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There's no one to be lonely with,
No one who can barely smile,
Only chattering conversations,
When will tears be in style?
I am weary of all the gladness,
The grinning voices of the land,
Tonight I wallow in sadness
And the tragic mystery of man.
How can I speak of yesterday
When I don't know what to say?
How can I talk of tomorrow
When words get in my way?
No one who can barely smile,
Only chattering conversations,
When will tears be in style?
I am weary of all the gladness,
The grinning voices of the land,
Tonight I wallow in sadness
And the tragic mystery of man.
How can I speak of yesterday
When I don't know what to say?
How can I talk of tomorrow
When words get in my way?
There's a language I never learned,
A sadness I cannot reveal.
There's a courage that has deserted me,
I cannot tell what I feel.
A tree is easy to chat with,
The sky will say what it can.
Even the moon is responsive,
The silence is only man.
Find a tree that you can love,
Tell all your dreams to the sky,
Give up your lust to the moon,
And please be lonely as I
A sadness I cannot reveal.
There's a courage that has deserted me,
I cannot tell what I feel.
A tree is easy to chat with,
The sky will say what it can.
Even the moon is responsive,
The silence is only man.
Find a tree that you can love,
Tell all your dreams to the sky,
Give up your lust to the moon,
And please be lonely as I
There's No one To Be Lonely With
-James Kavanaugh, 1979 (for Patricia)
-James Kavanaugh, 1979 (for Patricia)
⌂
Morning Yearning
Ben Harper, 2006
Ben Harper, 2006
Laughing Man
Joe Purdy, 2006
Joe Purdy, 2006
Angry Anymore
Ani DiFranco, 1999
Ani DiFranco, 1999
Here Comes the Sun
Beatles Cover by Nina Simone, 1971
Tablets VI
1
When the sun is absent
the flower misses her
and when the absence grows long
the flower looks inside herself
for another light.
2
My flower will not wither.
It’s drawn in my notebook.
3
I am the plural
who walks to you
as a singular one.
4
Urgent artificial tears wanted
for dry eyes.
Natural tears leaked
for centuries
into the rivers
and overflowed.
5
Before you shoot someone
remember their mother’s eyes
will follow you wherever you go
until she drowns you in her tears.
6
They didn’t like his idea
so they shot him in the head.
From the hole the bullet caused
his idea will reach the world
and unfurl like a climbing plant.
7
Only one heart resides
in each person
but each is a train full of people
who die
when you kill
what you think is one.
8
There’s a sun inside each book.
Come and bring the new day
that’s waiting for us to open.
9
She asked the night:
Why are you so dark?
Night answered:
So that the stars’ light
reaches you.
10
She asked the day:
Why don’t you light?
Day answered:
Because I became your shadow.
11
Life is beautiful and painful
like a feather pulled
from a wing.
12
When the pistachios ripen
we break their shells
like we do to the hearts
of our lovers.
13
If thieves come to your home
let them take everything
except your dreams.
Keep those in a safe box.
14
She dreams
and her friend completes the dream.
When they separate,
the Earth rotates
slower
and with half dreams.
15
The trees, like us,
resort to their roots
in times of danger.
16
During the pandemic
we are a forest—trees
standing alone together.
17
We watch our days:
a snowman melting away
as he should.
18
There are days we wait for
and they come
and there are days that happen to us
that we cannot avoid.
19
The bubbles in the aquarium
are the fish’s notes
about the world.
20
Like a patient teacher
the sun brightens our wrongdoings,
same time
every day.
21
When the bird is prevented
from singing,
his body turns into music,
filling the horizon.
22
The birds never ask
if you are going to heaven
or to hell
and they never divide the sky
into stations.
23
When the birds chirp in your head,
trust their message for you,
especially if they tell you,
for example: Flying
is your true home.
24
What if the guns
turn into pencils
in the hands of the soldiers
and they underline
the places on the map
as sites they must see
before they die?
By DUNYA MIKHAIL
Source: Poetry (April 2022)
“I feel that poetry is not medicine- it’s an X-ray. It helps you see the wound and understand it. We all feel alienated because of this continuous violence in the world. We feel alone, but we feel also together. So we resort to poetry as a possibility for survival. However, to say I survived is not so final. We wake up to find that the war survived with us.”
-Dunya Mikhail
-Dunya Mikhail
Love Each Other or Perish
☮︎
