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the color of my dreams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday morning poetry share. I haven't written poems in a long while. It feels infinitely good to stretch my poetry muscles. Bon Weekend! (image credited to Pinterest)

 

You asked the color of my dreams.                                        

In sleep, my eyes have sought

The inky black of raven lashes.

Starry nights and sooty ashes.

Prussian blue of fading violets

Indigo of clouds and silence

Beryl skies and turquoise seas

Blue-green waters of the deep

Peacock feathers of emerald green

Mossy dells of faery queens

Fields of wheat and brilliant suns

Amber gold in mid-autumns

Coral reefs and salmon streams

Marmalade and tangerines

Auburn sunsets, titian lips

Hennaed hands and fingertips

Blushing brides and rosy cheeks

Pink hued walls and white topped peaks

Silver moons and crystal nights

Downy geese in graceful flight

Ask not the color of my dreams

The question is not whole;

Deep within my rainbow’d sleep

Lies the color of my soul.

 

Purdah I, by Imtiaz Dharker

 

Purdah I, by Imtiaz Dharker | Illustration by Alessandro Gottardo

Purdah I
One day they said
she was old enough to learn some shame.
She found it came quite naturally.

Purdah is a kind of safety.
The body finds a place to hide.
The cloth fans out against the skin

much like the earth falls
on coffins after they put the dead men in.

People she has known
stand up, sit down as they have always done.

But they make different angles
in the light, their eyes aslant,
a little sly.

She half-remembers things
from someone else’s life,
Perhaps from yours, or mine –

carefully carrying  what we do not own:
between the thighs, a sense of sin.

We sit still, letting the cloth grow
a little closer to our skin.
A light filters inward
through our bodies’ walls.

Voices speak inside us,
echoing in the spaces we have just left.

She stands outside herself,
sometimes in all four corners of a room.

Wherever she goes, she is always
inching past herself,
as if she were a clod of earth
and the roots as well,
scratching for a hold
between the first and second rib.

Passing constantly out of her own hands
into the corner of someone else’s eyes…

while doors keep opening
inward and again
inward.

Pushkin: i loved you

photo from Spearmint Decor

 

I Loved You, by Aleksandr Pushkin

I loved you; and perhaps I love you still

The flame, perhaps, is not extinguished yet.

It burns so quietly within my soul

No longer should you feel distressed by it.

Silently and hopelessly I loved you

At times too jealous and at times too shy.

God grant you find another who will love you

As tenderly and truthfully as I.