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Thursday, December 12, 2019

FIVE POEMS BY SERKAN ENGIN - A LAZ POET FROM TURKEY


SERKAN ENGIN

Socialist Laz-Turk poet and author Serkan Engin was born in 1975 in Izmit, Turkey.

His poems and articles on poetry theory have appeared in more than fifty literary journals in Turkey. In 2004, he published a poem manifesto, entitled Imagist Socialist Poetry. He has been trying to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to this end has published numerous articles about literary theory.

His poems and articles on poetry theory have been published in English in many international literary journals and art/poetry web sites all over the world like The Tower Journal, Poetry'z Own, Belleville Park Pages, The Wagon Magazine, Far Enough East, Split Infinitive Lit Magazine, Empty Mirror, The Writer’s Drawer, Poetry Super Highway, Margutte, Miracle E-zine, Industry Night Lit Magazine, Open Road Review, Shot Glass Journal, The Criterion, Mediterranean Poetry, etc. Some of his poems appeared in Japanese in the leading Japanese philosophy and poetry journal Shi to Shisou. Also his poems and articles on poetry's theory has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Persian, Bengali, Kurdish, Zazaki, Romaic and Lazish.

Some of his poems in English have been accepted to international thematic poetry anthologies.

He is the first Turkish poet in history who has written a poem on Armenian Genocide. His poem named "Barbarian and Ms Daisy" which has been dedicated to the victims of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides has been accepted to the Armenian Poetry Project in 2015.

His political articles on Islam and also Armenian, Assyrian, Greek genocides have been published in many countries in many languages including Sweden, USA, Greece, India, France, Argentina, Netherland, Armenia, Indonesia and Finland.

http://paperboatsofpoetry.blogspot.com.tr/


ALL RIGHTS FOR THESE POEMS BELONG SOLELY TO THE POET


ABUSED LETTERS OF HOPE


I was born to loop my balmy
dreams to your bleeding verses
born to shout your childhood fads
lost in a mute hell in front of everybody

I am the delicious revenge of all molested children
spilling their pain into the purple shores of Orphanage
I am the handsome anger of all neglected buds
blooming on the lapel of Oppression

-Which holiness protected your most child-like letters
written on the skies of Hope!
Where was Jesus, where was Allah, where were Brahma and all others!

Tiny gardens of your short-length lives
occupied by the rivers of Fear round the clock
Your purity was hunted mercilessly
by the neighbour ravens of your helpless meadows

-Which holiness protected your most child-like letters
written on the skies of Hope!
Where was Jesus, where was Allah, where were Brahma and all others!

I am the delicious revenge of all molested children
spilling their pain into the purple shores of Orphanage
I am the handsome anger of all neglected buds
blooming on the lapel of Oppression

MY FAMILY(!) and DIALECTICMy father is what I reduce from as I run to myself
While dressing up from head to foot with sunflowers
Football and beer are making a free oscillation
In his brain having no curl
He has equivalent fear from the police and God
Never knew that he grew himself to nihility

- Hey buddy, where is here, Nazareth or Izmit?
My father and pragmatism crucified my youth

My mother was a purple thorn pricking, in my life
Property-greed and anger
Without compass lie on her heart
She has more faith in money than God
Never knew that she grew herself to nihility

- Hey buddy, where is here, Nazareth or Izmit?
My mother and capitalism crucified my youth




BROTHEL TRAUMA

In the rooms full of
decayed-dream scent
the oldness of the doors
opens to a wet disappointment
Fake orgasm symphonies permeated into the walls
Arabesque slogans are spelled on the mirrors.

The woman is the rebel acrobat
of pain on the barbed wires
strained between life and death
She stitches up the torn desires at her pubes
passes through the nitric, acidic nights
as laying her head on the shoulder of hope
dirty banknotes occupy
the rough geography of lust.

Broken Apprentice

I have made my heart a hammer
but could not repair the structure of my being.
My master spews forth his feelings lowly to me,
he expends my youth as oakum.

My desires could not be welded again,
I’ve been broken from yesterday to tomorrow.
They say: “Your offender is the government
and your procreation a generous family.”

-Truly, how can I go to the government, my lady?

They continuously beat the marble blue of my dreams,
my innocence has been sickened by abuse and tobacco.
Even though they did not buy overalls for me,
it is the childhood of my big brother that I wear.

The exhaust smoke stains the freshness of my hopes
while the dust of chalk whitens my mind.
The steel prickles of pain prick my heart,
my palms are a field of calluses.

-Tell me truthfully, my lady, is it suitable for me

to wear the blue of the school uniform and the red backpack?


GHAZAL TO PERA BELLE

Love is now a torn paper sea, its blue missing
I never ask from where a pair of hazel eyes you fail to efface catches fire

The sky topples down on our lives, smearing thin letters on our flesh
Lame birds keep bleeding onto the  G clef of loneliness

Now my body is a ruined wall I scratch with razors on my dreams
Who silences such disappointment, I know not

Only vague poems I stitch to my mute life can redeem me
No matter how many times I turn around myself, my jumbled days go on stammering

Now my skin is an unrhymed verse without your hands
I never ask from where a pair of hazel eyes you fail to efface catches fire
















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