thousand years. Then it became 500. Then 100. And then there were only Empires in the imagination of souls, descending down the ladders of the deepest recesses of pleasure, palaces built on our lines of poetry – dreams that never were reality.

In those gold-encrusted days, whenever guests were over, we ate caviar . We scooped it onto crackers and sprinkled it with a slice of lime. Caviar, our appetizer, would be followed by Shirin and Zeresk Polo, pieces of chicken, cucumber and yoghurt. A slice of bread. Butter. For breakfast, we tended to follow the poor man’s regimen: Goat’s cheese with bread and radish, or quince jam and butter. Our bread, though, was always toasted. And it was after we had feasted and then, the morning after, sleeked into the kitchen to prepare our breakfast sandwiches standing up to a glass of hot jasmine tea, that we would head out of town, while it was still dark, while Venus was just beginning to hang in the sky, while the milky way was slowly fading.

Even though my father didn’t want me to be like him, he took me with him everywhere. To the ruins, to the fortresses, down river valleys, and up narrow gulley and deep shadowed canyon paths. He wasn’t in search of her. Rather, he was in search of her past. Where did she live? Behind the treasury, of course. How did they bring her water? In channels hewn out of limestone and marble, quarried by prisoners of war from distant campaigns of pacification and indoctrination. What did she eat? Those same goat cheese and quince jam sandwiches you made for yourself this morning. He would analyze it all even though he was standing in front of the wavy-haired stalactite Emperor pointing to the valley below, brightened out of the cave’s dark mouth as if it were only a movie screen and we the temporary observers.

My father. My father wasn’t interested in the bakeries, so he would send me to get the bread once I was old enough. There, a few buildings down from our house, was the hollowed cavern and a large counter where I would reach my few rial to and ask for three lengths of bread. Behind the baker, standing next to the fully-stoked and roaring oven, stood the day laborers (they were always silent men): One grabbing the baked and bubbled bread off the ceiling of the oven, the other shuffling it in. I can still feel the fresh smell of well baked dough waft first past and then through my nose. “Ah!” Yes. Even in that bread line, as I reached out for the lengths that the baker had slid into some sheets of newspaper, she would line up behind me, her head covered with a pattern of slight, paisley-like, miniature flowers, a lock of hair curving carefully toward her bow-like eyebrows. She would smile – but only with her eyes, her youthful curiosity wondering whether one day I would ever keep my promise to recognize her for who she was – more than just the next girl in line.

Many years later, when we were finally together, my father didn’t accept that her and I could be together and neither did I allow it to last. And so it was with all the girls. Until he died. He. He died in the diaspora of his homeland surrounded by those in the diaspora of theirs, them all watching plays inspired by Layla and Majnun and Omar Khayam. “Tell me. Where is he now?” “Tell me.”

But for those brief days. Those brief days when we were together. When our spirits touched. When she lay her self-naked back on the edge of the bed for me to take. For those brief days when we were together and Her completeness bent to receive me – me. I Her Emperor. To sit on Her Throne. “Mmm.” We, when we were united, we were the lovers hewn into the Heavens, glittering in spheres above – beyond our own experience – sparkling shadows of our own lumination.

We. We felt as no other lovers felt. We were certain of our destiny. Certain of our presence. Of our divine role as those chosen to be more and better than others. We would sit in the evening on the porch of my working class home and I would see her slink forward, compelling her eyes to refuse to see the utter poverty in which I compelled my student mind to rest. For her, despite the way we held each other any time we made love, despite the way we embraced each other each time we needed consoling, and despite the way we were professionally certain of our convictions each time we solved a problem, it was just not good enough. “Not good enough.”

Many years later when a judge called me up and had his secretary whisper that into my ear, I remembered that stinging condemnation. “Not good enough,” she was whispering. Whispering: “Don’t you remember when I looked at you in the bread line? When we hung our feet into the cool waters? When we stood in front of the hunting scene hewn into the rocks of Hamadan? Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember how you dreamed of me forever when I asked you to come to me in the maid’s chamber? I didn’t care then how old you were then. I didn’t care because I knew you already were royalty and I knew you were destined to be a King. I knew it with a certainty. But this? This is your empire?”

Oh I. I was completely oblivious. My eyes had become glazed by images of Socialist Realism. I had come to the thought that the meek were the ones who really inherited the earth. I had come to the idea that royalty and riches were all good, but true love would make the difference no other would be able to make. “You can’t purchase love,” I remember telling her. “Oh yes you can,” she replied with great certainty. “Yes you can.” And she bent her head away remembering that she had been promised by someone else to a rich man, a man on his way to being an urban planner, and that she was betraying him for me. She too, had come to forget.

