Poems From The Bottom of A Bottle

I.
confused in my samhadi
restless tags struggling to define these words
you can tell me humanity doesnt matter, but

i can see cold black space like you cannot
the connections are part of me
the planets are my mind -- the warm breath of a lover
is no less real than you, my brother
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II.
you kill with your complacence
you kill with your apathy
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III.
your blood is on my hands
take it, i dont want it any more
its rightfully yours -- take it, brother

take this suffering, take the world
off my shoulders, out of my mind
take what you asked for
and carry it yourself, you
golem, you construct of evil

hypocrites, you run the world
but you cant understand that i speak to you

what pain has been granted me?
why do i see as you sit there, blind?

why should i care that you kill each other?
perhaps because i alone am human.
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IV.
the ocean, it
it calls to me
the tears of all those mothers, washing up
endlessly in countless waves of grief

always calling, always calling me
home
home at last
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V.
the brooks i drank from, as a boy
ice cold on a fall morning, i recall

hard as a rock, soft like a mother's forgiveness
clear like pain and love and understanding, liquid and crystal and undeniable

gentle, like rain after all that death.
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VI.
a gun, a gun
my kingdom for a gun
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VII.
so one day,
i was lying in the gun truck, trying to sleep
because i volunteered for everything those days, because i wanted to die
and i was one of only two 50 cal gunners available, and i was the one who volunteered
so i was lying there, trying to sleep, and i heard a sound
like the earth breaking apart, and i looked up, and the sky was white, white with fire

and then there was the wailing, and the burning flesh, and i was ready
i was ready to fight, but there was noone there, noone to fight, noone to shoot
i was ready to kill, but instead there was only the smell of burning flesh, and i was helping
i was helping to carry you into the hospital, as you burned alive
as i smelled your skin falling off
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VIII.
sometimes the only thing thats there
is the tangled intricacies of the primes
the inscutable dance that holds the mysteries of the framework of the universe

in the gray predawn, they march past
they walk in the song of the crickets, the steps of the small swallows
that nervously hunt for food, struggling for survival

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IX.
finally it comes
the ocean, cresting
rolling down my cheeks, like tears

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X.
Unknowingly we plough the dust of stars,
blown around us by the wind, and
drink the universe in a glass of rain. -- Ihab Hassan

therefore,

No man is an island, intire of it selfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if
Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,
as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor
of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death
diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And
therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee. -- John Donne

therefore,

everything else follows.

Ihab Hassan