Munayem Mayenin
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Poet's Letter Magazine
The Premiere Online English Magazine for Contemporary Poetry, Politics, Philosophy, Literature, Music and Arts
Vol. 1 London. 2004 ISSN 1744-3776
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Editor's Poems: Munayem Mayenin
This is Munayem Mayenin's fifth collection, complete as a manuscript, now waits for an English publisher to accept and publish it. This is the title poem of the collection.
Standing here
Now that is
Present
That does not
At all resemble anything
Like a present
I wonder
Why at all
I am here?
At my back
Past’s ghosts’ stares
Give me pains
Yet I stand here
Now and not in the past
Nor is the future
In my touch
I hold my breath
That is a dry thin
Elixir of carbon die and mono oxide
I stand on the plate
Of the present
And feels like a fish
All cooked and presented
With lemon and herbs
Yet as per punishment
They did not kill me
Before they cooked
Here I stand
At the ruins
Destroyed buildings
Concretes and bricks
Red shone like eyes of evil
I feel a smell of burnt out dreams
I feel body odours of people murdered
Dried blood trails show me
Show me the way to the theatre
I was supposed stand up
And make people laugh
I stand up
Here with my head
Full of stuff that seems
Like live pins and needles
And I scream in sonar
Standing at the ruins
The theatre resembles
Scorched graveyard
Present is not
What is seems
I feel a kick
At my back
All the nightmares
Of people dead
Un-buried and rotted away
Without funerals
Come together
As an infinite team
Of rugby players
And they kick me
The ruins underneath
My feet wound me
I bleed thirsty and dry
I sweat
Remembering a past
That was not mine
Yet I cannot deny
This fact that
Here it is
On my plate
That is present
I stand here
Expecting rains
Expecting wet soft clouds all dark
Becoming pregnant
With possibilities of thunder
And bring forth the inevitable rains
Yet the sky stares at me
Quietly with infinite empty light turquoise eyes
I feel a chill of impossibilities
Of Rains and the ruins
Rejuvenating with dreams of green
And sounds of sweet foot steps
Of children and women carrying
Their pitchers to the river
No echoes
Far end of the hot sunny filed
That creates a line
Where shines strong silver mirage
A hope as unreal as music
In that barren ruins without rains
There I was
Where I was haunted by the murdered
Children
Women
Elderly
Infirm
And all other alive
Yet denied the passports
To carry life in their pockets
They take shapes
Their voices become
Powerful thunders
That come onto me
Like Ababil birds
Shall I run?
Shall I say I did not do it?
Shall I wait and see
What happens to the theatre
Of this dry dusty
Evil-eyed red land of ruins without rains?
They speak languages
They speak Zulu and Arabic
They sing Bangla and Hindi
They speak French and Yoruba
They speak Hebrew and Russian
They speak Rwandan and Afrikan
They take colours
Black and white
Brown and earth-like
Their skins resemble the soil
Of Australian outback
Or they call themselves
Falling Feathers or
Dancing with the moon
I do not see
I cannot hear
Here at this land
Of Ruins and no rains
I want to scream out
A dream of music
I want to get a paddy-plant poem
Out of my scared heart
I want to sing a song
Of Rains that will wash
Wash away the blood
And the corpses
That the world
And we the leaders have
Gathered like the bones
Of hunted African elephants
But here I stand
Feeling the heat
And the cold chill
Of the past
In a present
That is violently
Thunderous and bloody
More so than the past
And I know
The future is
More dark and scary
Than the past and present
Presented together
The future is
For this land of ruins
No rains but blood
No dreams but hatred
No present but brutality shaped sculptures
Of greed and power
Here I am
On this land of ruins
On this land of no rains
And I bleed with my dream
Getting red-wet with expectations
Of rains and thunders
Yet I do not see
Any birds coming to me
I do not see any magic
Bringing me rains in this land of ruins
Where I began my vigil
