LOST TO THE ALPENGLOW
MARYAM ALI ALI
Copyright: Maryam Ali Ali, 2015
ISBN: 9789789462209
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CONTENT
BOOK 1: CUPID –OLOGY
1. My Mind Rebelled
2. The Last Supper
3. The Poem
4. I’ve lost myself
5. Loneliness
6. Without Love
7. Fools Fall in Love
8. The Moon is Up Today
9. St. Valentine is Not a Saint
10. Love Robber1
11. The Faculty
12. Hidden Identity
13. Love Robber 2
14. I was So Sure!
15. Poetic Purdah
16. Internal Domination
17. Remembrance
18. Relevance
19. I Remember
20. Forlorn
21. I Am Real!
22. Stolen Glances
23. Solitude
24. The Mad Poet
25. The Elusive Critic
26. The Visitor 1
27. Pen Brother
28. Patchwork
29. Volcanic Eruption
30. Those Eyes
31. The Visitor 2
32. The Confession
33. At the Horizon
34. The Confession of a Good Girl
35. On Bended Knees
36. The Rapture
37. Musing
38. Stranded
39. Passers By
40. Sweet Torture
41. Drowning
42. I Hold the Keys
43. Strategies
44. Dance Steps
45. Serendipity
BOOK 2: Philosophical
46. Prismatic Life
47. Upheld Treasure
48. The Love for Applause
49. Mammon
50. A Game of Life
51. Opposing Values
52. Life!
53. A Narrow Life
54. The Two Faces
55. The King of the Road
56. Ever Wonder
57. Borrow Beauty
58. I Am
59. Natures People
60. Neophyte
61. The Forbidden Fruit
62. Fabrications
63. Hour Glass
64. We Dictate
65. Who Am I
66. Expectations
67. Uncertain Situations
68. Demon-Crazy
69. The Assignment
70. Without Honour
71. Woe-Man
72. It Pains You, Why?
73. The Agora
74. Phasing Out
75. CivilandTheirServants
76. River of sand
BOOK 3 – Places
77. The Wanderer in Me
78. High on the Hills
79. Northern Stars
80. Sokoto!
81. Lost in Chicago
82. Dental Clinic
83. The Carnage on the Plateau
84. Garden City
85. Dubuque!
BOOK 4 – Changing Tides
86. When, Where and How
87. This House
88. When it’s Your Turn to Die
89. The Faces in the Streets
90. My Unknown Friend
91. The Best Option
92. When I Am Gone
93. Nothing Has Changed
94. The Tick of Time
BOOK 5 – Spiritual
95. Pure Perfection
96. Victoria’s Son
97. God Is
98. The Whirlwind of Illusion
99. What it takes
100. Fear!
101.At First
102. Blind Fury
103. The Night of Power
104. Footsteps
105. At first
106. You were there
About the Author
BOOK 1: CUPID –OLOGY
1. MY MIND REBELLED
Living on the brink
Of love eclipsed
By the vivid truth
That set me free
Written on the face of
A stranger
Who put me in a cage and
Strangled me
I cannot speak
Clipped my wings
I cannot fly
Weighs every word coming out of
My lips, and watched my tongue
And do only what I am
Told!
2. THE LAST SUPPER
Happiness grieved
When love was crucified
On the altar of suspicions
And I Wept
For the virgin heart
That has to feed love
The last supper
3. THE POEM
Seeing love
Through the eyes of the poet
You don’t see much
I laugh so hard bringing tears
To my eyes
4. I’VE LOST MYSELF
Who is there, I shouted
Aiming the searchlight
On the moving figure,
Hoping it is myself
I craned my neck and
Focus my eyes at
The fading figure that really looks like
myself
Myself and I were best of friends
Until we had a misunderstanding
When I insisted
And myself left
I searched for myself in Rumi,
In Aynal Qudaat and the banished Ovid
Myself has been stolen
By the Alpenglow
Probably, myself went in search of
Her dimple smile and silly little jokes
And drifted, carried away
By Floods
Myself once says melancholy is contagious
And because of that might have fled
To a place unknown, undiscovered, unexplored?
