Tuesday Poem: "Homecoming" by Tishani Doshi

I forgot how Madras loves noise
Loves neighbours and pregnant women
And Gods and babies

And Brahmins who rise
Like fire hymns to sear the air
With habitual earthquakes.

How funeral processions clatter
Down streets with drums and rose-petals,
Dancing death into deafness.

How vendors and cats make noises
Of love on bedroom walls and alleyways
Of night, operatic and dark.

How cars in reverse sing Jingle Bells
And scooters have larynxes of lorries.
How even colour can never be quiet.

How fisherwomen in screaming red
With skirts and incandescent third eyes
And bangles like rasping planets

And Tamil women on their morning walks
In saris and jasmine and trainers
Can shred the day and all its skinny silences.

I forgot how a man dying under the body
Of a tattered boat can ask for promises;
How they can be as soundless as the sea

On a wounded day, altering the ground
Of the earth as simply as the sun filtering through
The monsoon rain dividing everything.

by Tishani Doshi

For more information about poet, Tishani Doshi, see:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/tishani-doshi

Tuesday Poem: "Spellbound" by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

by Emily Brontë

For more information about poet, Emily Bronte, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Brontë

Tuesday Poem: "Willin' " by Little Feat

 

I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow 
I'm drunk and dirty don't ya know, and I'm still, willin' 
And I was out on the road late at night
I'd seen my pretty Alice in every head light 
Alice, Dallas Alice 
 
I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari 
Tehachapi to Tonapah 
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made 
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed 
And if you give me weed, whites and wine 
And you show me a sign 
I'll be willin', to be movin' 
 
Well I've been kicked by the wind, robbed by the sleet 
Had my head stoved in, but I'm still on my feet and I'm still, willin' 
Now I smuggled some smokes and folks from Mexico 
Baked by the sun, every time I go to Mexico, and I'm still 
 
And I been from Tucson to Tucumcari 
Tehachapi to Tonapah 
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made 
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed 
And if you give me weed, whites and wine 
And you show me a sign 
I'll be willin', to be movin'

by Lowell George and Little Feat

For more information about Little Feat, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Feat