Forget. Those instances when we woke up in the slums instead of in each others arms. Those moments were uncomfortable to both of us. It was in those moments where the young buds of wild roses that had begun to grow along our pores were quenched by the gushing waters of could have beens and “This is not how it should have been.” My kingly manners belied the realities around me. I had come to assume the role but to refuse the inheritance. She of course, wanted the inheritance too. The inheritance of a certain destiny among the classes that she knew she should be a part of. But that was not enough for her. No. Nor, it turned out, for me.

Soon I found myself alone. I found that our fleeting touch, our pedestal, had been pulled away from under us by the dreams of the poor and impoverished. We were becoming them, and they were becoming us and she couldn’t accept that. Not with me. Not through me. Not under me. No. She didn’t want the ticket to happiness that I offered her. And I? I wouldn’t give her a green card. That’s what had come of our love. I remembered all that as I sat on my barely sheeted mattress and smoked my Pall Malls and Benson & Hedges. I remembered that as I wished for the sweet, dark, tobacco from the highlands. And I knew what she was unwilling to accept. The promises made to us when we were tied as spirits; those promises were gone. Our throne had been taken. Our palaces were pillaged. Our lawns had become staging grounds for soup kitchens.

And so I sat. I sat and wondered. I wondered and I remembered. And in my ear I heard the waters of the poems. The admonition: “Sit on your hands, and lose everything.” And the call: “Listen down into my core and hear the song of lovers and of truths.” But, I couldn’t do anything else but sit. I sat. I sat and I read poetry. I sat and I read poetry and I smoked. I smoked more and more. Each puff, each inhalation, was an addition. Each puff, each inhalation, was an affirmation that the beautiful scents of her dew that had come to rest in my lungs during the morning of my life were now burnt away; as if I had been the audience in a movie theatre and my lungs the stage in a play that was bent on being terminated for the benefit of the poor. The coals on my pipe glowed under the noon-day sun and they turned burnt orange in the middle of the night. They were light. And me, I was eternally feeling the fire of emptiness, of loss, of unkempt solitude.

I started to wander the bleak and empty streets. Whether it was Paris, or Bilbão, or Tokyo, or Philadelphia; I wandered. I spoke to speak to the birds. I imagined the clouds painting what could only have been for me. Battleships and star fighters, palaces and honor guards. I stood there under the flag waiting for the time to be where my promised destiny would be fulfilled; where I would be King. The dogs barked messages in morse-code ordering me to fulfill my destiny. “Be our King! Be our President! Be our Emperor! Be our Father! But, why don’t you just Be!”

I found among the newspapers hints of my destiny’s past and I couldn’t accept it. Generals killed, prime ministers rounded up and shot, soldiers marked to duty and sent to the gas fields. Meanwhile, among the silent red oaks, the Honor Guard would continue its march; protecting quiescently the empty sarcophagus which continued daily to fill with the souls of lives wasted on other peoples’ ideals and dreams. Lives unfulfilled. Loves lost. Emptied. Bereft of meaning. Silent. The click, click of thirteen steps; the sliding drill and turn of boots; the slow but certain slap of rifle and hand. Dark, dank, eyes staring blindly behind sunglass shades – army issue; while above them and below them the tombstones continued to bud out of the soil, each in rank and file surrounding their great general, their great leader, their great father – now too, dead.

In those days after she had left me for not good enough, I began to hear the wind speak through the leaves of summer nights, and the stars form themselves in constellations that came to exist only in my mind. The grasses whistled as I passed by, and the more I walked and searched for what would never be in my hands again, the more the trees drooped and the greater the sadness was that hung over the eaves of the towns I visited.

I no longer welcomed the company of my friends and my friends no longer cared for my company. I relished that I no longer belonged. The home that had been promised to us, even though in a slum, was sold as not good enough; and all my possessions that I had kept for the day where they could become the foundations and stones necessary for that grand palace became only a vision and were sold off as not worthy of being held by me or anyone. Most of the items I cared for the most, I just threw away, though. I sought to free my mind from the torture of what I had permitted to be done; yet, my mind refused to leave where it had fixed itself to be. As lovers tied in myth, my mind was tied in the reality of her presence, now gone. Wisps of willows in the British Council. Waters sploshing against the dampers in the central pool. The shouts of children in the school yard. My parents’ gossip over the lunch and dinner table. Waking up in the back seat to see the sun rise as we drove across the asphalt toward dirt roads and winding mountain passes.

