A voice for the verse

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Poems in English.

Do You Hear It?

If a tree fell in a forest,
And you are there,
Do you hear it?

If ten trees fall, hundreds, thousands fall,
Do you hear it?
If you are not there,
But you are told,
Do you hear it?

Fallen trees don’t scream,
And trees don’t mourn their fallen kin,
Forests ignore the forgotten.
Lest we do.

In urban jungle,
Seedlings fall by tens of thousands,
Before they rise.
They are fallen, yet did not fall.
Cut down, cut young.

Darkness imposed to cover the crime
Silence domed the mournful ground.
Roots curled inward, holding secrets
No wind dared carry them out.

When one tree is felled, alarms are raised,
Hands link, voices gather, streets fill.
But when forests are erased in silence,
The world looks on, unmoved, still.

Shadows learned the names of the fallen,
But shadows do not testify.
The soil kept count in rings of grief,
Each layer a year denied.

And those who felled the young and rising
Walked away unburdened, unseen.
Axes washed, echoes buried,
History trimmed to a tidy seam.

Even in forests taught to forget,
Memory grows feral in the dark.
And one day, when the hush is broken,
The fallen will speak through the bark.

And when the buried names awaken,
No silence will contain their claim.
For every stump remembers thunder,
And every root recalls the flame.

Then those who never heard the falling
Will feel the tremor in the ground.
For truth, once risen from the undergrowth,
Will not be felled, nor turned around.

Twelve Thousand Deep

“I have never feared death,
Though its hands were more fragile than vulgarity.
My fear has always been of dying in a land,
Where the gravedigger’s wage,
Is greater than human freedom.” (Shamlou)

I have questions,
Yet I do not seek answers.

What is one life worth?

An eye for an eye?
A tooth for a tooth?
Life for life?

What of twelve thousand lives,
Lost before the world arrives,
Perished in two days.

What of twelve thousand lives,
Cut down as time connives.

How is one life worth more than another,
How is one held dear, one like no other?

How is it that the murderer of one
Is condemned,
Yet mass murderers roam,
Their cruelty unhemmed,

They linger, unscathed,
Their horror unrepentant,
While justice sleeps, abandoned, exempt,

Unjudged, unpunished?

How do we sit idle
When millions are in motion?
While suffering drifts like waves on the ocean.

We know how it feels to be alone, helpless,
We know how to cope, how to lessen the stress.
Sit in somber solitude,
Call a friend, maybe,
Or speak what’s suppressed,
A small light against the dark, fragile but blessed.

How does a nation cope
When darkness smothers hope,
Alone, abandoned, under siege?
No one to call,
No one to heed
The desperate plea, ignored by all.

The world witnesses with eyes closed,
Indifference reigning, unseen, untold.
Innocence slaughtered in blood-soaked alleys,
Lives lost,
Twelve thousand souls,
Young and old.

Remember where you were,
Where you stood still,
When death rained
Twelve thousand deep.

Sitting in your corner, quiet and chill,
Without concern or fear,
Unstirred by what befell,
Content in your distance,
Shedding no tear.

Not even the world would weep
When death rained, when the killing
Was twelve thousand deep.

Echoes of Desire and Despair

Are you the siren
that calls me to the shores
where tides come in foaming,
to crash against the cliffs,
calling on me with the sweetest of songs?

Are you the seductress,
the bird that draws me closer and closer
with the love sonnets of doom?

Am I rowing toward you
to be shipwrecked,
to rest eternally in the deep blue,
or marooned on the island of despair?

Are you the Goddess
that blesses me with inspiration,
the blissful daughter of Zeus,
the muse who brightens my mind with the clarity of dawn
and fills my heart with the desire to create,
to write—fearlessly, freely, fiercely?

Are you the empowerment of my words?
Are you my siren?
Are you my muse?

Eyes overwhelmed
with images of horror,
of blood of the innocent.

Ears filled
with echoes of screams
and cries of the young.

Mind exasperated
with the tyranny of evil.

Heart saddened
by the absence of hope.

Days clouded with misery,
nights the playground of dark shadows of gloom.

Sleepless nights, one after the other,
the consequence of our trying days,
our predicament.

And then come you,
walking under the crying sky,
full of unanswered questions, with doubtful stride.

You come near and sit by my side,
your face lit under the manmade moon,
your hair a golden cascade of splendor.

Your hand wrapped in mine,
your touch an overture to ecstasy,
your scent—
sweet and tranquil.

Ears filled with the melody of your voice,
eyes filled with the image of your lips,
mind dreaming of dawn,
heart warmed by your touch,
and my body wrapped in your scent.

I surrender.
I sleep,
and I dream of you…

In The Tear-Soaked Dusk

Not forty thousand.
Say just one.

Not forty days, not forty years,

Let it not be forgotten,
ever,
what happened as it did,
what was done,
what was endured,
what was inflicted,
what was borne.

Rain of fire on flesh,
scent of blood on soil,

in the tear-soaked dusk,
we, tearful,
weeping.

And now, still,
it burns within the soul,
that brief, endless moment,
that soundless cry,
that fallen shadow on the wall of night.

And we,
in that same blood-dripping dusk,
in that same defenseless hour,
stand,
tearful,
weeping, unhealed.

Let it never be forgotten,
not forty days, not forty years.
Forty thousand, body to body to body…