A *Fanaa
* A sufi term meaning material disappearance and spiritual appearing in the presence of God
But what myself hates the most
Is the lost of her rhythms and her rhymes
And in despair
Disappeared
If anyone should see myself
Should please
Tell her I have found the poem
See, it is the Sakinah
5. LONELINESS
Loneliness
My cup of tea
It keeps me warm
In the morning
When molecules
Falls down from the sky
Loneliness
Is my sweet dream
Keeps me company
When the bed is wide
And cold
Loneliness
Is my therapy
It rubs in the Sandalwood and
Massages away the fatigue
From my tired limbs
Loneliness
Is the soothing balm
Throughout the day
It caress the skin
Where the ice
Has burnt me blue
6. Without Love
Love slows time
To a halt
Days pass by
And nights are no longer
Dark
Without love
Food loses its taste
And flowers become colorless
The birds yell instead
The sky remains grey
Love moves mountains and
Builds bridges
Set up fountains in the
Desert, and milk comes out of
Trees
Without love
The bee stings
And water tastes bitter on the tongue
Where handsomeness was
Before, becomes ugly
Love creates creativity
Set up a canvas and
Paints the sky with love colors
Sculptures the mountains with its
Hand
Without love
Nothing works
And a smile looks
Like a Chagrin
Love cares
Feels
Fears
Love loves
Without love
There's is only
Scare,
Wear and
Swear
Love puts the lipstick
On the lips
And the balm
Caress the Palms
Without love
There is nothing of
Anything, and
The world goes up in flames
7. FOOLS FALL IN LOVE
When Love is found
By strategy or not
Some people will keep it
And live happily ever after
Some will find Love and let it go
Believing Love is like a butterfly
And should be free,
Resigning themselves to
Misery
Others find Love and
Are overwhelmed
They will then start singing a song
They call
A Poem
A good number will live their life unloved
Passively looking at Lovers
Calling them Fools – only fools fall in Love
And fools die – says Mario Puzo
But in the History of Time
Only the Triumphs and Failures
Of the Politics of War and
The Philosophy of Love get written
In the History of War
Everything is placed in view,
In the History of Love
Everything fades away
But the breathe of the Beloved
8. THE MOON IS UP TODAY
Today the moon is up
As bright as it was
When you came last time
Practicing your husbandry
Role
Today I remembered
How we walked
Hand in hand under
The influence
Of the light and the love
The moon is up today
It reminds me of you
Of your kindness
Humility and care
I will always remember you
When the moon is up
Brightening the sky
As it did when last you came
And we walked hand in hand
In fool’s paradise
9. St. VALENTINE IS NOT A SAINT
St. Valentine didn’t die for me
So that I live
Love and beloved
He certainly
Didn’t do what he did
With me in mind
If it is for me
He employed cupid
Then it is a wasted capital
Because my man
Was not with me
On the 14th of 2
He flew away
On the 13th
Like a bird out of a cage
Unloved then
I opened my eyes on my bed
To watch lovers valentine-ning
So, on the 14th
I was unloved
I was alone
As I have always
Been, no one to hold
Or MMS
So, to me
St. Valentine
Is not a saint
That died for me
So that I live
A life of love
10. LOVE ROBBER 2
You stole an identity and
Wore a mask, then you came
Knocking on my door
“Ah! My Knight in shining amour
Come on in”, and I wore my ecstasy
Gave you the Keys
To all the four rooms
Of my heart
When I woke up from the
Hangover
You were gone!
11. THE FACULTY
Go and bring the rain
Let it then knock on
The window pane
And let the rain go and
Call the thunder and lightening
And the cool breeze
So that the breeze will now talk
With my racing heart
And thinking mind
Thinking
Thinking
Thinking of yesterday’s
Today’s and tomorrow’s
Thought
Just thought and
Thinking
Of nothing
But the dough
‘Give me money’
‘More money’
No humanity
No humility
No empathy
Nothing... Just the money
Nothing
The rain
The breeze
Thinking
And then its morning, and I
A veteran of the Faculty
12. HIDDEN IDENTITY
They said I am
Possessed
By the crazy spirit
Of obsession
I thus search for my sanity
To no avail
As I continue to go down
Further into a sphere
Of diminishing identity
I give
And give
And kept giving
From every part of my body
Loosing myself
In the process,
I roamed around aimlessly
How was I to know
That this city has no geography
There was no East and there was no West
The sun neither rose nor set
Sat right there at the zenith
What curse or blessing
I asked myself, as I
Looked askance at
The cheering crowd
And leering painted
Faces
Don’t they know who I am
Must I introduce myself
To them, or they to me
Why do I then see shadows
In my dreams
With faceless faces
Like fever demons
Why was I blinded
And could not see
The shadows, only
The two little birds
The white one that died
On my palm, drawn
In the waters of anxiety
And the little red
Robin
That took shelter
In my cubicle, determined
Rubbing itself clean
Of the waters of anxiety
Sweet one, there
So, like a woman in labor
Experiencing
The two emotions
Of pain and expectation
Of pain and fear
Prancing up and down
Restless, the owner
Of the shadows
In my dream
And I along with
Those shadows
Buried my childhood
Dreams
Glad to have outlived it
Therefore
Though blinded
By the shadows
I can now see vividly
Clearly, the grey horizon
Looming before me
As far as the eyes can see
And the cave and the mount of light
That spread the whole world
Before me, and I rose
And claimed it
13. LOVE ROBBER1
Love the philosopher said
Is like a butterfly
Once captured should be
Let to run freely
The philosopher
Robbed me of love
14. I WAS SO SURE
The anguish that is
When that thing that
Seemed so possible
Suddenly became
Impossible
It was there tangible
Before it disappeared
On the 25th
But I was so sure!
15. POETIC PURDAH
Consider the expanse of the earth
And the vastness of space
Consider too, the google of stars
And the brightness of the moon
But you will rather write
About sweating bodies
And Ruptured Rapture!
Why not write
On the genius
In every blade of grass
Or the minute grain of sand
But such embarrassing poems
Like Volcanic Eruptions!
There is the deep of the ocean
To ponder on, as well as
Human struggles – to write
About
Erotic poems
Don’t win any award
16. INTERNAL DOMINATION
There is certainly no winner
And there is no loser
In this battle between
Two occupation armies of my mind
The quarrels
Of the two burns me deeply
Giving me no peace in their squabbles
A gentleman is certainly
Not good for me, since he
Can only wear one ring!
And remember
Every paw has a claw,
Hidden
Out of sight
17. REMEMBRANCE
Long after the curfew has been lifted off the mosquitoes
I lay cuddled in the arms of the night
And the dogs of the night would not let me
Holding their concert right across the street
The stars among them
Barked, yelped, and a howling
That would most certainly attract
A standing ovation from the audience
While I lay tossing and turning
Commemorating my beloved
Till the graying hours of the morn
18. RELEVANCE
By the variables on ground