swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

tangled inside the piano chords
M A Shaheed

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Myth Informed

You have been laboring under an
illusion, if you thought inclusion
meant you too.

Nope! I told you many times before
to stop using hope, that it is a dope
that underpins your moral dilemma.

It just doesn’t work. Once again, don’t
use it, buy it or sell it. It will lead you to
other more dangerous habits.

To disappointment and despair to paranoia
and you will become a causality that can’t
be repaired.

The million dollars you see is the million
spent on the TV ads the ones that keep you
less happy and sadder. You as a person
doesn’t matter.

If you weren’t aware, that’s grease on the
pole you couldn’t climb. I don’t know if you
know, the bottom of barrel, is the top for
you. That’s is as far as you’re going to go.

There you stand, with a remote and on
demand comes the sleight of hand you
waited all day for. Everything you’ve been
given is a leftover to fight over.

The ideas for what to do with you, have been
slept over. Any name you can think of to call
them, can’t really hit the mark.

They feed off negativity and it leaves you with
The scars. I guess you’re stuck with myth inform-
ation. Unfortunately, that’s just who you are.

Letters

Shall it be graphite or ink, hard to
decide when being alphabetically
deranged? Maybe the other voice
can make the choice? I’m waiting
at the imagination station until the
train of thoughts arrive.

The bass cleft left me stranded
Tangled inside the piano chords.
Someone screamed, “Lord have
Mercy,” there was nobody else
around to pick up those deafening
sounds.

When the truth was induced the lies
were displaced. They hovered above
the landscape looking for some ears
to hear. Desperate tongues reach out
attempting to rearrange the letters,
trying to re- work things that didn’t
work.

Seasoning new minds with hatched
plans that never manifested. Unable
to duck all the silver bullets, chocking
on yellow ribbons, watching the zombies
at the kitchen door asking them to feed
them more and more, not knowing the
cupboards were damn near bare.

Finding hollow victories while celebrating
anniversaries with the prison guards.
They swore to cod, that they were just
playing! They got played by a smooth
operator. They never learn and that’s
what makes them so cool. It’s a journey
for a fool.

A little newspaper ink, a cold bottle of beer,
then hear, hear! Another bitter pill they
gladly swallow. Not able to unravel the riddles
that challenge the cluelessness of their existence.
After breaking down the doors, all they could do
was to urinate on the floors, just like they did in
all the other wars.

Left Side

She was dying and I was crying,
trying to keep her here.
Over there was too strong,
I couldn’t hold on.
She was leaving from the left side.
I didn’t have the
right to hold a life that didn’t
belong to me.
As her hand slipped from mine,
she whispered,
“write about us.”
She would read it the next time.
She said, she wouldn’t be that
difficult to find.
She said, she would look for me
where we met the first time.

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Proet M A Shaheed was first published in White Motors newspaper under the name of Clyde Shy. In 1963/64 living in Stockholm, Sweden, he wrote stories for a photographer whose pictures were sold to newspapers & magazines. M A Shaheed played bass violin with major Avant Garde musicians. In 1966 he joined the poetry workshop, Muntu Poets, headed by Russell Atkins, noted Avant Garde poet and composer along with well- known poet and playwright Norman Jordan in Cleveland, Ohio. At the end of “68”, he began to work on his spiritual development and stopped writing for 3 decades, but was driven back to his pen by a clearer understanding of the real reality. He has since published 44 books, been in numerous anthologies. The genre includes novellas, poetry, short stories and Flash Fiction. “My goal is to keep writing until I stop, until I can no longer hear.”