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For a long time they fished in the pockets of their well worn jeans
For a slice of the moon lost during childhood For the drop of rain that went waste For the twittering of birds that was silenced long ago For a long time they stood on the stairs staring into space, spaced out like forgotten constellations talking to a sky that had never heard their names For a long time, they were there looking at nowhere For a long time, they were there in the heart of everywhere. © Jaspreet Mann This riveting film that unravelled human tragedy of unparalleled proportions introduced me to a poet. While I was listening to John Musgrave, I knew in an instant that he had the soul of a poet. And my instincts were right! Like all people, who struggle to come to terms with life, he embraced poetry. His poems in 'Notes to the man who shot me: Vietnam War Poems', are unflinchingly honest, bone-chillingly frightening as you understand the pain behind the seemingly simple words. His poems made me shiver to the extent that I could actually feel the napalm in the combat zone. This is not a book review. This is a salute to the spirit of the man who could recount his horrors through poetry with the hope that his sacrifice would not be just a cold page in history! "You're exhausted. You sit in your hole in water up to your waist. You piss in your pants, what difference does it make, and for a few seconds you feel warm. You're a Marine. What in hell did you expect? Remember, In Case Of Rain The War Will Not Be Held In The Auditorium. Yeah, no shit." -John Musgrave, Vietnam War Veteran, Counselor, Poet.  John Musgrave, Vietnam War veteran, Counselor, Poet.  This brilliant film dispels all myths!!! Unflinchingly HONEST. This poem is cold it is how people must have felt walking barefeet in Siberian ice looking for the fire in their bodies or perhaps, how peasants in Vietnam must have dreaded the flash of napalm leaving nothing besides ashes it feels like a patriot lost inside a gulag wondering if his country finally wrote him an elegy it writes itself in the language of something imperfect finding lacunae in the sleeplessness of its tempests This poem is cold it is how people walk among the dead looking for life in the cataclysms of field hospitals in a war torn countryside or perhaps, how the spirit of slaves must have fragmented in market places, in bazaars, in streets with Colonial names it tries to give itself a name, it tries to bridge tears and fears reason murders romance, rivers run into a seismic seance it has feet but it cannot walk, it has a mouth but it cannot talk this poem is cold, it is stringing heartache into a song. © Jaspreet Mann  Melancholy, a sculpture created by Romanian artist Albert Gyorgy at Lake Geneva, Switzerland, portrays the void that grief leaves us with. I walk. You walk. We walk. They walk.
Inside our heads the sharp edges of a knife brushes against memories, scraping the inside. I smile. You smile. We smile. They smile. A thousand watts of light blinds our eyes when there is complete darkness inside. When it's night, we put our mask aside hoping we'd never have to wear it again but in the morning, it is a routine to hide. © Jaspreet mann Those empty spaces where we live, soldered to our past
have a terrible way of saying- wait, joy is coming, between that waiting and going, trains pass, aeroplanes fly birds learn that they don't have a home in the sky. © jaspreet “I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. Your soul is the whole world. My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life. Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" -Herman Hesse, Siddhartha  Photograph by Hans Hendriksen in Darjeeling, India. The more I see of people, the more I realize that most of them are living the life of a vacuous kind- always in pursuit of something. What is this existence? If at the end of the day, you have not held a hand that needed reassurance or not bothered to look beyond your selfish interests, you have failed as a human being. It does not matter if you got the registers roaring at Wall Street, you are not worth a penny if you did not understand the despair of a heart beat. Let life make you, do not make your life. Life is a temporary thing. What is permanent is the love you left as an offering- to a silent somebody , to another soul in need.
We are all possessed
by the impassiveness of things that drift by in the psychosis of our minds of streams that flow of winds that drift from the terrains of long ago winters reek of wrongs summers seek the solace of storms in the heart of all these things we are all possessed by the impassiveness of broken strings. © Jaspreet Mann “It’s necessary to write terrible lines, awful drafts, half-hearted poems. Write ten in a row if needed. Throw pencils, get mad, take a walk. Swear off poetry, read a chapter of a post-apocalyptic novel, wash the dishes. Feel better? Back to writing. Repeat as necessary.”
—Karen Skolfield |
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