You ponder what is life?
The American poets have it easy,
Being the ones who get to shove
Their poems down so many journals.
While in this part of the world
There is very little we can do
But postbox a poem down the shaft
Of an editor, at a reputed journal far away,
Who will blindly look at the poem
Hopefully without any mention, that it is from
Sri Lanka. I’m public enemy number one,
A proud virgin, even a prouder married man,
Who worships god – a type scarcely
Found in poetic circles – that makes
Me easy to be erased from pages of history
Only a blog holding her fort
To who I am and what I write about.
I’m no perfectionist, but I strive for perfection
No qualms there, it’s not to feel like God.
If you want to feel like God,
You can use technology and infiltrate
Some poor man’s mind 24 hours a day.
I’m a just a lowly poet, traded in
By friends and foes alike, a Christian
In these times of islamophilia.
Yes, you get special mention
If you’re a poet from Iran, who like
Rumi, is worshiped for the words.
Perhaps I will always be invisible
On paper, perhaps I will die with
A cancer the size of a tennis ball in my spleen,
Perhaps I will have a poem in the New Yorker
When all prejudices are lost,
To the thinning of ice, air, ether,
Anything between me and the anti-me
The invisible duels between Christian and atheist
Or any strange vendetta below
The cover of a poem. We are all
Here to live and die, and hope like mad,
We rise from our frailties
To garnish our reputation the way
We see it. Hope is all I’ve got.
That stardust on the end of my nib
Which makes a nebula on paper.
Whether it will become a star, is up to
The armchair warmers,
Who from this small island of ours far away,
Look like gods on thrones.
Kite Dreams 