dolls roll in my brain

continuously and constantly you hit

on my face and expect me to hold tight

on to your pet’s leash and your doll

but i have to let them go despite your growl

without you your pet and doll are mere memories

that fade as other pets and other dolls roll

into my brain as newer snow keep falling

on my sun-deck, older to leave, fast melting

neither you nor me are to here stay stagnant

at present, but like yesterday evaporate, forgotten

forever, and we are none but that snowman

of the Halloween not there to see the spring

henry victor       29.12.2014

Christmas 2000

That wailing and weeping

Now, not in ancient Rama,
But, right in our midst
Not Rachel, for her children
But, helpless fellow creatures
Refusing, all consolation
Cause, they are no more
That’s Christmas of Christians
Deaf, dumb, and blind

Forests thousands of acres

The gardens of Eden damaged and destroyed
For holiday decorations
And cosmetic Christmas worship
For printing of comical carol sheets
And hilarious, hypocritical greeting cards

Turkeys, with other fowls

And innocent animals
Butchered, in millions of tons
Slaughtered mercilessly
For celebration of
The creator’s love
For pretentious Christmas fellowships
And for the feeding of hellish greed

Oh did you hear that

Wailing and weeping,
This time, not in ancient Rama
But right in our midst
Not Rachel,
No, not Rachel, for her children
But, helpless fellow creatures
Refusing, all consolation
That’s Christmas for Christians-
Deaf, dumb, and blind

Henry Victor      25.12.2000 

dung-beetle

i lack no inspiration

but that comes not with fuel
to adequately excite my will
to spark a fire that starts my soul

to push my destiny in that direction

that i desire to move
actually to fly high, like that eagle
with no spark plugs of aircrafts
or, that of a smaller motor cycle

hence like a dung-beetle i crawl

always backward
far, far from a highway with fear of speed
pushing that piece of dung
into my little cozy tunnel

constantly cherishing

the droppings and depending
on my single skill to smell

 

 

 

 

 

To My Eternity

Your whistling

I clearly heard

Your colour

I see not

Your name

I know not

But

To my eternity

I take you

Note: This poem was published in Songs of the Street, Volume V, edited by Arlene Williams & Ron MacLellan (2002) with the following editorial note:

Henry Victor is a published poet with two collections of poems No Tears (1998) and Frail Floret (1999). He uses poetry to promote more humane values, social justice, cultural pluralism and communal harmony. He believes that his task is to give “some voice” to the “voiceless”. “To My Eternity” was the winner of the “The End of the World” category of the Songs of the Street poetry contest, which was sponsored by Inner-City Pastoral Ministry. Other poems by Henry can be found on pages 19 and 46.

Insanity

Yesterday

With might and main I laboured

To diligently learn the art

Of lengthening simple shoes

For the ever expanding

Tiny feet of my little daughter

 

Today

I am frighteningly tormented

To discover the contemporary wisdom

Of conveniently cutting feet

To fit useless foot-wears

Made by the reigning professionals

 

Disagreeing

With the modern overnight professors,

I am very assertively informed,

By their cowardly counsellors,

Is plain insanity

Fit enough only for dismissal

 

Ethnic cleansing

In the political arena is easy answer

For those wolfish rulers

Greedily striving to firmly establish

Corruptive power and stinking business

Instead, dealing positively, the prevailing pluralism

 

juggle

i do not juggle with three balls

the coloured and the soft
neither do i juggle three stones
the triple solid in the air

but i juggle Fred, the four

and the forty four years
and also that sliding
in between the moments

and wonder the purpose

humans come to live
in their turn to juggle the living
the dead, and the thereafter hours

henry victor

 

 

dew on my lawn

like my mouth watering after a spicy dish

when my stomach is empty, last evening
my heart craved that highway leading
to nature’s carving the million-year-sculpture

that unambitious hard work, Grand Canyon!

but my sober soul suggested something else
to run around prompting a Nikon, or a Canon
a pair of better eyes and mind, a larger book

to photo-write, to note, to store to play later

and with others, also advertise my, already
overweight and extra-large ego lost
this morning like the dew on my lawn!  

