Why my poetry fails in North America

1. Ambience

I want to be proven wrong. I want someone to come forth with a rebuttal.
So far, I won one award - the Ted Plantos poetry award. I was surprised. And when I was invited to the award party...organized inside a rather pungent pub (oh, I was hoping for a multi-sensory experience of a different kind) I knew that the patron of Poetry in N. America is dead, or, may be not yet alive. Poetry, when good, is archetypal and it moves one in a manner similar to any other ecstatic form of art...music, drama, painting...In order to achieve ek-stasis, we need to give it a try and move poetry (at least once) from the smelly, lousy in acoustics and visual stimulation pubs, and onto a stage from where the audience can dream its dream clearly.
May be you think I am concentrating too much on external elements - but, experience in many ways is what acts as a catalyst to propel us inward...So, if you agree, let's talk about organizing a poetry gala...in Toronto (all pubs disqualified)...


Old Kurdish Song

I forgot my complaint.
I forgot hunger and thirst.
I am neither the child nor the beggar
not even the satisfied commuter
on the train home.
I am spellbound by distance and proximity.
So far from you, so close.

Inside out, life has become a Myth.
I speak and say nothing.
I am silent and all sounds, all words
converge into meaning -
a sacred tale that cannot be released
into the world of mediocrity.
I forgot my complaint. I forgot everything
except this pleasure, this pain.
For the sake of lovers,
for the wine that drenches the oud
with longing for God.
For the sake of dreamers,
their palaces hanging like grapes from the vine,
for my sake unfold in my hands this secret
like an old Kurdish song,
no matter what the words -
pleasure and pain
dancing interchangeably
in the notes -
and love me.

SERMON FOR A LEWD AFTERNOON

First, smooth out the creases of the day
like an old photograph or like sheets
on an unmade bed.
Find and freeze time…lie down…listen.

I think of you. Your underarms
have the scent of forests
I shall enter and never return
into this world. My prison is a garden.
Listen. I talk to you. Softly
in the back of your neck
I whisper the truth.
There's a lake in your languid gaze
and my eyes a diver.
For so long I have drunk your face
I will never be sober.
Listen. Away from you,
you are with me whole
like the earth from above
free from the petty disputes of humans.
A crystal now, a jewel
in infinite time-space.

Rendezvous

Imagine and bring back
the old, sensual district…The neighborhoods
where they still light fires
at solstice
where body and soul succumb to love.
And it will suddenly appear
in front of you
as a ghost in midday
strange and momentous
fragile but invincible
against the high-rises
and the insatiable flowof pedestrians
on their way to work.