Tag: ghazal

Anapestic Ghazal, for Aylan Kurdi

September 9, 2015 / jgregg

Photo by Nilufer Demir (Turkey’s Dogan News Agency)

Tell me who sent the boat that was flipped in the waves?
Tell me who is the boy who was slipped in the waves?

Oh no, please, do not talk of the wars that we wage,
or about all the others we’ve lost in the waves;

for my heart cannot stand the mere sight of the sand
that held him in its hand as he slept in the waves.

Yes, I know there is much we should change in the world,
yet I know that all change comes in drips, comes in waves.

And so tell me, J. Gregg, who was drowned, who was saved,
who will weep by the grave of the boy in the waves?

December 4, 2012 / old jg

licensed via creative commons

A place from which you can’t escape is prison.
A place to which you must return is prison.

The space between the place where you were born
and everywhere you fear to go is prison.

Your shame has strapped a saddle on your back
and whipped your ass to ride you back to prison.

Their faces — all the ones you can’t forgive —
become the guards who lock you in your prison.

Pull back the shades; reveal the fragile glass
that forms the razor fence around your prison.

What taste now aches within your bitter palate?
What sweetness haunts your memory in this prison?

You see your lover standing at the gate.
You wave to her — but turn into your prison.