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Mem Zepper 

 

OF THE DAYS

 

 

I know the value of the days

It’s why I spend them doing nothing

I have a seat in lower-society

Looking upwards to laugh at the laughing

 

Trudging outside the world’s dazzling ways

I dig my own grave for-a-living

Sometimes I regret ever meeting anyone

What a tragedy is “believing”

 

I breathe the fresh air and filter through

I am an actor playing me

I beg for love on the underground

While others beg for money

 

I’ve made my heart a public building

Take note, “Mr I’m alright Jack”

I know the value of the days

It’s why you can never buy one back

 

Now let me be on my ways

 

My head is heavy eyes are moist and mouth is dry

The biggest mistake I ever made

Was spelling “philosophy” without the “I."

WHEN I DIE

 

 

When I die of this love

Come...carve “fool”

On my grey stone

 

I walk a coward’s path 

I am only beautiful

When I am alone

 

I know now there is a cure 

That God does not possess

It is him! And not me!

Whom should step forward and confess

 

Though I never told you a lie

My reward was not the truth

Because our love got lost and so

At middle age I am finally sick of youth,

 

The outline of my soul is missing

You left me behind without

Letting go of my hand.

 

And now what is the order of the day?

For I am flying in the disorder of the night

A bird that knows not where to land

 

IF I COULD WATCH YOU SLEEP

 

 

If I could watch you sleep

I would not have the heart to awake you

 

I am poor...unattractive...lack entertainment...

Where do I find the nerve

To take you?

 

I hear the hum of the lake in your eyes

My bones revolt, break through my skin

To protect you

 

I will crawl to the four corners of the world

Alas, you have instructed me

To forsake you.

 

If I could watch you sleep

I would gather birds and hire instruments

To awake you. 

 

Mem Zepper was born in a village south east of Turkey roughly two hours from the old city of Harput 1969. His family migrated to England. 1971. Austere,unflinching description, Moments of tenderness and squalor and dark themes of loneliness,social isolation and dislocation are running issues.. In materialistic and superficial times The poems question existence. And the responsibility humans must Oblige to the truth ...at all cost to self image...to be or not to be...yourself ..?

REFUGE

 

 

I take refuge in poetry

Where poverty blossoms

Women’s feet leave not a print

And the stomach gets drunk on tap water.

 

Imprisoned in a shed, situated

At the back of my mind I have 

Scared life away from me

‘Tis also the case vice-versa.

I try to keep a harmonious tongue

But good people? You have

Witnessed for yourselves

Some folk crave a brutal answer.

 

The primitive man

With qualifications

The sober man 

With hallucinations

The right honourable gentleman

With wrong un-honourable expenses

I take refuge in poetry 

Squatting between the sentences.

 

We don’t really know exactly

What we are doing, we just follow 

Things and see where it takes us

Never mind purchasing luxury

To even get a smile is all “subject to status”

I take refuge in poetry

Whether written by me the fool

Or them!...the old sages.

LEFT OF MY RED JUMPER

 

 

Ask me what I want from life

I am curious to hear my answer

Give me a wish I could tie, to the

Left of my red jumper.

 

I perhaps wish for a kettle

Or a chair to rest my body

Or a pair of shoes that can make me walk

Without looks from anybody.

 

I may wish for a table

To employ my pen and paper

Write me a wish I could pin, to the

Left of my red jumper.

 

I have given up on everyone

Now I only talk to myself

They used to question my morality

Now it’s just my mental health.

 

Can I ask for your eyes 

To be my eternal helper?

The only wish I possess, to the

Left of my red jumper.

MILLION STAR HOTEL

 

 

Million Star Hotel

That’s where the man stay’

Huddled up in a shop door-way

 

The traffic a lullaby

Room service from passers by

Million Star Hotel

Where a million people stay

 

“What makes me laugh”, he would say

“Is that I think I smell,

What makes me sad”, then he would say

“Is my loneliness.”

 

“God has put survival in the air 

I wake up to people urinating aiming for my ear

My face is cursed with an evil look 

That my heart does not possess

But it’s not that which makes me sad 

What makes me sad is my...loneliness.

 

My loneliness

Can fill every suitcase ever made

Fill every shoe that has ever been worn

It can crack a mountain.

I have seen it outshine the stars at night

And I have seen it cast its shadow over the sun at dawn.

 

Voluntarily?...or...inevitably perhaps?

I somehow engineered my social collapse!

And so I checked in to the Million Star Hotel,

where I found my peace in the epicentre of Hell”.

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