Plea...

Jasmine smells
So sweet
Though it's not as beautiful as roses.
But ever innocent without thrones
And charming as ever
May you not try to smash it.
Though it is very possible...
Please let it unwind its
Sweet fragrance... Santhushti Ekanayake

Sweet is the fragrance of Jasmine though it is not as beautiful as roses. But the poet pleads that let the 'Jasmine' blossom to pervade its fragrance albeit it is possible to smash it. In these simple lines, the poet compares, perhaps, tender love with a 'Jasmine'. The love, here, has not yet blossomed and it is fragile. It should be allowed to 'unwind' its fragrance. The poem is marked for its brevity of expression and for its symbolism. - Indeewara

A patriotic poem

I'm a Pajama-Iraqi, my wife's Romanian
And our daughter the thief from Baghdad.
My mother's always boiling the Euphrates and Tigris,
My sister learned to make Perushki from her Russian
Mother-in-law.

Our friend, Morocco the Knife, stabs
Fish from the shores of Norway
With a fork of English steel.
We're all fired workers taken off the tower
We were building in Babylon.
We're all rusty spears Don Quixote thrust
At the windmills.

We're all still shooting at gleaming stars
A minute before they're swallowed
By the Milky Way.

Forty years separate me from her.
I could've wandered in the desert,
Craved the fleshpot,

Eaten the quail God dropped
From the clouds.
I could've passed by Mount Nevo,
Been a spy,
Seen a whore in Jericho.

I gave it all up for the war
In which the spoils was the word "Daddy."
From 'The Milk Underground'
Ronny Someck

In the poem, Israeli poet Ronny Someck redefines the perception of Patriot and patriotic sentiments. Apart from its patriotic sentiments, the poem depicts modern-day reality of diasporic existence away from one's motherland. The family represents many continents as well as diverse civilizations. It is a proverbial melting pot of cultures. The poet uses metaphors from diverse cultures together with allusions to Don Quixote. The narrator has separated from his love for forty years yet he has given up everything for war in which the word 'Daddy' was 'spoils'. - Indeewara Thilakarathne

"Leave us alone"

We were brutalised for 30 long years
Why was the world just watching?
We lost our elite one by one
Until a joke survived
Who brought about a false peace

The world never left us alone
They rewarded the brute with patterns visit
They glorified his ways
He survived with the children's blood
No call for war crimes then

Please leave us alone
You prolonged our suffering
You wanted a false peace
Believing the brute's diabolical lies
Please leave us alone

Now the war is over
We want to be left in peace
To mourn all the dead and to heal
Why are we being robbed of even this
Have not the drains run on our blood
Please leave us alone

Yes, we did wrong by our kith and kin
They scattered all over the world
At the whim of the brute
They oiled his gruesome plans
Believing there was a dream
Over the death of a thousand lives
No war crimes then

Why were you all watching
Did you not see our pain?
After all this you now want a war crimes plan
Please leave us alone
Ormarh Sheriff

The poem is an outburst of anger at the world at large which has ignored the brutalities and atrocities committed by a megalomaniac who fed up on the aspirations of a segment of population. Now the war is over and the world which has not imposed war crime charges on the megalomaniac has turned on civilian leaders who defeated terror. The poet pleads that the world should now 'leave us alone'. The poet uses simple and rather blunt language and poet's anger is manifested in almost all the lines. - Indeewara