21.07.2014

month-end pay-packet

a month-end pay-packet, now, i collect not
but i continue waking before the sun wakes
stretching feet many hours after the sun sets
picking crumbs falling from greased wallets

and buy, cook, and lay tables for animals

sleeping until the sun warms their butts
with only purpose to empty the bulbs
the tax money from hard working nests

do i, then, call mine a living soul, or a machine

paying bills? do i, then, smile and dance, or whine
and kill my urge to plod? do i, then, wake-up
and strike, or yawn in my grave, before i sleep

30.06.2014

my will

am i overly stubborn in imposing my will

rejecting your will, in my failing to see grace
in freight unloaded, regularly, at my feet
or, am i lively, very vibrantly, otherwise

adding life to a decaying soul like the mountain

lion, the cougar, pouncing dissolutely at the hunter
with his gun like will hounding the creature
who as a hermit already withdrawn to a cavern

my quest, however, is for wisdom, that light

from the abundance of your mercy to isolate
the black thread in the dusk of my life, and yield
to your will even in my defeat suspending mine
 
15.07.2014

never an outcast

when in my speech your voice is not heard
or, my movements make your being invisible

or, my songs do not convey your melody
or, my lines express not your poetic utterance

still i fear not a rejection but i am assured of acceptance

from you; for your embrace is not due to my conformity
to your will, my walking to the beat of your drum
that i seldom hear; nor, for it, my will is strong to submit

but my nonconformity to those who laid hands

on my head and those who claimed to love
and belong to me by blood and name and tribe
reject me, pushing me to the edge as an outcast

18.07.2014

last noon and last night

last noon i bent my inflexible frame to sit

down on my driveway with my grandson

the little boy, to draw with sidewalk chalk
flowers that never droop, bees that never suck

adding the easy crocodile beside the baby

and endlessly much more that he scribbled
until the energy within tempted him to spill
beyond the safety of my patience, my control

and last night you sent your heavy dark clouds

to completely wipe out our creative expressions
as if getting rid of the monstrous dinosaurs, bad
land creatures, to give space for prickly cacti bed!
 
29.06.2014    

‘lord have mercy’

i, like a feather fallen from an unknown

bird, am drifting alone, blown in an arid terrain
that wilderness of a loveless world
watered, enriched by the scarcity of gold

that mammon, an idol washed and worshipped

with liturgical music, pious rituals, and spiced
with sacred silence, with and without a person
in priestly garb, naming me, victor barren

the wind here fights and battles with emptiness

breathing out the refrain, but occasionally, ‘lord
have mercy’, while the lord of the creation
like Jesus of Nazareth naps on the boat’s stern!

28.06.2014

 

living nightmare

my waking from slumber was too sudden

also, announcing others, my companions
in journey, about the entrance of our train
at the destination, with effects to un-board

before the carriage is shunted to the yard

to be locked for hours, may be for days
before becoming a carrier of another herd
in ride to a distant land, a different moment   

but it was nightmarish to unclutter dream

filled minds, purposeless lives, lumped
in the baggage of laziness with scattered
shoes and stocks of habitual procrastination

24.06.2014

oldest man!

 

to become the oldest man

ever to have lived in this world
is not what i aspire for
but a tranquil and a hard-working
life that i keep yearning for!

let me remain close to those

whose life i can make it brighter
and when i have to leave this world
let my going be swift and painless
to me and those whom i lived for!

while living let my life

be simple as well as my food
including more gorgeous greens
with less of manifold muscular meat
consumed with ceaseless cheer!

in my short life let me not campaign

against the wine that tickle
my soul but never going after
for me and mine, that very same
to sustain their, or my, laughter!

let my mind never settle down

with those who settle self-confidently
with easy answers that repudiate further
probing the well-traveled path
of life’s more complex questions!

04.01.2002

 

untamed buffalo

alone i sit in the cave by the roadside

to the wilderness far beyond the urban
dwellings but i feel no seclusion, unruffled
like a wild buffalo, indifferent to breeze

gentle and the stormy winds making noise

but occasionally turning my head this way
and that side with ready un-readiness to build
my nest, or clean up any mess, mine

or those around through either commission

or omission caused by un-human indifference
to hear, to see, and to feel the pain
of bleeding life in paths much trailed

there neither the silence of the wilderness

nor the singing and dancing and hoarding
of the city invite me, inspire me to rise-up
to walk, to work, to fill, and, at the end, spill!

09.06.2014

 

 

to embrace another i go

hurry! and get to bed, rest to wake

early in the morning with evening
now gone, and the hand of daughter
to someone from far to take away!

for i now need to adopt another daughter

or may be a son for a change in my mood
and to pass on my books, manuscripts
and present pieces to edit with colour!

also to soon entomb my worthless bones

while archiving, for further study, shards
worked and handed in my tongue
by Fabricius, Rhenius, and Henry Bower!

