Nature

‘Neath a Melancholy Moon

~ Iyan Igma

I never want to see the moon
As depressed as I am tonight,
For it would but add to my gloom
To be bathed in a blue moon’s light.

‘Tis better that it hides its face,
Since I could never bear to see
The only friend who can solace
Feeling lost and melancholy.

For it would remind me of the tears
That lunar rays have only known
And the confessions of my fears
I’ve given to the moon alone.

Its light to others may be pale,
But it enlightens me. It’s warm.
It’s the only friend, as well,
Who’s never done me any harm.

Supernova

~ Iyan Igma

His love was a comet’s song;
Beautiful, lovely, disastrously gone.
Bleeding tears of milky despair,
With the cosmos his pain to share.
He was taken with a-flaring anger and fearful ague,
And here is where it all grows vague,
For which of you mayst nobly say
Aught of the demented mood on that day
When the swollen red giant burst?
In anguished, doubting confusion, and what’s worst
Of all these passions, a self-hating shriek
Urging self-slaughter in no way meek.
This once dazzling and coyish entity
Set fright in all who did see
His plasma smear the firmament,
And to his fickle love was sent
Word of his turbulent demise.
On occasion she thinks and cries,
Her cold tears streaking watching skies.
But she has no forgiveness in their eyes,
And from where he once lay she’s often fled
Like cosmic winds to another’s bed;
And with thoughts as empty as his love,
We now wonder if there’s life above.

War of the Roses

~ Iyan Igma

Roses on a thorny stem
Living in beauty and splendor
Unfolded to perfume the world.
They are called to arms
To fight a futile war
That shall end them
Time is an unfair opponent
With all of the advantages
And all the time in the world to fight
The roses wither and blacken
Lose their beauty to an unkind age
The waning minion of time
Cut from the stem
They enjoy a decomposing rot
Joy they wouldn’t have had, had they fought not
The roses still blossom
Blossom to wither and die
Fighting the same war as you and I

Weed

~ Iyan Igma

They grow up in adversity, always hated.
Others are not happy until their lives have dissipated.
But what makes them less special than a rose?
Marry, they’re much nicer, sans the thorns it grows.
Picked and sprayed and from soil freed
Lives the fittest of Nature’s breed,
The outcast, the eyesore, the weed.

Deflowering Fields

~ Iyan Igma

As if in a dream
I run deflowering fields
Of the spring’s newborn
Bounteously petaled yields.

It’s rare one sees blue
In nature; the oceans are green.
Yet, childishly, the sky adorns
My fingers and in between.

From peedabeds and aphids
I’ve fashioned a toga.
In this black-eyed Susie
Hut I meditate in yoga.

With a honey-suckled daisy diadem,
I naturally rule in thought.
My embellished ways have more flowers
Than any florist has bought.

Excessively I’ve strewn petals
Where their transpiration splatters
To find out if she loves me
Or not and other such matters.

Bridges

~ Iyan Igma

We sat atop bridges, though
Our lives we couldn’t cross.
Though I loved her lots,
She felt for me dross.

Poised blandly admiring murky
Waters of the Ochlocknee,
I forgot about her and dreamed
Of my old home near the sea.

Near Fargo I was wading shallowly
The swamp’s Suwanee, bridge overhead.
In the tea waters splashing, I’d been warned
To veer from dark spots or wind up dead.

Swamp, my Swamp, where I feel at home,
I walk above wildlife on a boardwalk
Which in the end woodenly towers
Presenting a view of where soulless stalk.

I’ve fished in you when of small age;
I was too bored sitting to catch much.
All I wanted was to walk the trails
With bridges, canoe, and some such.

There were no bridges at Trader’s Hill
Where I developed swimming skills,
But there was a boat ramp and dock
And at times a gator—sorta like a croc.

Stroking North of you on clean waters
Can be found near the lottery of D & L’s
A perilous span with black canals beside
That could not comfortably solace with rails.

I always mesmerizedly feared falling in
The abysses whilst we drove
And deadly would I be found
By unlucky rescuers who dove.

On Danespoint, which my stepfather maintained,
I intoxicatedly breathe in the angled heights
Of the St. Johns while a lesser part of me
Was given acrophobic chills and frights.

But Fernandina salt marshes at sunset
Is the image I’ve always had for love.
Many times I’ve abrasively stared
At that vegetated waterway from above.

Pluto and Charon

~ Iyan Igma

Off in space, as it seems,
Disconnected darkly where
None could hear the screams
Of tortured coldness
Except for the occasional
Neptune passing by,
Who you probably wouldn’t
Let hear you cry
Since away from such
You brokenly ran away
Parting from grave orbit
In a memory far away.
Of you twain escape artists
Which of you works the hardest
And which is most rife with sin
And evil down below within?
Charon the loving boatman
Who does others deliver
To Hell, your pal, who is
Larger only a sliver.
Or Pluto, the incarnate Hell
Whose atmospheric shell’s frail
As a mask where all can see
In the light there it does be
On the one half thinly in glee
For hiding the darkly empty.
Calmly with pure intents
You happen to deceive
Yourself, Charon, and all souls
From him you do receive.
Though one of you is bigger
In the force of gyration,
The tugging created diminishes
You both in force of the rotation.
With the elliptical orbit which
Is planetarily unfitting
Throughout the spinning galaxy
You seem to be sitting
Unable to truly master collaborative
Force, as in a gerrymander.
You’ll never become the something
Much more powerful and grander.
Woe you weren’t the hidden planet that
Influences the orbit of Neptune;
You separated and settled
For being a double moon.

Sri Lanka

~ Iyan Igma

And the nebula of colours twisted
Spake to the star whom for her love listed,
And with logic sensibly insisted
That the pow’r of our love they could ne’er match.
It’d be impossible as to catch
A shooting star as love as we two do;
Theirs would die when existence desisted.
The red giant took this not as offense,
For love’s been reputed to make all dense,
And there are some it’s e’en made go insane.
She laughed as a child and questioned again,
For one should e’er question the depths of love,
Even should one live in the stars above.
Such coquettish makes it a pleasant brew.

Pebbles

~ Iyan Igma

Said a hot collection of vibrant gas
Loosely collected, a nebulant lass,
Via the colours of her cloudy eye
The question ‘ternal, “How do you love I?”
To the hot-plasmaed star who would her woo.
“Well beyond the wildest ration and true;
Almost as much as those two humans do,”
Replied he as he pointed with a flare
To the mortals at which the stars do stare
For their radiance of love which e’er grew
And like a supernova lit the sky
In awe. The noble star meant you and I,
But stars are worthless pebbles, like the moon.
I can only value seeing you soon.

A Cool Drink

~ Iyan Igma

The wooden oak slab squeaked
On hinges well-oiled
As my hand’s sebaciousness
The molested hardwood soiled.

Thirsty, I the threshold crossed
Into the bathroom’s cloister.
Behind the blackened screen could
Be heard the crickets’ boister.

Cleanly brushing and flossing
Over the marble sink,
Stood I musing at the skies
Coloured no longer pink.

With a fresh mouth freed
Of odor and taste,
I could now savour water
And its freshness not waste.

Dampening the pump’s shaft
Where the sink should be,
I welled up my desire by
Pumping the handle lustily.

A cool stream unevenly flowed into
A coopered bucket with metal bands.
Quenching, with catharsis I drank from
The large, iron ladle in my hands.