The dawn tells me
Continue the vigil
For you have no other choice
Remember choices
Are very thorny
You chose and they pine you
Keep up the vigil
And do not think of what will not
But think of what you might
What you might just be able to do
Think of the ruins and no rains
Strong enough
And you may end up with magic
A magic that will transform things
Into poetry
Out of ruins and into rains
Keep up your vigil
Keep up your vigil
Keep up your vigil
Some Poems of Munayem Mayenin
The Inner Phantom
Carbon bonding in singular and binary knots
Silence dancing in the music of atoms changing
Electrons flowing motion unfolding the rhythm
Bloods flowing inside the body motion keeps us going
Carbon boding in chains and in non chains
Silently life moving meaning building melody growing
Carbon carbon carrying the genome of life
Things living and non living space and time
All are carrying the genome of life imprinted
Carbon bonding oxygen and hydrogen helping
Here and there visible or not there they are
All bonding following imprinted inner phantom
Music melody motion blending life flowing
Carbon bonding blood flowing life growing
All carrying genome imprints of inner phantom
Seeds acting in touch of soil water darkness and lights
Reactions enabling losing and gaining of electrons
Life glows and creation flows regardless
Things act as though they know how to
Nothingness acts as though it knows
Animals plants grow and live and die
As though they know how to when to
Spring is recognised by the birds and the trees
The eclipses recognised by things and nothing
Animals and plants cockroaches and tigers
Seas and oceans and rivers all know what and how
Carbon bonding oxygen and hydrogen know when
They know how where and how much water grows
Virus knows bacteria does even the fishes do
All knows exactly where and when to be
Dry wood burns and water froze or becomes gass
Knowing from the inner genome of life
Human genome is the beginning of the music
The genome the imprint the inner phantom
Of the universe gives the knowledge to all
Carbon bonding the oceans weaving waves
High tide and low floods and volcanoes know
Exactly how to be when to be and they be
No other way but the way they do
The planets and moons and the suns
All the stars and the helliospheres
The solar winds and the particles and radiation
All knows where to begin and end
Iron knows the oxygen and rust
Music of inner phantom inner imprints
The genome of the universe and of life
All bewilderingly clear and they do
They do show the life that is being
Carbon bonding life is being that must sing
Life does not mean living things and non living things
Everything and nothing things and anti things
Space and the particles the energies lights and darkness
All carry the genome the imprints the inner phantom
I sing to music melody and miracle of the inner phantom
The colours the motion the magic all come together
In the silent dance with music of life in the festival of colours
All bonding blending combining being painting the inner phantom
I Search for the Myth of Life
I am no academic nor can I play accordion
Producing music melodically mesmerising
I am no scientist for I search for the myth of life
That is created in the wave-eaten shadows on the sea
Of the flying seagulls that paint tirelessly
Motional pictures with sheer will against the wind
I am no merchant nor can I dress as Mickey Mouse
In Disneyland dixiband in digital manipulation
I am not what you expect of me nor do I salute your
Desire for me to be what essentiates my dismissal
I am who I intend to be and my notations are mine
I sing the coral’s continuum of oxygenation of water
I am no anarchist nor can I bring you democracy
Producing razzmatazz de ja vu of mass sleepathon
I carry on bending the iron to live to fight the rusting
I am to scream and support you scream against the rusting
Against the rusting of the iron to enhance the brief length
Of our shortest living enlarging the shadows of our walk
Go To Top
Like a Blown
Kiss
"Tihe time
has not come yet, it hasn't, I'm telling you!"
