Refusing A Requiem For Scapegoats Poem by Sofiul Azam

for late Bob Marley

I'm always short of my sympathizers.
This nostalgist's designs of decency
are documents laid out for scrutinizers,
not the usual stuff any good in emergency.
Time's always of blood congealed on the knife.
Yet nothing's short of entertainment in life.

Lives of the damned are yoked together.
Inextricable pains - blueprints of love -
become a force for artists amid the fanfare
or stuff about it tells you this is enough.
And peace doesn't ever drop like summer rain,
rather it walks on thorns of guilt like Cain.

No, not always does childhood seem good
as something we can't get over the years
for everything much depends on your mood.
Goodness is what a calamity shears,
or fooled by wars, plagues, and disasters;
some are of nature, some done by tricksters.

We simpletons croak in this suffocation,
however with fiery irises, with no belief
that we will get out of the lack of action.
Is there for us any space of fine relief?
To rot in dreadful gulches is a shock,
even for the poulards under key and lock.

Daunted as we may be at the end of the day,
do we ever think of bruises as sunsets
or as damn golden as promise in May?
Or simply we small fish caught in the nets
accept our destiny on the social scale
as something profiting in the sad sale.

Ligaments torn, excuse me for this limp.
Intimidated still but I'll learn courage,
with tides from seas around me a tiny shrimp -
not afraid of the shark's white teeth and rage.
Why grope for the famed elixir of old?
Go grab what makes you free before it's sold.

This raving is a requiem for grand thoughts,
as part of losers' growing in harshness,
and of their pushing edges. Those scapegoats,
split out in two by the guillotine's sharpness,
bleat smeared bloody exceptionally well.
The tyrants love their immaculate smell.

The puddles of rain water one rarely finds
are the ones filled with blood. Yes, certainly
designs and graphs ingrained in our minds
increase with boon from terror's assembly.
Is crying all we can for the terribly weak
or hosanna simply enough for them to seek?

With doors and windows shut for privacy,
we artists aspire to prized non-violence
but this confines us to crimes of fancy
which never saves us from the flying lance.
Friends, arms and money make a coalition
to lead us on the road to perdition.

That's what we basically need answering,
instead of denying their inevitability.
Not in the attitudes of moralizing
do people rise like frothy waves on the sea.
Let us close as codices, for all's uplift,
debacles and the histrionics of profit.


from SAFE UNDER WATER (2014)