Ennui

The Than-bauk is a three-line poem, conventionally an epigram, each line being of four syllables, and the rhyme being on the fourth syllable of the first line, the third syllable of the second one, and the second of the third. This has been called "climbing rhyme" and is characteristic of Burmese verse.

The following is my poem in Than-bauk:

Ennui

When tears become
more the sum of
night, numb is love.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Over the Counter Philosophy

At the counters stacked with pain relief,
they know my name. By the ache
that's crawling up my face, I must
be smiling near the aisles
that meet the needs between
denial and withdrawal, stocked
on shelves that co-exist adjacent
to the cases lined in green glassed alcohol.

Either way, it's a long climb back.

The film I dropped that caught
you still alive arrived last week,
transformed to prints too small
to see the clouds that gathered overhead.

Like tapes retrieved from planes that crash,
they keep repeating vanished time,
leaving gaps of disbelief in doses
swallowed with the ease of numbing
remedies that try to keep us both alive.

No comments:

Post a Comment