As though it has an invisible horse carriage to ride
And tockety tock tickety tock tockety tickety tock
It is gong to come and jump at you saying: Look,
Here I'm! Right in your face as a soaring secular pain
Time does not come for it cannot ride at all
It has no carriages to ride roaring away free-care
For all it does is spin and spin on the spinning wheel
Of earth round and round looking at itself orbiting and out
It doesn't come nor does it go taking the mythical ride
We reach it as though it is the highest of accolade
That we can catch like the falling gems out of our hands
We must manage manipulating ourselves to the extreme
So that we could stretch and reach it-stretch and reach it
Stretch ourselves high and hard and catch it like a blown kiss
Rainbow Lady
At the beach
Water wet wind
Mellowed the sun
That offered a place
Quietly for your shadow
To form on the sands
Parallel my shadow
Proximity protected us
From the tourists
I capsulate you
In the camera
As if caught
In the act
Offering a smile
As long as the rainbow
That hanged behind your wind sewn hair
I called you my rainbow lady
That offered you
A sanctuary
Of coral cool combustion
My heart melted
In the heat
The photo is framed
You with that intoxicated smile
Stood there as if you could
Reach beyond the moon
The rainbow held you
In the picture
That is my melted heart
At time chocolatelike
And at other ice or vanilla cool
The memories
Folded in layers
Kept in the colours
Of the shadows of our minds
We are still
Building the length of the garden
My rainbow lady with her
Wind sewn hair
Touching my cheeks
Let’s walk
With the shadows parallel
Coming together
Closer
Go To Top
East Grinstead
East Grinstead
Took a lot out of us
At night
I under the mute trees
Watching the dress rehearsal of crickets and fire flies
Cigarette appeared one eyed alien
I could feel you standing beside me
Although it was cold
You inside half asleep
Like a curled up baby
I carried the stone
Thinking of the dead body
Taken out of the ward
All done fire took out the last of him
Or her I do not know
All I could see
Is dark thickening
With only the light
Of the lighthouse of prayers
East Grinstead
I could drive there
Closed eyes
Feel the bend and remember
The road signs
Where to slow or
Where there are holes
Home dismembered
Job abandoned
A child homeless
I spread like the sky
With no centre or ship
Only prayers held me up
Helpless I walk and talk
In a state of automation
The smell and the half dozed smile
Morphine and pain
And smell of lingering burns
Polite nurses and instructions
I remember to be home
Where there was smell of burned
Carpet and body skin
Our son homeless
No sense of where you were
I knew than
East Grinstead gave us a lot
And I felt prayers do get you stronger
They act like a shield
Like the paint on iron
Keep you all together
Beyond the bare boiling touch of rusting
A Few Poems of Munayem Mayenin
Epyllion
Not sure as to what’s wobbling in my mind
A sound shadow of serenading sonnet or
A Story Ville’s village folks’ ballad sunk in bitter brown
Ales all the way out of sobriety’s solemn box
Sonnet or ballad or bubonic blank verse
Rhythm and metre in peripheral paradox of images
Not sure as to why at all I care for the words
That stand up laming wet in prejudices-diction opens
Up wound that bleeds in noise unhearable
Metaphors appear bloodlike expressions in site
Alliterations do not alter algorithm’s allergy
In fact alliterations glitter the glory and games
Of famous flamboyant stars out and about
Not sure where it starts the impacted rotting
On people’s mind and the spaces it occupies
How it circles itself into a smell of narrowness
Geometric truth germinates regardless of viewpoint
I here stand as heir to the crown of no crown
Accused of crimes clearly uncommitted un-done
Wearing a jacket does not transform my skin
Into a creation for which I can be cited as creator
Here if I use antistrophe as means of musing
Musing may not occur then will you be feeling an
Oyster dance forming like storm? Or rather
Antithesis appear to dazzle the dire end
I am not a mean beast but a man of a mere heart
It does hurt knowing and not knowing the knowledge
Regardless reassembling the assonating hills and valleys
That supports the clouds being the columns of earth
I here lay down my clothes in the skin and bare
I stand all red like any other, does it change anything
In the politico-grammar’s ornament or orientation,
That finds disagreeable syllables and foreign letters
And unacceptable sounds and seasoning in my name?
