Robert Fisk
Pico Iyer
John Lavery
Tariq Ali
Arundhati Roy
Rochelle Gurstein
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PHARAOH
LAMBERT
Born in
Cameroon, raised in Trinidad, survivor of six Saskatchewan winters,
Pharaoh Lambert is the author of an unpublished collection of
poetry entitled Pathetic Smear. He is also a
distinguished composer-musician and master
of Indian stomach yoga.
Nausea invades on
mildewed stilts,
crawls through my spleen
and dispenses its perplexity.
It becomes my enigma
and makes me one with Sisyphus.
Christened with perpetual climax and anti-climax,
relief from its clinging tentacles
is momentary.
We are doomed to
a life of paradox.
SEWER CRUISE
I
lost my path to freedom. Sour grapes.
I lost my chamber with good view and absurd setting.
Health and homage to yonder enemies.
Enamel glass on metallic click sound to pan on concrete
solid like your divinity.
Some like
it hot.
Action in Rue Morgue.
Dark and dank evening.
Light rain, trickle of blood-red water in a Paris slum.
On same street walks humid whore
with exposed upper thigh and tight inviting crotch. The beggar
looks up from the vermillion stench,
limpidly reaches out for this exquisite meat
only to remember that he has already had his supper of boiled
potatoes and rancid meat.
Goodbye to
suffering.
He quietly slits his throat
and drops into the gutter,
his blood making no impression as it becomes one with the wretched
waters.
BEING AND NOTHINGNESS
in a shaded dale
all along the purpose grass
falls the fallout of consciousness
stained with its own brand of emptiness
shelved and repressed for decades
finally to be let loose in one tirade
regurgitated with one's dying breath
all along the cerebral vomit
rides the kite of death
a humanist swoons
from the stench
topples off his sympathetic bench
into the arms of a passing wench
whose presence proffers
prattles a toothless profit
flexes his welted tongue to question the credibility gap
he foams at the mouth
his head falls in his lap
a brainless cranium
cracked and oozing pus
discards its last member
a rotting thalamus that rolls down some pristine slope
whose residents grope for their last supper
mouths to chatter lips to stutter
tongues to utter
bondage and servitude forever
a hanging date palm
blandly wavers in the astral air
flagging fate
then opens the gate
a giant ape watches
coldly
as the ocean waters flush
and worlds gush
into nothingness
HAIKU
Cyclops siphons
a vialful of vomit
one-eyed in the autumn tide.
BAY OF BEGGARS
Behind the floating
mirage,
beside the creeping vine of servitude
lies the bay
of beggars where massive rocks and vast stretches of sand proclaim
a degree of integrity.
Eagle talons
cling to abrasive cliff edge
as keen eyes scan for carrion. Ancient
mariners ride tidal waves through time, finally embarking on
beggars row where bronze beach combers, garbed in eagle feathers,
mark praises to absurd figure heads before offering a mutilated,
moaning sacrifice.
Molten lava
pours over the once proud terrain
reducing it to nothingness. The slithering snake
rattles no more.
The last battered beggar
begs his last
and shouts to the crimson skies for mercy.
As if in answer to his pleas
the rising tide
washes in a lone piece of weathered driftwood.