02.06.2014

 

the fruit

the fruit in my hand

is for love i like to expand
but i hesitate to give
for there is a worm inside

the skin shines with colour

multiple and the wave within me grows
larger but i will, very soon, yield
for the sake of the seed

hidden, deeply buried within
to grow, to give
more fruits for my hand
and songs for all around

19.05.2014

not normal

if not to look at a floating cloud on the sky

or the face of the water in the river
flowing both within and around me
can be considered a normal human

then, sure, i am abnormal to be shunned

and, soon, taken in for incarceration
in that asylum as incapable of living
a normal life except to sign my last will

while the river with all the uploaded urban

sewage flood into the ocean to poison
maim and soon kill the source of cloud
and the living dead enthroned as normal
 
19.05.2014

at the edge

most of the moments these days

i am free of that terminal illness
the masses name, ‘healthy hope’!

these days i let my intuition and pangs

guide me when and where i catch
my crabs, creatures with protest
eventually yielding to my cravings!

at the edge neither the rules

written down by the modern
aristocrats nor noises the masses
spit out direct my directions!

from nothingness to nothingness

i slide with no care
like a kid on the slide
in the urban playground!

and at the edge of my ridge

with neither wants nor hope i stand
with readiness to exchange
the loin cloth, my present pair of pants
for my birthday suit, to let go my pant!
 
henry victor      04.05.2014

with clowns around

seated beside the lake with no waves

beating the shore, or above the surface
bleating fish i see neither wrinkles
nor the need to crusade for life

neatly pressed while clowns pass by

at times nodding at me to acknowledge
my absence elsewhere in the market
and crowded malls and other clowns

mere passers-by, often with sombre face

and more of others with firm intent to mask
face true, rooted to their heart, with more
to tickle faces stuck to glue of the past pain

henry victor      03.04.2014

 

 

purity of souls

an amazing togetherness i witness

in the functioning of the mother earth
and the father sun, her eternal partner
to maintain the purity of her springs

despite the quick gathering of impurity

in the brook running away from source
the place of her origin, like refugees
and immigrants towards wealth

as the loaded muck in the river

running to the ocean but never
beyond to eternity, the rain cloud
for a re-birth of another pure soul

henry victor      27.04.2014

Note:
Dedicated to Mario Flores
and Gitanjali Victor to be wedded
on May 17, 2014.

mediocrity

she runs with blinkers, changing

not her course, her dream
with him riding on her with similar
pads and becoming one with speed

like a jockey on the horse racing

a harmonious linking
of two unlike souls, one
from the surface of the earth

and the other from a cloud floating

but impregnated not with rain
a sure unproductive providence
together also a mere vapour

henry victor      17.04.2014

 

 

walk through the woods

i walked in the woods, your dream garden

hoping to have a glimpse of your face
that i may lay at your feet my weight
caused on earth by trickery and cruelty

i searched for your soul in this Eden,

this forest where angels dance with you
but haunted also frequently by women
and men with premeditated brutality

i observed there the stinking human shit

the remains of an unidentifiable animal
the partially decayed corpse of a pig
and a deer hiding from this intruder

henry victor     25.05.2002

praying a psalm

my awareness of your presence on earth

is more important than owning  my breath!
your subtle existence despite my denials
critically breathe purpose to the cosmos!

in this broken world your face

further gets distorted by chants
of your name arising from tongues
denying space for your silence!

as i survey the skies in the night

the working of your invisible fingers
the moon, the planets and the stars
established beyond the human cities

when i see the seas, the dreaming in your heart

and the massive whales haunted by human trickery
as i consider the jungles, a vision of your mind
and the enormous elephants hunted by manly greed

i see my smallness and pause to look up for help

to break barriers that create inequality among
the diverse beings with their multiple creeds
caring and healing all beasts, birds and fish

but who am i that you should stop

to listen to my pleadings, my helplessness
i know, for sure, you care for me, your created
being to do your peace, piece together your beauty

henry victor     27.05.2002

rained your love

with your love you came into my empty

space, my soul, parched like a dry desert
deprived of years of rain with all life turn
to mere skeleton, making me run to dance!

after you rained your love on me, now

a brook, i chase you, a young life, rolling
on ground laughing out loud my heart
and mind with all its content rearranged

creating your image in my soul, my cup

overflowing with new memories of massaging
your feet, scrubbing your body and narrating
stories that you playfully dump as boring!

25.03.2014