Four Poems by Jamal Uddin

 

Tectonic ride


Now and then gentle tectonic
wrestling transforms to wild
tango in geological lego game
viciously tearing earth's skin.

Raw flesh bleeds in agony
ripped heart keeps beating
this merciless tectonic scene.

Last breath lingers stirring up
dust under cruel rubble with
muted cries and lonely pain
but hope endures and remains
eternal as the light dims
some life may yet spring
like flowers through the cracks.

Digging deep with eager
bare hands to reach the heart
of the earth, love is hidden in
molten fury simply to ask why.

Aquanaut

Fearless astronaut scales the sky 

searching for new world 

and wonders of the unknown.

Some search by aspiring aquanaut 

morphed into commercial enterprise

reckless descend of the deep

just call of the wild.

Affluent with morbid curiosity 

credulous descended for a look at Titanic, 

relic of the past

museum of the doomed

a tourist trap.

Five perished in  implosion 

in faulty submersible machine.

Old wrack sighs as new wrack arrives.

On other side of the ocean

desperate migrants in hundreds 

young and old 

drowned in a crowded

leaky boat fleeing the horror

trying to reach the promised shore.

Death has no mercy for  rich or poor.

Truth and reconciliation

Truth remains hidden and we chase 

mirage of reconciliation.

Walking side by side, never knowing 

the grief, pain or remorse of each other.

Truth or dare, truth or consequences

once popular  TV game shows 

but truth and reconciliation now

haunting generations in real time.

Seeking the whole truth not just a bit of it

here and there

hidden below the visual field

in unmarked school graveyard

like a tip of an iceberg.

In the pile up of unclaimed small shoes 

on the steps

I hear the  children cry.

Misguided forced doctrine

of assimilation turn into

Indigenous cultural genocide.

Young bones seeking peace 

In the quiet of second womb of Mother 

We hear them  still cry

In the four corners of the earth

under ugly  shadow of colonial cloud.

Ancient ruins

Bare bricks glare like raw flesh 

in rows of laterite columns

wounded only by time

proudly standing erect.

 

Water flows through the old moat

with beaming lotus flower

once kept enemy at bay,

precious gigantic statue of serene Buddha 

with hand sign of Mudra.

 

I roam through the ancient ruins;

alive with reverence and adulation.

 

 

They all gather in throng with devotion

in heart and offering in hands 

head bowed singing in slow chant.

 

Time robbed the moisture of all things.

Wisdom and teaching

remain deeply etched in the ancient ruins.

Jamal Uddin is a retired Rheumatologist in Toronto and author of a poetry book Portal and its Bengali translated version, poems are in anthologies, Medical Post and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.