With my beloved
I pray with my beloved
She is the moon in whom I disappear
Men of evil may kill her
And the beauty of her children
And gun down the mourners at her funeral
And the taut spirit in me –
So I love her in this moment
Against the murders of that day
When the centuries’ chain of anguish
Will be dragged across the backs
Of the suffering, toiling prisoners here.
If I wake tomorrow and find her taken
If I wake to receive the news of her murder
I will confront her assassins
I will haunt their souls
With the intensity of all they are obsessed to destroy
I will use the weapon
Of the faith that she planted in me.
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poem by Frank Bana
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About the War Poem
This poem is about
The impossibility of writing
A poem about the war
Now don't go getting disappointed
You probably know everything
You really need to know
About the war
There's nothing more a poem could tell
Than what's in the lines of the dailies
That you read between so carefully
Nothing I could show you
That you haven't seen already
In your nightmare dreams or when
Your eyes are open
Nor could I shed enlightenment
On all the things we may not be
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poem by Frank Bana
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Abilities
I sat next to a blind young man
His hands upon a coffee cup and cane
The train lurched through the morning air
Sunlight danced across his face
No newspaper at his side
No handheld device, well-dressed
Like the businessmen. What thoughts,
Assumptions floated in his mind?
To what was he resigned?
Sitting arm-to-arm, I visualised
How the world is built around
Designs made by the powerful
With all their senses in command
Their corridors, well-sized machines
To ease and entertain.
I wondered how a one-handed man
Or a woman with a broken arm
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poem by Frank Bana
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Help Me if you Can (Beatles, Grand Central, Bombay Mix)
'Can I help anyone? '
Voice thin and high, Asian-inflected
Female, hints of softness and suggestion.
'Can I....? '
Hid in shelves of poetry, journals
birds of Scotland, lesbian, gendered, jazz, New England
school house quarterlies
Unaffected where it matters, I don't look to her
Semi-resigned, someone will surely take her up
on it. Oh, she can't be serious
I pass on through
the Cheez-its and the Cheerios
the weeklies and the daily rags
dripping inky off the shelves
And step out, on my perfect guard
into the criss-cross hordes, how they
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poem by Frank Bana
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America under the Boardwalk
The boardwalk quivers, carousel lights go out
Jesus in sand guarded by the devout
Summer crowds jostle by the ocean side
Kids scream for tickets to the carnival ride
Young men hustling their blonde-haired prizes
Seniors try on new ages and sizes
Tongues pierced, arms and buttocks tattooed
With the first names of dreams that were never pursued
Every spirit hungry for something to eat
Ghosts, clapboard houses lining the street
Have your name engraved on a small silver cross
For a country whose prophets are more than its loss.
Have your name inscribed on a small rice grain.
The old wild America will be rising again.
It lingers like incense, ducking for cover
It will not be censored like the words of a lover
Hiding under the boardwalk, waiting out summer nights
Chewing funnel cake, taffy in faint autumn light
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poem by Frank Bana
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The Big-Game Room
A proud and upright huntress
Seated in her big-game room
Surrounded by hectares of dead stuffed flesh
Wearing a later-life rictus smile
She has opted for anonymity
Due to "threats from animal activists"
And as for me
I never thought such a room to exist
So now she can count me among them
Antlers, antlers rise everywhere
And hordes of tiny wild cats
Snarling, fleeing, seated stilled
Arranged together in curlicues
On rugs of other animals' skins
And up beside the Texas brick
Two brown bears rise majestic
A Mexican jaguar, but even these
Are not the proudest centrepiece
Would you believe, she flew to the Arctic
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poem by Frank Bana
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Colour My Soul
Colour me brown, next time around
To understand the pain of hearts
Measured by shadows in rooms of caste
To know the name of the goddess
And to touch her face, my soul
Lullabied by the holy river
Tasting the fruits of indentured labour
And trees planted in the sugar fields.
Bring me back as someone black
So none mistake me again for pale
Sufficient pitch to be collared for ships
To taste the lash - and if I survive
Forced to fight the Confederate side
Longing to cross each battle to join
The slow liberation of the North.
To be female, a spirited girl
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poem by Frank Bana
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Slight Melodies
There are some on this earth who write so fast
that the world spins before them, the real world shaken
by the strength of their fiction, the elements disturbed
by the power of their creations and the churning of their talent.
I am not one of them....
No thousand-page novels teaming with characters
loving on the beaches and in the backstreets
with heartbreak, robbery
and the agony of families in need.
Yet my eyes burn with the same tears
when music is alive and pulsating in the night
when I think of a beautiful woman who may dance with me at the ball
where I stand against the wall with my orange drink
while the winds blow across the Achada
and the children climb on the rocks
when I sweep up my imaginings and throw them to the winds
when I begin to know how I will be ashes
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poem by Frank Bana
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Summer Fever 2008
The night is colder since the rain
The light is dimmer than expected
Wet leaves clinging to the window-pane
Inside the 1950s house
A madman hunting Mystery
Wonders if the world will question him
Or pass him by completely
The girl's red ball was tucked inside
The garden's crooked arms' embrace
Flecked by rivulets at noon
Like teardrops drowning in a face
Mother is often out, about
Gas stations dry, so many
Switching their accounts
To Walmart back from JC Penny
Small feet running, light and swift
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poem by Frank Bana
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A Gloss on Love's Pavilion
PK Page, Love's Pavilion
Poetry as brilliance
Oh why should I write poetry?
I must write it differently
I will build a little altar
Wearing these inscriptions
In the dark of this pavilion
To which my heart is drawn
As a filing to earth's core
Inferior as poetry
Grossly, indisputably
Yet a noble piece of me
Pathetic simultaneously
I will sketch it quietly
Like a mouse on tiptoes
Sniffing round the vast borders
Of Love
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poem by Frank Bana
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