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Tuesday, August 6, 2019

A. V. Koshy writes


I know you are pretty
you are beautiful
you are sexy
you are desirable
but what I want to know
is: are you for real?
Do you know what it means
to be on the dark side of life's town
where I walk
on the left hand path
where the sidewalk is narrow
and the streetlamps are out?
Where the poetry is acid
and gets your head blown off?
I met only one
at the same level of danger
to walk on my wild side
and only another
at the same level of confusion
to be on my right
Who will cover my back?
is the question
There's four queens in a pack
Which one's black?
You meet with the hearts
and the diamonds and clubs
but what is the role of the queen of spades?
King, Jack, Ace, Joker -
women have them all up their sleeve-
but I could always defeat you
any day
at strip poker.
I am the gambler
Don't look so rummy
when the cards are shuffled and cut
and dealt,
I'll be looking at the gold pin in your tummy
There is no way
to the pot at the end
of the rainbow overnight, baby doll
but if you are game
we can (p)lay through it
I'll be your leprechaun
Will you be my outlaw in green?
I know you are waiting to hear me say
I love you
but when you say it
I'm ne'er around to hear it
They call us the inseparables
I think it's some kind of sick joke
when all I know is you're practically untouchable
Out of sight is not out of mind
I'll always love you tender
though you are only my smoke ring blower and pretender
Let me whatsapp you right off
to tell you that
before I forget your number
This town has no place in it for love
and no hearts that slumber
All night long the rain keeps falling
on the tin roofs like thunder
Baby, I will wait for you
on the other side of the railway tracks
in the hope you will wave out to me when the train goes by in clouds of dust
with a handkerchief not borrowed
with hearts on it embroidered
by your own hands, so at least
one time I'll feel beloved
There are eighteen rings on the road to heaven
Yes, baby, I counted them
but none of them held you in its hairpin bends
when I searched high and low to bypass them
This must be love in our time
and age, to be not around when you want them
I mean your curves and flouncing
The fridge is also empty
I know this is a long poem
It could e'en pass for the lyrics of a song
but what to do when you're my absent queen
and I am only fortune's knave
One writes and writes to reach somewhere
or to forget that one has to reach there
Baby, I'd exchange it all for a drink
and my head cushioned by your breasts
I confess I don't know how to end this song
as like life it has no ending
wish death would take me
but I got to get along
till life has let me play the curtain down
No, I do not want to hurt anybody
Just want to do what I have to get done
Leave behind some tears
but also some smiles and then - gone
Baby, I'll never get tired of you
I just wish you were here and real
not just words in my head
and that poetry was not so strong
 
Image result for poker paintings
Poker Game at Sunset -- Marlina Vera

1 comment:

  1. "Sídhe" are the hills or tumuli that dot the Irish landscape. (In modern Irish the word is "sí;" in Scottish Gaelic, "sìth;" in Old Irish "síde" and the singular is "síd.") The "aos sí" (older form: "aes sídhe;" the people of the mounds) were the supernatural beings who dwelled in them. They include the leprechauns, who rarely appeared in the oldest surviving stories but became more prominent in later folklore. Their name is derived from "leipreachán," a corruption of the Middle Irish "luchrupán," from the Old Irish "luchorpán," a compound of the roots "lú" (small) and "corp" (body). In "Irish Wonders" (1888) David Russell McAnally they were descended from an "evil spirit" who mated with a "degenerate fairy" and were not "wholly good nor wholly evil." The earliest known reference to the leprechaun is the 8th-century tale known as the "Echtra Fergus mac Léti" (Adventure of Fergus son of Léti), in which the legendary king of Ulster encountered water-sprites called lúchorpáin who tried to drag him into the sea while he was asleep, but the cold water woke him and he seized them; in exchange for their freedom they granted him 3 wishes. Their modern appearance ("He's a span / And a quarter in height /.... A wrinkled, wizen'd, and bearded Elf, / Spectacles stuck on his pointed nose, / Silver buckles to his hose, / Leather apron — shoe in his lap") is derived from William Allingham's 19th-century poem "The Lepracaun; Or, Fairy Shoemaker."

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