Veteran Poet David Leo Sirois, you are not only wearing your poetry robe but you have also donned a teaching garb. Your poetry carry that verve of moral instruction. Your thought provoking biblical allusions and head tilting imagery are a refreshment of social consciousness . Iam thoroughly wowed by your choice of diction and the word economics thereof places you into the class of extraordinary English page poets , a special mention to Robert Frost and TS. Elliot . As such ,I have again picked and pocketed from your metaphoric fruit tree, some literary wisdom of John Donne , Yeats and Keats , the metaphysical poets . Your hybrid fusion of traditions , your own ingenuity and modernistic writing is mesmerizing and fulfills the consumer , the reader the way original fruit juice does to ever gormandizing kindergartens , And then followed by a loud belch there after , a natural signal of fulfillment and satisfaction. We continue to imbibe your verses of wisdom and graze through pages with that willing keenness of a new lover , we greedily gormandize your moral instruction and social consciousness like monkeys fervently shelling peanuts in fields of promise or like bees passionately drinking sweet honey from the hive of plenty .TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC is honored to feature and profile above all excellence and prowess in the personality , international renowned spoken-word arts curator and acclaimed literature hub producer Poet David Leo Sirois
Turning
It is not so difficult to endure bullets in your chest; but it is extremely difficult to work
daily on a schedule, to fight with yourself at every moment, and in this way, to purify
yourself.
- Mahatma Gandhi
The sky slowly lowers its gaze
handed to a row of old indigo windows
Time conserves its endless strength
conversing with each passerby
sacred words & arcane signs
intimating times of rough good fortune
I am now unreachable to all but the lowest
heavens
Seconds beat against my brow
willing a spiraling universe
These cars create hypnotic quiet
wise machine’s lilting roll
The river speaks unintelligibly
& bridges tread water always
Wooden cross upon my tongue
haunts my speech with melodies
of sorrow swallowed & transformed
by words of wood that burn & lighten
Silence spoken to hours found
in time to be devoured
Now night envelops every eye
tiny globes in sacrifice
Windows drink the darkest wine
Luminous form the human face
in shadow lit phosphorescent
The skin of counting canvas stage where
minute months show themselves as roads revolve
round the planet clouds pursue at their own pace
I walk abstract edges
of falling hills lit green crosses
glass-roofed aquamarine door
red yellow white on pine-colored trellises
Crescent moon cast in silver
as café customers unroll their tongues or steep in silence
conjuring cloudy atmospheres to crowd themselves
into one sculpture
The radio center its circular structure
embracing Mahatma’s “human truth”
which changes day by day
while divine truth is absolute
I remember learning to fall
without resistance landing gently
on padded floors nothing in hand
to prevent me from rising again
The black pearlescent scent of espresso
welcomes me back
Even the dark shimmers violet
Everything’s turning
Time is awake throughout this night
through all our dawns
This wind is saying
It is time to MAKE
but witty conversation will not suffice
What you create ethereal names a room in space
Nectar Is the Best Medicine
Dearest Ghost,
whose name
I’ve never known,
tell me what you must
teach at this time…
David, the world leans its loud mind
against our windows,
puts us in a trance of trepidation,
a palpable presence in our heads
fed on statistics of illness
& images of violent unrest –
sword to wield against ourselves,
threaten our weakest moments
with wounds of uselessness,
& cowardice,
as we exile our own power
because we can’t see we have any.
We are not the slain victims
of the nightly news report,
catalog of atrocities that keep us
held by beds where we don’t
want to wake up yet,
threatened by the thought
of what the day ahead harbors,
duties done with distaste
& frightening surprises
that might hide in blind spots.
What are you afraid of, David?…
You meet that question with mute musings.
The deepest answer is “Nothing.”
Thread the eye of your heart’s needle
with the string of continuous awareness,
& stitch a richer fabric of reality
than what you now wear
as worldly work uniform,
customary costume.
We are all cut from the same cloth…
Bring your attention to the baseline of
your humanness –
skin, bone & blood.
Heart that still beats its bass drum.
Mind that makes you see what you believe.
Soul steeped in light that turns the universe.
Underneath the showy poet costume
of the character you play
on the stage of the spoken world,
jacket, tophat, & twilight dress-shirt
unbuttoned down to your heart ~
far behind your indigo eyes
shines fluid, formless Consciousness…
Seven billion minds
of people planted on this planet,
but only one Awareness.
Blank canvas we all carry…
Behind its pale presence,
& the driftwood of history in our heads,
plus the endless train of
anxious anticipations…
Pause to turn within
& taste the fresh nectar
of God’s intoxicating, hypnotic silence.
