THE WOMAN IN MY KITCHEN
if she were
an exotic recipe
fusion
and eclectic
a meteorological occlusion
or a passage geometric
would i wish to change her?
could i dare to challenge her?
Or
would it be enough
of a feat
to keep her
just keep her
in a steady state
ahmet
October 13, 2022
PREFERENCE
If I could travel back in time
would I wish
to attend Queen Victoria
in a nightie
or
Namik Pasha
at a pajama party
would either be
breathtaking
or world shaking
as
the younger me
in any attire
running
on a path of memory
not
not at all
emblazened with glory
ahmet
October 13, 2022
FABLE No. 37
A goose going at a steady rate
thought of ancestors
who had lived in state
of feathers galore
and ponds in gardens
with grass all around
knowing well
that it will also become
an ancestor regal
in as short
or long
a time
as time goes for geese
and for humans
no different
for life is life
and a lifetime is a lifetime
ahmet the last stanza in a lullaby
October 13, 2022
Truth for Compassion
Two of my grandchildren have been with us for about one week. We have one on one chats frequently.
Elevators, stars and planets and math with the boy, and everything else with the girl. The boy asks what and how and the girl asks what and why. I ask them who they are.
1. The older, six year old grandson, got up from his bed in the adjoining room, without waking her mom, and came to help me walk to the bathroom in darkness when he heard me get up.
2. The younger, four year old granddaughter refused to go to her dance and rhythm class because she was the only female left in the house to take care of me during that time. This was after she asked me if my heart problem was contagious and received sufficient reassurance.
Their teachers consider them as individuals.
I owe my self confidence partially to my primary school first grade teacher who gave me a tiny book of La Fontain's Fables with a note appreciating that I was the best poem reader in her class.
An then there were all the highschool teachers who never taught me but knew me and even remembered me thirty years after I graduated. I hope they felt my admiration and compassion at certain times in their lives.
Not so strange strangers are sometimes closer to one than some blood relatives and most school mates who assume that I am an assumption, and never more.
ahmet
September 9. 2022
just one more birthday
on which my sister always buys a lottery ticket for me that never wins. I check the dates just in case it is the same losing ticket every year.
using sieves and sifting and trial by wealth in politics
How do you become a politician without any experience in politics and how can you make your country better through politics?
You find the funds to support you as a candidate for office,
You spend those funds wisely, in buying allegiance of people, groups and institutions
You make your opponents appear inadequate, corrupt or bad.
You then use your position and its power to pay back those who suppported you
And if this endeavor meshes with making the country better, that would also be good.
Or, you may train some vigilantes and mercenaries for a coup to take over the government. This way you will not owe as much and may actually have more power to make yor country better, if that desire still survives in your ethical perspective.
Augustos the Chelebi
26 August, 2022
The Latter Time
Relationships have lives of their own. Marriages, business partnerships, master-apprentice, professor-assistant, doctor-patient, parent-progeny, home-owner or tenant. The entities do not always realize the span of the half-life or even a perentage of the life of this nuclear bond, but the relationship does, and starts signalling. If you are perceptive and do not have a wishful belief in mitosis or meiosis, instincts kick in, not in a different way than a developing fetus of a pregnancy, to start sending their own messages.
Demise of one of the partners in the relationship, follows sensual and metaphysical as well as physical indications like the mark found on proprietary victims in fairs, festivals. This time, it may well appear at family or business gatherings. These marks have a nomenclature extensive enough to be dismissed according to various types of blindness, like uncared cataracts.
Yet, instincts, wishes, beliefs, reason do not provide perceptible evidence, when the tendency of the herd is to disregard the sacrifice of one member or to justify its loss to a hungry beast of differing dimensions and divine names.
The final sounds the victim makes, depend on the health of its organs or the presence of the physical and emotional audience which vey quickly dissolves in a haze of nostalgic memory, like the rainbow that appeared today over the cemetery which houses part of my and most of Eser's ancestors.
Ahmet C. Celebiler
August 7, 2022
And Now Something Almost completely Different
The name of the department or ministry has nothing to do with its activity. Think of the ministry of the interior or home office their purpose have little to do with decoration as far as I can tell. It is the people who occupy positions in these institutions and what they consider their duties, responsibilities.
Some cornered person once said, “best defense is offense,” (and was never heard of again) and since then all defense ministries and their occupants have become totally offensive homicidal maniacs, keeping tallies of destroyed stuff and body counts with pride.
