Writing poems sometimes gives a sense of lack of control, similar to dreaming. Odd things from different times and places in your life mix and hurtle off in unexpected directions, and you have little power to decide their destination. This poem is one of those times…

Dreams

Dreams are thoughts with the reins off, galloping through dim night

Eyes that burn the darkness, skin as pale as fright

Tearing through night’s hours, howling like lost wind

Clinging on white knuckled – and you’re slipping, slipping…

Hearing soundless footfalls, thunder that won’t speak

Hurtling up dark mountains, breathless at the peak

Wind that lifts you flying, feet that leave firm ground

Arms that cannot carry – and you’re falling, falling…

Remember, remember

The thing didn’t happen

The thought was a waterfall, cascading and calling…

Remember, remember

Embrace it, don’t fear it

The wind was a whisper, you’re ears didn’t hear it …

Run on into the scream, it’s not a scream of danger,

It’s not a scream of fright, just keep your eyes wide open

Not long until dawn’s light

After days and nights of rain the skies over Dhaka are washed blue, and the mornings lovely. This weeks poem is in praise of my favourite time of day.

Dawn

With a contented sigh darkness passes

Rolling over the edge of the landscape

Sleep follows yawning, clinging to his shirttails

For the sleepless, long lonely hours are over

Dawn has come at last

Peering distantly over far horizons

Peeping intimately through cracks

Playful fingers reaching through curtain threads

Distinctive fingerprints in floating dust fragments

Dawn gently claims us for the day

Tender light on morning eyes

Cobwebs brushed aside

Curtains flung wide to scatter gold across cold floor

Treetops tentative twittering bursts to full blown song

Dawn has come

Day has come

Again we live in light

And everything is blessed

This week’s poem is about my interesting and numerous neighbours in Dhaka, so resilient in the face of too many trials.

Dreams of my neighbours

Blocks bathed in moonlight, clocks way past midnight,

Alone on the rooftop I stand

Ten-million sleepers – ten-million deep breathers,

Exhaling heavy hot air 

Their dreams light the night, and moon shares the sight

of pictures that grow in their sleep.   

Girls dream in one voice of a groom of their choice,

handsome and moneyed as well

Bangles of gold, to have and to hold,

hoping his mother is kind

Old men still clutch tight to a dream of youth’s kite,

though storms snapped the string years ago.

Dream Ramadan fasting, that faithfulness lasting,

togetherness ends aching days,

with Iftari treats, date-flavoured sweets,

steaming rice piled high on plates

Mangoes and jack-fruits, end distant bus routes,

nostalgic Eid days out of town.

Stitchers dreams patterns embroidered for fashions,

slim fingers remember in sleep

How people would stare at the garments they’d wear,

if only they sewed for themselves

Exhausted young maid still learning her trade,

dreaming her mother is near.

Sleep clutching cheap phone, maybe son will call home,

His journey to help pay her bills,

he’s travelled to work and she’s proud he’ll not shirk,

but she’s missing his voice in the hall.

Drummers dream sounds that hard fingers will pound,

the heartbeats that binds all these lives.

Dreams of far places, sharp-nosed bearded faces,

names you have heard all your life,

the call of the Mullah, the dreaming of Mecca,

to fly there just once in your life

Praying to live right – every day and at night,

Inshallah your dreams will come true

In Dhaka, cyclone Mahasen comes to the hot city this morning with welcome gentle rain – we are grateful – but fear what else she has in store…

Roughness of Mahasen’s rain starts to gain – morning shower gaining power – morning breeze bullying trees – thoughts toss to the sea.

…

Rain washed city sky, morning wakes to bird song and blue sky. News is sad, but not so bad – expected much worse – thank Mahasen for small mercies.

This week’s poem talks about events of the last few weeks in Dhaka. Events which will have far reaching repercussions for an industry, for a country and unimaginable repercussions for tens of thousands of lives. The collapse of the building at Rana Plaza in Savar gave us stories of horror, heroics and hope in the first few days. But as the days passed the only real news was the body count, increasing day by day.

Surely it is enough now.

Enough now

They are holding up photographs of their missing loved ones.

They are scratching helplessly,

hopelessly, at the rubble.

Ran down long corridors,

roof was caving in.

Banged on metal doors

locked for safety on all floors.

Crawled on all fours,

no way out.

Hold onto each other.

Hold out your ID card for your mother,

so she’ll know it is your body when you’re found.

Is he the one they found alive?

Is she the one who had her hand amputated to free her from the rubble?

Are some still alive in there, in that mountain of concrete suffering?

Enough now – just give us her body so we can say goodbye.

The only breadwinner ;

old woman crying alone for her only daughter,

someone takes her picture, published in the press.

Who cares?

They were from some village, they were nobody.

Just a body.

They are praying

They are hoping

They are crying

They are dead

They are all dead now.

The number keeps rising,

The daily count

700, 800…

15 days and 1000 dead.

Enough now.

Enough.

The incompetent

The careless

The greedy

The corrupt

Can we please stop now?

Is this not the limit of cheap labour,

when the cheapness becomes too dear,

when the lowness of the price is too high a price to pay.

Why not give a damn, think a bit,

share a little of your abundance .

When you buy so damn cheap

 who pays?

Now you know the answer – spelt out in nine floors and 1000 dead bodies

In uncounted lives ripped and torn like old garments

Enough now, it doesn’t have to be that cheap.

Enough.

The powerless

The poor

The women

The girls

They didn’t want to slave for peanuts,

 they just want a chance to earn.

 They didn’t plan to lose their lives and limbs

or see their work mates burn.

Enough now.

Enough

This week something quite different. Just poetry and imagination with no claim that I’m inspired by current events. With a nudge from my on-line writers group, Writer’s Abroad, and some inspiration from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his poem the ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, this week’s poem borrows the first two lines from that epic poem, and then wonders off to some unknown place….

.

.

Water, water everywhere….

…

Water, water everywhere

Nor any drop to drink

Across white sand, across high dunes

Our heavy feet still sink

The waves upon the shore did beat

The sun a hammer pounding heat

Nor any drop to drink

…

Nor clouds we saw, nor birds, nor green

No nature blessed our eye

Across the miles, along the shore

The sun beat from the sky

The sound of water in our ears

The sound of silence fed our fears

No Nature blessed our eye

…

We dared not leave the cursed splash

We dared not desert cross

But miles of water, bitter salt

No thirst away could wash

The heat, the shimmering, hazy light

Oasis rises in our sight

We dared not desert cross

…

We curse our life, we curse our luck

To wash from storm to shore

To live through drowning in the sea

And then to die once more

We curse survival, curse the waves

Curse the fate to which we’re slaves

To wash from storm to shore

I’m on Twitter as the ‘on-line one-line poet’. Follow for all sorts of comments and sighs of joy or frustration, depending on the condition of the weather and the world.

Rilla Norslund @Rillaspoems