The Most Precious Stone
Mahadev, Leonard Saphier, I sense your spirit there.
The sparks of your electric presence
crackle in the room’s stale radiator air,
& leave it charged & clear.
Do you have some words to share?
The Earth is far from ready
to hold your body cold
in somber soil & stone.
Your chosen reason to exist –
to live for Light, & write of it.
Remember the teaching tale
I told you 10 years ago,
when you returned to the Ashram
you’d seen in dreams since the age of 5,
& served selflessly at 25,
doing work I had no muscle for –
activities of daily living,
morning & evening routines
that most perform unaware
of the richness there,
the gift of able movement.
In the story, a kind precious stone miner
with no means to survive slim times,
is told by his guru,
with a gentle smile,
“Keep going, keep going.”
The nearly-spent seeker finds
a mine of sapphire, cave of grace
that enables him to save
his wife’s & children’s lives.
Keep going, keep going, David,
now that you’ve found the sapphire mine
of your current kind of song,
along the lines of what you were taught
as a freshman student of beauty,
who wished to frame divinity
with poetry, words for the ineffable.
When asked “What is the sublime?”
your first workshop teacher replied:
“The Sublime…
(puffs his cigarette)
…is what blows your mind.”
Later a poet/professor
taught you what to cut away,
& what to cultivate.
One winter’s end, at 3am,
you sat with a close friend,
& talked of poetry, & spirituality.
You saw a dove of white fire
appear in still air,
fly across the room toward you
& alight on the crown of your head,
burn its way down
the length of your spine,
throw your body to the bed,
& as if goddess Saraswati danced
on the tip of your tongue,
made a creation poem
play upon your lips…
“Over the face of naked waters
a nameless breath was blowing…”
Your friend penned what you said.
In poetry workshop you were advised:
“Your vision needs revision.
Your automatic writing
could use some rewriting.
You could leave this
as a piece of trance-channeling,
or go the way of literature,
& I hope you do.”
Then 25 years of ceaseless editing.
Polish the stone ’til it shines brightest.
Enjoy the sapphire here.
Exhaust the brilliant possiblities
of this cave of cobalt blue air,
treasure trove from which you share.
At 25, your eyes were wide
about a book upon my shelves –
The Collected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke.
You exclaimed great praise for his work,
but I offended you
from then ‘til now
with what I said:
“Yes, it is great, but one can feel
the element of trying…
as opposed to enlivened words
of enlightened poet-saints,
like your belovèd Mirabai,
or Rumi.
R U? M I?”
Years later, graver times came
for the miner once again, his family poised
on the precarious cusp of hunger.
The guru said with a peaceful smile,
“Keep going, keep going.”
Months past his last sapphire,
the seeker searched
for farther caves, generous with gems
to keep a few souls warm
with breath’s give-&-take.
That day he was surprised by joy
when a mountain’s rocky contours
opened a new eye –
he stepped inside the opening to find
a cave of clustered rubies,
which brought abundant days
& tranquil nights.
Discipline will save your life.
Blaze the trail of realization
& your poetry will shimmer
with Shakti, pure energy.
David, as I said in 2010,
you can always visit the temple.
Though the ashram’s doors were closed,
you glimpsed the gate to your inner temple,
in which God sits in golden steadfastness.
You glimpsed the light behind
your indigo eyes,
Consciousness, our true life.
Find the ruby mine inside you,
with its deep thirst for words
you can choreograph over the page,
but now include your sense of human
suffering, sickness, old age & death.
All red words of need.
From dust to dust,
nothing is lost,
but we must give
the space between
some warm meaning –
poetry of this moment
for which you are here,
for the whole unknown duration,
then the mystery of existence afterward –
one taste of which would arrest your breath.
Let natural Power move you farther –
give that ruby cave
your clearest, strongest voice,
student of beauty &
the roots of human pain,
knowing nothing binds us
but inward words, false concepts –
offer the verse of turning deep within,
freedom in the world of form.
Do you want your words to live
long after you die?
Who else could sing your song
while you sleep long after dawn,
or when you’re gone?
Inspired lines can rise off the page,
the spirit’s upward gravity, skyward pull,
& can change our state of consciousness.
A true poet is a bridge between worlds.
Build that bridge with precious gems,
words of infinite resonance.
You remember what I shared –
after the ruby mine’s richness
had exhausted all its usefulness,
the student’s hair a cloud of grey,
the grateful miner went again
to sit in his guru’s palpable peace,
intoxicating presence.
Again the wisdom always true
for us, who must flow with streams of change –
through a sweet & gentle smile
the sage strongly whispered:
“Keep going, keep going.”
