Fresh Notebook
She bought me a fresh notebook
To write my deepest thoughts
Deliver up my soul
Daily to her
A hard serrated border
Thick along the spine
Designed to pay tribute in words
An opening address
A nod a wink
Initialled in my best
Invisible ink
I turn a new leaf over
Another page, far from
A new beginning
Or a new address
A naked page where I confess
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poem by Frank Bana
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Of Loss and Gain
Like pouring whiskey down a sink
Spilling coffee beans or ink
So do I drink my deeper life away
With papers laden on my knees
And fields to cross before I freeze
I sharpen up the millstones every day
Scattered seeds on smoking ground
Clattered keys of pianos sound
White on dark, turning black on grey
Cracking eggs upon one table
Casting notes as I am able
Let me out, I'm soaking from the rain
Kept by restlessness from rest
Tempted by childhood regress
Into the cage where songbirds go insane
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poem by Frank Bana
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Only words fly
Only words fly
And about two planes a day
In this debating-hall of race.
Realities remain on earth.
I wish my mother were the sea
So I would weep for the faraway
Troubled sea on the crushing Cape shore
But I think I was of desert born
On the steppes of the city.
Desert meets me everywhere
With her spacious inspiration
To make love and create.
I am not afraid for children
The world is younger here
And would not haul them down:
This flood of time is still.
Rains chill me bad
Sun warms me up and pierces me
Where I am cold and sad.
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poem by Frank Bana
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For my Father
My father told me
I feel safer now
when you are near
when you come around
and he said in these days
we can be together
and not really have to say
too much to each other
After 53 years
we begin to understand
there's a moment's hope
that things won't turn out
quite so very hard
(Why then has it become
more difficult to sleep
when I remember
that I am a son?)
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poem by Frank Bana
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I Will Try
I will try
To dance for you as once I danced
Barefoot in the heavy summer night
In the heart of the Bamangwato lands
And I will try
To sing for you as once I sang
Blue cap shading my eyes, guitar in hand
For the stars by the Thamalakane banks
I will do my best
To long for you as once I sent
My longing out from salt-crusted rocks
Into the heart of Cape Verdian winds
I will try again
To write for you, as I once composed
Words of the deep self, bubbling up
From mystical wells that water the soul
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poem by Frank Bana
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We Celebrate Silence
I write to you only
In poetry now
Letters are useless
Our poems contain
All the silence between us
Wherein we remain
Poems are the songs
Of church morning bells
Lyrics are scriptures
Of soft evening rain
The choruses ring
On the craters and hills
In echo, again and again
We make love and listen
We laugh when it's funny
No judgments to sweeten in
Vaseline and honey
We never use words
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poem by Frank Bana
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Our Time
Dying is our crucifixion
Our time enduring on the cross
A juice-soaked sponge
To moisten lips and gums
Our time of thirst and terror
Of silence where night comes
And then at last, arrival
To a tiny exhalation
Of cease and expiration
Letting go of breath and pain
Freed to let go and fall
Into the all in all
Brave and beautiful, we are
To make it to the end
To place our self in deathly hands
Relinquishing the choice
Resting on the mercy
Of the cold and merciless
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poem by Frank Bana
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Cancer blooms...
Cancer blooms in the corporeal garden
Slow, dreamlike, insistent
Not advertising its next appearance
Choosing at will among the garden’s delights.
I don’t care so far to die
Or not to die. I care
To live outside of fear
And inside the present time of life.
Shall I live as slow as cancer moves
In harmony and equal intensity
Multiplying thoughts and creative waves
As it multiplies itself?
We find ourselves locked fatally together
In negotiated inevitability –
Host and uninvited guest
Who depends on me as I depend on her
For life, destruction and survival.
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poem by Frank Bana
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Basket of Sunlight
Laying aside the dreams I lost
Another world opens to me
Amid the gentle swirls of dust
Cappucino and cardoman tea
Addis jazz at every corner
Cafes called Adonai and Shoah
Painted eyes for the hills of Zion
Portraits of Emperor and the Lion
Arsenal shirts, kids in tattered shoes
Lada cars make patient traffic
Amid new buildings, browns and blues
Progress patched up and erratic
We climb towards the cafe floor
Hand in hand upon the stairs
The wind blows through your long light hair
You watch me gazing down the street
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poem by Frank Bana
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Ceu (Sky)
Hoje fazia 16 graus abaixo de zero.
O céu, vasto, estava azul e brilhante.
Eu o olhava bem de perto
E resplandecia a luz do mesmo sol brilhante
que lhe banha.
Havia um canto no céu, vazio e cinza,
em que você se encontrava.
Resolvi olhar para o vazio no majestoso céu,
de forma profunda e intensa.
Quanto mais eu me concentrava, mais você emergia.
E eu lhe encontrei de novo, no céu da minha mente
na teia dos meus pensamentos e sentimentos.
Atravessando continentes, eu lhe encontro
E o vazio do céu se dissolve e se transforma
na bela paisagem dos seus dias e noites
Em que a terra se une sob nossos pés.
Sky - Translation by Sonia Maria Davico Simon
poem by Frank Bana
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