settling with unsettling

something bulky in my indoors,

like an active turtle, revolts

within, refusing to my settling

in the depth inside my shell

refusals and revolts of my soul

against the menacing ‘isms’

religious and secular in texture

including a broader universalism

they are nothing but a ‘herd-ism’

camouflaged, making me move,

though, like a tortoise in slow speed

reconciling with an unsettling self

© henry victor     31.12.2003

answers premeditated

nauseating emotions

bubble inside my head

even as volcanic liquid

roll in my stomach

every time i sit with groups

of women and men questing

after questions with answers

premeditated and easy

confirming established prejudices

leaving no space for timid, tentative

rejoins, which may be closer to truth

to set free women, men and children

© henry victor     30.09.2003

my breakfast

i am glad i decided to think

outside the box
to unchain my soul
like my seven-year old grandson
chasing a magpie on the way to school

so for my breakfast

i let go my beggarly oatmeal
with that watery milk
racing to prize my daughter’s joy
that last two days of baking hard

while i washed and chopped

the apples the little rascal picked
from under the tree
i planted seven years ago
my home’s celebration of the first born

so i ate an Easy Apple Muffin
a tasty Apple Cinnamon Lemon Zest Muffin

two squares of Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal
and a raw apple with a shiny skin
like that of the angelic Josephine

© henry victor          07.09.2016

factory smoke

from your footstool, a comfortable cradle

you placed me i hesitate not to meddle

with my ever fattening factory smoke

thicker clouds, i cherish to make

trapping me tight behind those bars

from which neither me nor my princely progeny

will ever escape like a turtle trapped

under her own unyielding roof

thus with my shortsightedness i build

greater momentum to cause first, an hasty

homicide, moving then, to a silent suicide

pushing, further, to a genocide and a globocide

while the sulfuric stink from my artificial cloud

that deteriorating dead carcass shall pierce

through the ozone layer keeping pure the cloud

you send to refurbish my life at your footstool

© henry victor     15.10.2003

against the current

not the river into that ocean

eternally flowing, following a path

not of her own but of her ancestor

that i pause in poise to admire

but a struggle of the salmon to spawn

sacrificially swimming swiftly

against the current to lay her eggs

for which i tip my hat

though her end comes swifter

with that greedy grizzly standing in middle

to stop before an upward movement

a new shoal, to the ocean, could swim

 

© henry victor     17.10.2003

psalm 151

my pleadings like smoke

came to you and you listened
my prayers like fog
were before you, and me, you assisted

my days now stay strong
like rocks of Rockies
my nights are peaceful
like lakes in mountains

my heart leaps with joy

like a dancing deer
my plate is full
with extravagant bread

my bones are strong

like the Indian iron wood
my past wrongs you blotted
all out of my sight

i now soar high, and higher

like an eagle in flight
i sit with poise like a king
on throne with no guards around
 
i sleep like a log
the whole night in my bed
i am busy like a bee
the whole day collecting food

in the day of my anguish

you hid not your face
in my distress i called you
and you speedily responded

© henry victor     11.10.2003 

being in love

my love for you, utterly, embraced

the total you, including the new life

bulging, but silently, inside your belly

and ear-rings, your protesting my style!

my love for you bent mine straight

into your heart with a mesmerising energy

submitting mine to your diction, a dictating

i blindly delighted, as if you are my mother!

my love for you painlessly twists my arm

that i neither dream nor truly pack my baggage

to leave my old home, or go out to look

for a spouse, a re-placement for a lost love! 

© henry victor          02.06.2016