With a refreshed spirit, the miner left,
& read the road ahead of him
as an exquisite line of scripture.
Who knew what might be written
on the rugged mountain’s edge?
In whichever way they can,
all of nature’s children dance
& climb along the ragged rim of Earth,
holding onto nothing
but the power that held them first.
You’re a dancer by birth,
I told you at 25,
after asking “What’s it like?” to run.
Intuition’s dowsing rod
led the diligent disciple
to a cave dotted with diamonds.
When you are strong enough
to keep your heart quartz-clear,
then you can find poetry’s diamond mine,
if you meet all three prerequisites:
Words can dance at your command,
your heart can sing about suffering,
& when you are strong enough to surrender,
give the Ghost a voice.
Learn languages of light.
I gave up suffering long ago…
Inside each one of us,
there’s a place of sublime knowledge,
& anyone who enters it becomes a true poet,
without having to have a degree –
diamond mines of divine words
can be humbly carried from there
into the darkened world.
The natural jewels
of the heart’s Heart
call to all of us.
Listen closely to silence,
student of Light –
a quiet mind can hear
the highest song.
Once I recited a poetic gem
from the back of the wheelchair van,
which you found profoundly exquisite,
though so elusive you could not take
a snapshot of it with your mind,
& I too surrendered it to time.
You tasted true astonishment –
& asked if I had written it.
Forever remember what I said:
“Not writing…just reading the heart of God.”
All your trying cannot take you far.
Wake up to who you truly are.
David Leo Sirois is a Canadian-American poet who wrote and performed in Paris for seven years, where he hosted a weekly multi-art open mic on the Left Bank, called Open Secret. He now hosts the global open mic, Spoken World Online. His work has been published in four countries (USA, France, England, and the Czech Republic) in several languages. Poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Village, The Sunday Tribune Online, Ariel’s Dream, Winning Writers, The Opiate, Silo, Those That This, THE BASTILLE, Belleville Park Pages, Paris Lit Up, and Terre à Ciel (which also published his translations from the French of Paul Valéry and others). Altogether, he has had 86 publications, including his work in The Keystone Anthology (England), and the anthologies Vignettes and Postcards from Paris and Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations (Boston). He is currently submitting two manuscripts for publication and writing two more.
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Mbizo CHIRASHA – UNESCO-RILA Affiliate Artist. 2020 Free Speech Fellow at PEN Deutschland.2020 Poet in Residence of the Fictional Café . 2019 African Fellow of the Ihraf.org. Contributing Writer at Monk Arts and Soul Magazine . Literary Arts Activism Diplomatie at Bezine Arts and Humanities Magazine and The Poet A Day. Featured Poetry Artist at World BeyondWar.Org. Arts Features and Political commentary Writer at Cultural Weekly. Featured African Writer at Demer Press International Poetry Series . Featured African Performance Poet at 2020 Medellin International Poetry Festival. Featured Poet/Writer at INKSWEATAND TEARS Journal, Sentinel UK , Wrath-bearing Tree- USA , FemAsia Magazine -UK. Soutrhern Africa Poet at 2020Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín.2019 Live Literature Hub Curator/Producer at Sotambe International Film Arts FESTIVAL. 2009 Poet in Residence at International Africa Culture and Development, ICACD). 2003 Young Literary Arts Delegate of ZimBookFair to Goteborg International Book Fair and was the Spokenword Artist at SIDA African Pavilion . Co-Editor of a three Languages International collection STREET VOICES with prominent Germany Author Andreas Weiland . Featured Poet at Cervena Barva Press Newsletter. Literary Arts and Poetry Contributor to the Zimbabwean Voice of the Voiceless Newspaper. African Participant to the World Poetry Almanac Book Series in Mongolia. Resident Coordinator for 100 Thousand POETS for Peace- Zimbabwe. Founder and Creative Director at GirlChildcreativity Project . Writer in Residence. Global LITERARY Arts Projects Influencer. Published Author and International Acclaimed Poet. Chronicler and Publisher , AFRICA WRITERS CARAVAN. Chief Editor at TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC. Projects Curator at WOMAWORDS LITERARY PRESS. Chief Influencer at Brave Voices Poetry Journal. Author and Editor at Porcupine Quill.
TIME OF THE POET REPUBLIC- An Internet based Writers Center, Archiving Theme based Digital Poetry Anthologies and publishing Iconic Poets ,Writers and Artists from around the globe. TIME OF POET REPUBLIC was founded by UNESCO-RILA Affliate ARTIST. Freedom of SPEECH Fellow PEN-Zentrum Deutschland.2019 African FELLOW ihraf.org and Acclaimed LiteraryArtDiplomatie,Mbizo CHIRASHA
