Poem: When The Show Is Over

Showbiz baby, you look pallid and haunted
emaciated and caved in, it's your core they taunted
now you're Z-shaped and demented

but nothing like Zeus
except every much as aggravated
incinerated within and you feel repeated
like a drama unable to follow nor look after
a script your linguistic limitation prohibits you
from seeing through

- to understand enough to cut the scenes
   in which you make no sense or in which 
you just round up an eight-gazed fool

ashamed in the lights, amid the social irony
facing every length of your infinite perjury
and glued to the index page of a book from history

-black and white-
color and odorless

with just a little emboss above your shoulders
as you turn to address the crowd
maybe your God Mama is a little proud
a little being the operative word

you cannot function without that veneration
and it resonates from nowhere
it's not your name up in air
bouncing like an orgy all over the theater
besides, you don't even know where you are
once again, this just happened to you
and that's not even excusable anymore

but no matter,

your reasons for
are just as
sudden and incomprehensible

you rattle in the overhead lights that the icons
glide through like cheetahs on LSD
or Pumas on Ecstasy
and fade in the rap of encore-jeers
just assume some posture anyway, take a bow
baby, cheers 


©Raeez Jacobs. Poetry, 2013. 

Best Thing I (Should Never) Ever Had

Best Thing I (Should Never) Ever Had

that sunrise makes itself
apparent,

'remember that silver cloud?'

the voice breaks through
the already-shattered window
but first dances in the billowing-tube
of the wind-dancing curtain

making it sound so far-away, far-off,
as if its arriving through a century
of discombobulated traffic and space

my hands meet my temples
the gods are alive in my eyes
and those written letters never-sent
rise in the grains of wisdom
spilling from the ego that had long pushed me
the one that said, 'relent makes you look mistaken'
the one whose foot fell in front
of all the tombs I wanted to melt into

I know two things in this state
i know more than s'posed to me                                maybe
i should
less than i do
maybe i should listen 'stead o'know
maybe i that way i could help you go,

'No, I don't remember those silver clouds.' I mutter
and to that you would take off,
like an emotional kite into the night you lived trying to avoid
into the night we used to talk about; that made your skin crawl
and your eyes water like prophets, the night that was the dooms day
of our union-

'Maybe,' I'll add.
'If you promise me this one thing,
maybe just maybe, I won't 'em you
were the one who led me to bask
in the manila fold of your soul- in your furcula
of sin- tell 'em you bred the lie,
and I'll remember that cloud, boo.'

©Raeez Jacobs. Poetry. 2013.

[POEM] bangle Theory

-my decrepit state is an art form, and 
I will always allow myself colour; 
Bursts of laughter, toasts, 
Sex, and hope, in all that would come afterwards. 
I couldn't always cling to it, 
They say, the hands of a poet 
Is numbed, 
When the bangles of misery 
Begin wrapping themselves 
'Round the tattooed arms of youth. 
I still seek the truth, 
And lend myself to his jargon- 
Pretending to understand, 
Pretending to know; 
Keeping up the appearance, of someone 
Whose eyes, have a view of their head, 
While really, I know so little, 
That my bones crack whenever 
Knowledge jumps at me, 
From the pages of his biography. 
And secretly, I buck violently- 
Corner-to-corner, like a stone 
Underneath a floor, trembling by some vibration. 
And sometimes I even cry more than 
An appalled god, whose hair 
Was cut by his angels; whose followers 
Turned their heads, 
Whose heaven suddenly 
Became so earth, he had to stoop. 
I was a child of his parenthood, 
Taking baby steps, 
And tryin'a convince myself 
That, I will supersede 
The bangles of misery, 
By turning my tears into art.
         
                                                                  -Raeez Jacobs

© Raeez Jacobs. 2012.