The Doctors
They told me I was dying
But I was only sick
I started to panic
Made all kinds of mistakes
I returned to poetry
Got myself married
But now I'm in recovery
And I tell you straight:
It's a long, austere process
Don't listen to the doctors
They understand sickness
They know nothing about death.
poem by Frank Bana
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One-Off (Xmas Turkey)
I ate meat
After nearly two whole years
A whole plate of Christmas turkey meat
Brown and white
Free Range
Next day my body just rebelled
Felt like a post-war zone
A wounded combatant
Consuming itself
Flesh eating fowl eating flesh
An animal
A cannibal
This must be
How all carnivores feel
Unknowingly
poem by Frank Bana
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Progression
If every day we know one thing true
Or know one truth, deeper than before
If every day we meet someone who
We never saw in the mirror before
And recognise we can only know once
The first time for standing face-to-face
And go on to accept we will never know twice
How we arrived to this moment in life.
poem by Frank Bana
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The Cup of Mercy
The cup of Mercy is so small
Its drops are few
Too greedily
We thirst to drink them all
Mercy holds the well of life
As songs and fables claim
So humbly from this cup
We seek the source of nourishment
And we become the same
In Mercy lifted up
Our kindest acts of Love performed
Above this almost-empty cup.
poem by Frank Bana
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The Little Prince
The Little Prince has come
The dreams of Saint-Exupery
A boy refused to die
And it is winter now
It too has come so late
Now that the world is warming
The snow is building in the sky
All the schools are closing
Commuter lines are dressed in white
Perhaps I will stay home and read
Sharing Saint-Exupery's dreams
My little girl and I.
poem by Frank Bana
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Eggs
A cigarette end was thrown from a car window
It smouldered brightly in the road
Another car sped past giving an aura of headlight
Stealing it from the hands of the night
The butt showered orange specks around the lane
One landed on my shirt and tried to burn.
I do not smoke
I do not drive a car
Cracked eggs lay slimy on the pavement
I eat eggs.
poem by Frank Bana
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I Can Always Tell
when clouds fill the horizon
I can see the signs
I can always tell
when rains will arrive
there's tapping on the skylight
the deer run for the woods
you get up very slowly
and lay down in your room
then later
after many years
when all the wells are dry
the rain wakes the savannah
you rush into the garden
glistening and golden
your face turned to the sky.
poem by Frank Bana
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The Letter, 1974
A certain man was left alone
Creating work for his hands to own
Left alone by his woman lover
Abandoned by a man, his brother
Humbled he lay reading poems
Relearning faith from modern bibles
Reading in poems of a fool Isaiah
Instructed in his own desire
A dreaming man once found a letter
Beloved hands, but not for him
A letter returned to the stars
To free him from his burning heart.
poem by Frank Bana
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Magic Man
Yes I know a man
Who with his quiet magic hand
Can turn a room of quarrelsome heads
Snarling for each other in self-regard
Into the running, tumbling, laughing
Children of 4 that they once were
Yes it is his gift to them
Sprawled unconscious to themselves
And for this one chance they must yield
To him the knowledge they have been
To play in wonder, freed from thought
And careless for an hour again.
poem by Frank Bana
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Vers le poeme (petit bonbon)/In English-Don't Be Scared..!
The poem brings you verses
Elements, sun and rain
The rain, 'par averses'
Paints grass verdant green
The poem is subversive
Turns the world onto its side
Until you feel vertiginous
And give up the ride
So when you get sick of it
Just avert your eyes
And demand the writer
Some better advice
On how to stay vertical
And not fall in the tank
It may shine just like Versailles -
[...] Read more
poem by Frank Bana
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