Nothing at all changes the charcoal inside that burns
Firing out the essence of one’s wondrous inside
I hereby see solitude taking colours in the reflected
Sky on a lake where dragonflies paint invisible work
Of art that follows the strokes of waves waving out to
An end that hit the end of the lake with a final take
Critics that say similes must assimilate with the ones
That are already in abundant circulation in Hackney Marsh
Clichés fork out the dictionary of people’s usage
I try to map out unhackneyed land and notations of
Orchestral suits or sonatas in the microlasting smile
On her face that signs my meaning of the time
Timeless I stand wonder-wounded looking at the sunset
Remembering at the end of the day the beginning stands
In a daisy dawn that might or might not be rosy and wide
Depending on how I face it outstretching or shrinking in
I faced the dawn that presented me in Rome a disk of a round rose
In the subdued sun all popping out beyond the scarlet fog
A dawn offers me the opportune glory to sing
All there was and all there wasn’t all mixed in a round rosy disk
My poetry is the disk of the sun round rosy at dawn
On scarlet fog where mist and air kissed in cool breeze
A thing called life with its glory and nought
Whether I use anastrophe or try hard to avoid catastrophe
The time stands as the measuring wheel and I am to be
Cut out of the sand of it and face the length of my strength
Leave or not does not depend on how my skin clothes me
Nor should the place where I touched the earth
Or even if I walk on the grass on the meadow of life
Wounding the thick velvet green and getting wounded up by it
I write because that’s the way it is to be me inside and out
You do not dare open up and hence opening up a wide box
That brings out worms of skunk-smelling interior of yours
Where I do not but you live in poisoned air
Thankfully I take a walk in the scent of Scottish heather
Even if I bleed I could still find my music
In the peripheral circumstance of heliospheric end
The beginning of the wider unknown worlds
Wait to be found in other ranges of other stars
I will always find you new music written in anew grammar
Afresh as a wound bleeding but real as the hurt
You cannot clothe me with your narrow grasp
Ignominy is yours to be a destiny I on the other hand
Drink the joy the moving silver water leaves on the wet pebbles
Having seen the un-light name in my nouns
They think thoroughly enjoyably in their part
As if I fell out of the sky as an accidental meteor
And who does not know how to create a diction
Of the heart beats that I hear in billions of bravado times
Rhythm and meters iambic or trochaic or be it spondaic
Dactylic or anapaestic needed to be curved out of the
Dictionary of snobs to show how they create a club of cubs
That are fed in the illusion’s dry milk of snobbery’s farm
I here cheer as I listen the sun charming up the clothes of the earth
Where I live a droplet of a life that shivers in cold and dances in spring
In between there daggers and massacres punctuate our measures
The sky occupies a space if only to support our understanding
Yet it is in itself a spread out space appearing blue
Using synesis or Zeugma here or there does not count
For I am writing for the people who do not
Carry a dictionary along with them as they go
Whether it is synecdoche synchysis or syllepsis
Or pathetic prolepsis oxymoron or juxtapose
It does not matter in the material end of poetry
For it is the words that are my notes and colours
With which I only try to take the music or the paintings
To the hearts and the eyes of the minds
It’s the ether of life or the essence of space
Which I wish to lit up in the sphere of human mind
It is water and its melodies in waves and the flow
Of oxygen and hydrogen getting together
Always cleaning the convicted air with our poison breath
I hereby leave this to the people who try to live
Here at the sphere of temporality’s waves
For now and for later without the box
Of the critics and the theorists whose works are imbued
In the bin of non navigated land of pure encryption
No regrets linger in my breath or shadow upon my face
Nor do I care much of what they make of me
For I register the fact that it is being there than not
That counts at the end and bent but defied breaking
This is the name one should aim acquiring
Being a human it bans idiots who waste life
Pretending they are something somebody or someplace else
The bright knight of the night trying living light
The lonely snail leaves a trail of its travels but
Does not come back on the back of it ever again
Crisscrossing it over and over again over the course
Of its length of luminous locomotive nocturnal time
Silver-strewn a road map appears in the morning dew
With the imposition of baby rays of the sun
The critics and the theorists and academics find
The meaning of hidden symbols and signs of living
A history is planted out of it about the snail and its trail
Yet he has lived and now gone in hibernation among his nation
Does not care much whether its trail makes good history
It lived the moment being the bright knight of the night
Trying the best stretching the living light last longer
Circularity of Our Understanding
Starting at a stirring point of beginning
A word working a concept being constructed
We seek a meaning in another word offering
Another unfurled concept wrapped in another word
Let us begin the wordathon out of the dictionary
Taking a fishing rod of an idea getting a word out
Of the dry sea of words compiled together in solemnity
We pick a solemn word of solid concept of law
‘Subpoena’ surely means a writ that is written orders
Of courts. Courts then go to mean an assembly of
Judges assembled to analyse the anatomy of justice
While judges mean to offer us another meaning
They are public officers actuating justice at courts
