The night outside has only just begun. It is youthful, jaunty with the stars perked up for an eve of dance and delight; much like the twelve princesses from childhood stories. The stars row down the alabaster stretch to a clandestine ball held at some obscured corner of the sky, conspicuous to only lovers – or believers.
Category Archives: Poetry 2014-2019
ADR poetry published 2014-2019
This time – Poem by Sheikha A.
This
time is not the deepest of times;
it is an unslept hour of breaking light
stirring lazily after a spent night
of copulation with its denseness
gloom, in visitation of hope
for the crescent moon to have tilted
sideways up into a smile, half
concealed by the veils of frothing
clouds speculating its revelation.
Vigilia – by Sheika A.
Drape me in the purdahs of your being
as I cave into hundred thousand deaths
per night; relentlessly I lodge my spirit
in the empty taverns of your existence
wishing to grow a flower, not very red
like shimmering rubies found in Mahals
of kings richly adorned of any despair,
but a plant common that you colour,
I hope, with the red of your blood warm.
Like a nomad groping towards an oasis,
I had disciplined myself to survive you
through these very nights, manifesting
sanity to stubborn senility; from lover
to patient, to broken as is what became
of a once curated heart.
A Poem and Prayer in a Soldier’s Memory — by Deborah Levine
For those who put themselves in harm’s way for their families, friends and country,
For those whose lives were taken in war-torn lands far from home And for all those who carry the wounds of war proudly and with honor,
Let us say a prayer of thanks and remembrance of courage and of valor.
To recall a war whose evil was heard around the globe and changed us forever,
To watch the destruction of civilization and hear the cries of the oppressed,
Is to know that good people cannot remain silent or deny commandments from above.
But must believe that “There, but for the Grace of God,” go you and I, and all we love.
As peaceful as this field of headstones As beautiful as the bouquets that mark your graves,
So may be – the rest you’ve earned so well,
While your lives touch our hearts with the stories that they tell.