And then, I don’t know how it happened, the Kings, they died. It may have been the day I took our last Persian carpets and sold them. The Isphahan and the Tabriz, the Shiraz and the Mashad. There were about 14 of them. One, so big that you could line the entire tent wall with it, surrounding your bride and her family with the security of the tent’s shade but providing them with the breezes that slipped over the floor, cooled then by the lambs’ wool woven into warp and weft. I stuffed those carpets into the back of my 1976 Volvo wagon, and drove them down to a miser carpet dealer somewhere downtown. On the tape deck I listened to President Carter’s speeches about Habitat for Humanity and Social Justice and I remembered his smile from the cover of Mad Magazine.

When I arrived at the carpet dealer he smiled and said, “I’ll give you $100 for each carpet and a bonus for being so generous.” He sat down in his chair and he listened to me rant and rave about how my parents were all crazy and the revolution shouldn’t have happened; and how these carpets were like jewels that deserved to be seen by people rather than rotting in the cellars of memories now lost. He smiled sharply again and promised that the carpets would be well cared for and drew a corporate checkbook out of a drawer to his right. He wrote out a check in the amount of two thousand bucks and handed it to me.

I took that money and I cashed it at a check cashing place in town. 6% service fee and an ID. Luckily, I still had an ID. For the last time in my life I signed my name on the back and there, on that day, I threw out the last vestiges of royalty and I packed my bag and walked out of the woods. Figuratively, that is, of course. I still did go to the woods. Even though I was far away, I could sit among the trees on the edge of the river and watch the King Heron dive for food while in the distance the oil refineries reflected ancient ruins in amber yellow and shivering white.

The trees. The trees rustled together to form cathedrals and temples, shrines to inner peace and spirituality. To certainty that man’s destiny lies not in material things but in connection to God, to spiritual beings, ghosts and goblins. Now and then I would see a rabbit run for shelter, and in the evenings the birds would gather and enshrine their day in plays on chatter. And in the mornings, after the sun had burned the fogs away and left the sky in a cold gray, every now and then I would see an owl swoop down to its hole just under me on the cliff above the water’s edge.

It was a quiet place where I had placed my despair. In the rustle of the rushes I could hear the water pushing past reeds in the rivulets built by Valerian’s soldiers all to water the fields of a still proud empire. Out in the distance, I heard the cars begin to move, carrying people to town. But here there were no dust clouds announcing their arrival from the other side of the mountain pass. Here the cars were clean, washed by the latest modification in car washes, the dust having slid off the most novel inventions in wax.

While I could remember how it was and how it had been, I also knew that it would never be again. I had not been good enough, and now I had sold the last of what had been more than good enough. I no longer had a carpet or a Qilim to sit on and I no longer had a blanket to my name. Finally I was free of her grip and I was able to walk out with a hope and a prayer that there could be something different for me out there. What, I did not know. It no longer mattered. I had no plans. I had placed my faith not in palaces nor in dreams; but in something I had not yet found, something greater than Man.

One Day I Woke Up

One day i woke up and realized i had fallen in love with my wife. It was one of those ordinary summer mornings. The heat was going to rise above 100 that day and when I looked outside, the smog was already settling in for a long, and pensive, rest.

You Set Them Up

You Set Them Up - (c) June 2010

It was a sharing unlike others. It was a conviction of meaning. A statement of fulfillment and an understanding of wealth meeting poverty - an overtaking and a refusal to accept the experiment yet a willingness to allow it to flow into its presence.

I dreamed I was flying on a 707 with the Shah of Iran and a huge box of French Fries

golden blondes and brunnettes in mini-skirts as he chuckled glints of oversized eyebrows in his dark rimmed glasses

wine on the table, pistachio shells scattered on plexiglas - a new invention

Wealth to some is more important because they are aware of the harsh realities of daily living and aren’t willing to settle for less.

I dreamed of an English professor pointing to an exit sign held open by a sponsor to Dr. Death and gasping toward a chasm wrapped by gilt-laden-edges of white

golden-wrapped Rothmans Internationals perched on edges of tar-stained ivory ashtrays as the young boy eyed the dancer in lust “You” are mine tonight, my birthday present and her

aware of his glance,

knowing her fate was sealed despite the other bonds knew that he was there that night in his arms as she laid herself on the blanket bereft silk sheets opened and flared her bobbing breasts welcoming a smile saying come come to me now

here

I am.

Then. The other looked up at him, inquiring her eyes distant but discerning - is that what you really mean by your objective> is that your intent? And he thinking that if you only knew that I was merely a shell once - an apparition of wishful thinking and dreams shattered and pointless meanings and an understanding that

social exclusions are real

barriers once

you set them up.