That leads us now to follow the travel of the trails
In the dictionary lifting us to find justice on our plate
Fishlike it stares at us offering fairness as its synonym
Here we are in all fairness wrapped in fairness’s silk
Fairly falling concept-faint we find fairness an equitable state
Where we find the ground to be a just one which again
Must henceforth be a morally right thing theoretically
Right then takes us right into the heart of abstraction
Showing the door to be the correct one until we
Reach the realm of tranquillity’s true self and shires
Taking us to the space in the dictionary land taken by honest
Searching the meaning starting from stop zero round
We end up at automated alliance of sincere replacing honest
Taking us to the reach of top end of a thing called genuine
That must thenceforth come from an original source
Surely we say ours is the difficult job following the flow
Of all these links words linking words concepts flowing like cobweb
We end up at a point where we find standing origin in writing
That takes us to a beginning point where all begins all over again
The circularity of our understanding flows through the invisible links
Between words opening up a railway line of concepts one after the other
A line of concepts supports our understanding as though a flow
And we stand wiser in the wisdom that cannot stand on its own
Here each word works its way up into a concept concrete
In its meaning opening up in another bringing a new one
Requiring another need be met by a new one being brought in
The music of words and their mesmerising flow of links tick
We stand in the flow our understanding runs through the wires
Of words where electric flow goes on fuelled by the interlinked concepts
We love the words and see the concepts clearing our head yet
The skin of the circularity of our understanding remains untouched
Playing I do with Words
Playing I do with the words
Serenading them soulfully as though they are my mates
Is not a game but a living
That I cannot carefully achieve
Following the forward road of forewords economy
Playing I do with words
That score for me
Events of enormous joys
That lay out litmus test results
Portraying my life and living
Playing I do with words
But do not play any games
I am no games gambling away
Playing I do with words
Try to grasp their delicate dances
Evaporating they do high up
In the heat of silence solid
I watch their pathways smoky
I follow their trails to finale or folly
I play with playful words plentifully splendid
Playing with words playfully tease them out
Out of their dry bed of dreary dictionary
I chase them and cajole them to run
And I follow them wet and dry sweating
I am no games gambling away
Playing I do that forms my living
Games I do not for I am no gassopian gossip
I am in and out Orion’s neighbour
Touching and talking things and nothing
As if they are more than things and nothing
I play alright alighting myself like a lamp
Fuelling the flimsy light with my toil of play
That is not what we are asked to do in our little life
Playing I do and that’s all I ever want to do
I am no games gambling away
I’m no Macbeth
I’m No Macbeth
Nor do I see myself as Hamlet
I’m a Mcfly in a disposable cup
Right out of fish and cake
Smelling of Macdonald’s
I’m part of a happy meal
Bought and consumed cheap
I’m No Macbeth
The Straight Line Theory
A straight line is bound to abound
Always bending like vine in the wind
Because there is nothing straight in a straight line
A straight line is always part of an infinite circle
It is always coming back to where it commences
The journey; it is always in the coming back state
A line a straight line
Lingers in a non linear state
It has the journey of dots chasing each other till eternity
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Contact us: mm@munayemmayenin.com
Read Interview with George Szirtes
|
Poetry Month Special
To Celebrate Poetry Month
we have gathered the links for our visitors to listen to poets performing
their works.
While you are here joining the celebrations of creation of words why not
venture out to find out more about what is going on in the poetic scenes
across the borders: poetry speaking English in various tongues as well as
the international poetry scenes: Poetry Month Special Poetry
Keep Falling Starlike
Go To Top
The bud holds possibility’s
door
Sizzling up |
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Seamus Heaney Personal Heliconhttp://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/personal.html Boglandhttp://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/bogland.html The Tollund Manhttp://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/tollund.html Casualtyhttp://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/casualty.html Song http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/song.html The Harvest Bow http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/heaney/harvestbow.html Listen Maura Dooley Bernardine Evaristo Jackie Kay Mimi Khalvati Jamie McKendrick Eva Salzman read their poetry: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/info/poems.htm Listen to readings of Paul Muldoon http://www.paulmuldoon.net/recordings.php4
Poetry International Web's Camera Poetica During
the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam in
2001, 2002 and 2003, 41 of such films were shot by Victor Vroegindeweij
and Daniëlle van Ark, in collaboration with Neon Media.
There are a host of poets from across the languages and cultures reading
there works in three festivals. This is an opportunity for visitors to
take a listen:
Festival 2002
Festival 2003 http://www.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/19018 Suheir Hammad: B E Y O N D W O R D S http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2824.shtml Watch Beyond Words on Video: | ||