"Trying to find a cause" and Other Poems

Trying to find a cause

I want the sun to bade while facing
the blue sky of my childhood
... but ...
mother, I am falling face
down on the dark and dirty
blanket of snowŠcan I lay
next to your grave and count
the frozen flowers of sorrow?

My breasts are like the rotten grapes,
and my breath is like the not-kept secrets,
and my hands are the spiders
that chuckle on the walls of grief,
and the fear from the reappearing
death of yet another beloved
grows deep within and tortures me...

There is not a thing as such as living for Hundred Years.
There is nothing as such eternity in the Chamber of Life.

We all end up in a lonesome place called Death.

- Sheema Kalbasi & Roger Humes

---

If you would count the number
          (for Sheema)

If you would count the number
of blessings laid by friends in quiet
by your doorstep before they tip-
toe away lest they disturb you
from your deep encumbered thought

they would fill your sea of sorrow
and they would wash the tears
from the river of anguish
that catches your every breath
in this moment of your infinite grief.

For at the end when the clouds part
and the sun radiates its warmth upon
the beauty that we know is your soul

a rainbow will catch your heart
and in the warmth of its colors
laughter and peace shall sing
from your lips in a joy that says
this has ended - it is time for you
to continue now with the living.

Until then we shall wait and occasionally
creep to your doorstep where
we will place our bouquets of blessing
which are known as friendship

and slowly walk quiet away
lest the crows gather to watch
our shadows as we leave.

- Roger Humes

---

Someday I Will Breath

Someday I will breathe
out but not in again,
and those who knew me will gather
in songs of my praise, talk of what
and who I was, but this will lessen
as time passes, and they shall grow
to learn to live with the acceptance
of the lingering pain of my demise.

Then someday they, too, shall breathe
out but not in again, and they will be
gone as will be their memories
of me, and I shall cease to exist
save for perhaps a genetic gleam
in the eye of some descendent
who cannot leave art and poetry alone.

And my poems shall crumble
and blow away to mingle
with the earth and the dust
of a thousand other such dreams,
and they shall settle into the ground
and from them perhaps will spring forth
the growth of another untold poem
to keep eternity in motion...

- Sheema Kalabasi & Roger Humes