jembosatta

[jembosatta]

THE LEAST I CAN DO

is my best to never let meek silences fester and spread like disease is speak about my unease that I live in prosperity and peace and others, terror and grief

is move my feet, (arm in arm, side by side, in the street, though despair seems abundant and cheap and though the price of belief seems steep) is invest, be dressed in, belief is disagree loudly, uncomfortably (lovingly thrash out our discord in passionate discourse, listen & learn)

because these are not my bridges to burn or to leave to decay, not my ties to fray (what for me is a matter of right & left, for others is life & death, and the risks of rupture are not mine to afford and the price of my piety is not mine to pay) because silence like rot will gnaw at the supports,

the least we can do is save and save and talk and walk and clear and pave the way for these frail and precious freedoms to seed and take and live to see another day.

[jembosatta]

love laureate pt 1 - custom songs for loving people

song prompts: about to get married / large mouth / "this morning i am irrationally happy"

i wrote a song for my newlywed friends, imagining archaeologists digging them up and deducing they were objectively, rationally the happiest couple of all time.

anyone else for a custom song?

[jembosatta]

Empty white room (a truth)

You're not everything i want - this at least i know is true - but suddenly to my mind comes the sight of me and you in a slow close waltz in an empty white room while an old hoarse record spins a sad lovely tune.

I want a sad lovely tune in an empty white room, to be danced in the arms of you - this at least I know to be true.

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Notes from Italy #7 (a dictionary entry/listicle/poem)

IF: graffiti = things scratched, = "HERE" (first person singular), = vain clawing of author at eternity = washable

THEN: sfioriti = things brushed against = the wear of a million feet on a stone step = "HERE" (first person plural) = cry of the countless nameless deathless

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Notes from Italy #6 ('aiku)

Street-level apartment She's in there dusting No sunlight while I linger

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Notes from Italy #4 (trying to spin something)

Cloudlike towels meringuelike napkins plain white t shirts greying socks, strung from balcony to balcony in a citywide web

[jembosatta]

Notes from Italy #3 (just a chat with a cabbie)

"Siamo amici", the taxi driver says, "we are friends".

I agree as far as: friendship has a price / the price of friendship is not very high / friendship happens in between home places.

[jembosatta]

Join the dots (a constellation of poem)

Only you hold your celestial bodies together, weaving a cloth across loose constellations on the loom of your mind's eye. Only you can feel at your known edges for what's tasselled, what's unfinished, what's frayed.

Meanwhile I

am yet to discern the same shape of you twice in two night skies; to see, behind the slow spin of tales and dreams, your half-dozen white-hot elemental seams that cannot be unmade.

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Two bald men (a poem full of celestial bodies)

One bald man to another, slaps the tea-towel on his shoulder, it’s daybreak at the night café, the overnight shift is over.

The sun hangs up his jacket, we all three share a yawn, the moon does a French exit, the night café at dawn.

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

What I did to the desert (from the oral tradition)

Where the elders had gone to dig or die, left ruins and ghosts

Where I struck upon a borderstone that marked an edge of myself

I heard a hushed warning, I felt a warm, pregnant wind, I traced on my shoulders the red where cares once hung

Then, turning once more to bow to the night behind I stepped on beyond and swallowed the desert

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Time seep in (a poem in transition)

Days I hear my own breath, face to face with the dance with death and the cracks let the sighs creep in - Heaven's where I'm going, home's where I've been.

Days when the mirror wakes up, face to face with a half-full cup and the cracks let the dark flood in - Whole's where I'm going, empty's where I've been.

Days when my head feels loose, guts want war, lungs want truce and time seeps through the cracks in my skin - Earth's where I'm going, body's where I've been.

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Notes from Italy #2 (a drag)

tobacco burns spilling from the sacrifice, live lost shoals of silverblue fish pulsating around us megafauna

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Notes from Italy #1 ('aiku)

What points to the sky? Antennae, mourning wishes, maradona's eyes

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

This dance is not about self-control, about finding the perfect pose -

it is about the pose and about the fall and all that happens in between,

about your body's call to stay with you always just ahead of what my mind thinks it knows -

about the heat that leaps from charred wick to shivering flame -

this dance can't be made grand or kept clean -

it's not about the strength of our backs or the grace of our hands it's about what can't be seen

about my body's call to fall with me always just ahead of what your mind thinks it understands -

about the heat that leaps from my breath to your name -

about two candles that burn in an empty white room for no other eyes -

this dance doesn't arc towards becoming perfect, only free, then, maybe, wise

jem bosatta

[jembosatta]

Not text (a poem that is not a text)

Sorry,

it's just I'm not used to having a a heart so full and

no paper

Today I learnt things about us - that my hands know  you better than my

mind's eye -

that care is a spring where we all can drink, surprised to find it will never

go dry -

I didn't say I missed you  cos you were there. now the missing has grown

deeper, greater

I miss you. I didn't say but I do. I'll not text

you later.

jem bosatta

(click on 'Surprise me!')

[jembosatta]

Go well (a poem for the departed)

On the way to the well where the mourners sit, there's a strange sad nightwatchangel who keeps the road swept, lamps lit - fills the oil, crops the wick -

on that gold night street, cobbles worn slick by numberless mourners' feet, no-one is spared the march, the angel's call to go and draw from the spring of grief -

even the trees come shuffling through here by love and loss - alight, dig deep, drink, muster the force to return and seize once more the same old reasons to breathe

so whenever a dear one's flame is spent I pray you've the time to drink your fill I pray you've the time to sit and reflect

where why                        they went how well

[jembosatta]

Tentatively accepted (a poem half-carved)

Just because no tree's bark in a city park ever made it to maturity uncarved,

or because white clothes go green when you play in the grass,

doesn't mean you should never rush to love like a moth towards light, doesn't mean you should never wear white.

My gift is a chipped but pretty vase. Fill it with flowers that are real and dying.

Fill it like you fill your lungs to sing, knowing you're close to the end of your breath, every living thing at peace with its own death.

My gift is music the open wound, a porcelain throat and blossom of a tune,

my gift is the tentative vow to renew, the dew that turns to mist that turns to frost that turns to dew,

and it seems my gifts, though never quite simple, are accepted and watered by you.