David Jalajel


SONNETS, QASIDAS, ETC…

dlc

exclusively releasing for pc
players left with no good way to play 
the highest hyped campaign comes crashing 
through the anticipated bottom line 
of sight which prophesies hard clarities
to hearts in hands that deftly cut the losses 
rendered ever more realistically 
portraying how you’d think it couldn’t be
a comedown phased withdrawal recommitting
rebooted features that won’t strike you like 
a crashing wave but lift you like the sea
of new downloadables uploading soon

our first-world problems’ blessèd patron saint’s
mood-boosting neuromodulating boon 



(i) aspirant

proposals for reform assured they’d will 
to form themselves into a formalised 
pecking order’s unironic rule
imposes scornful smirks inflame pursed lips
drink in your gaze at their enrubied glassfuls 
overbrim with sanctimonious 
authority derails your train of thought 
you knew the claim that fire’s presaged by smoke 
billows acridly through blustered pleas
bequeath you little cause to curry hope
& trust in what could be when hope becomes 
hopelessly buttressed by bespoke statistics

make obvious how far they’ll track your failures
& you & yours obligingly despair



(ii) sinecured

precious little thought to whom attention
commands are seldom barked out sternly since 
pretensions towards exclusive hierarchies 
presume obedience through obligations
colluding with paternal privilege tasks
the favours they’ll have channelled to those who’ll 
leave scant trace of coldly indolent
visitations brusquely misdirected 
prosperity induced insipid looks
encourage precious little in the way
limpid stares implore prolonged postponements
posthumously upheld to countermand

seditious institutions second-guessing
grandfathered claimants’ contrary demands



pageant

beauty constricts this evening’s frivolous 
dresses disturb our tranquil villagers’
rest assured their swank allure entices
louts to saunter down & tromp the floors
them truly gobsmacked with all eyes locked on 
lusciously draped embodied scenes of passion
incarnate gods damn righteous disaffection
culminates in climates of dispassioned
longing stares from several postemergent 
associated litigations’ woken 
tastes provoke a bold forensic science 
candidly qualifies each nation’s beauties 

displayed with ample modesty before
instinctively deep moral observation
 


arts-e

between the here & now & there & then 
the real rhetorical performance lures
our gaze unveils our plainly mundane faces
our fears provoke dream visions’ blurry focus
narrows our deadened phrasing of ideas 
typed in to generate what seeks to show
our subconscious standard to-&-fro 
slow shaping semblance our exquisite features
reflect in processing our sympathies 
for tragic figures stand by everyone’s 
outlandish creativity obscuring
our nascent dread to set in motion where

the random thoughts of all the people are
contained by random laws of what can be



teambuilding

we’re based but these fool trends are catching on 
to how uncool rote interviews to screen 
through a continuum of fuzzy values 
uphold bold platitudes self-righteously 
copped from others texted tired memes 
as cringe replies reworking worker’s truths 
avow to hone one master narrative  
controlling for the overstimulating
morning coffee sets the office scene
pans to random checks where every door
bursts open on the basest human motives
hide in the namesake hollow tone we practice

the fumbling steps & inadvertent turns
of corporate newbies with a newbie’s zeal


 
enrol

personalised professional assistance
eludes these colour-coded ethicists
raise the socially acceptable 
compounded costs accruing most of their
own membership’s assured propensity 
to deftly network tendered allocations
from several bank accounts for more essential 
storefront glass displays the sundry products
purchased daily customers obliged
to justify convenient boundaries 
adopted in real time to optimise
the eco-friendly options put on offer 

a wider more affordable selection
with standard margins & adjusted rates



coping/

climate change proved so deadly how it bodes
more tallied dead than we’d have killed to know
what we’re to do to reassuage our guilt 
in this too murderously clear & most 
substantial provocation which the world 
bemoans to date who’ve bled to death right under
our surveillance they’ll clear out the flood 
path waters flow so we can take that needed
bath in preparation for the stately
pastimes we’ll be wanting to arrange 
these ventures’ scale has grown a bit too much 
they have disclosed how fully we’ve become

acclimatised to all of what must go 
of all our well-deserved entitlements





qasida #52

you presume trellised hillocks serve your visceral instincts – 
your arcadian visions turn insipid & mindless:

spent vines, their dead runners spewing brown leaves,
entwine weathered stone satyrs, faceworn & eyeless

you surrender discretion, sage words cease to guide you,
you entomb chiselled epitaphs & revel in silence

then the morning mist lifts, it unsettles the air,
& the wine-starved come dancing to fawn for your guidance

they peel back the clarity from your hearing & sight –
& when the jubilation grips you, you bloom into violence



qasida #53 

you’re of no mind your senses can resist decline,
your beleaguered thoughts embodied less & less

as the lights wink out in your old brains, & you 
jump on the cathartic trampoline of hopefulness

to bounce back more confounded in your discontent,
playing the near-pensioned civil servant in distress

dutifully fuelled by a caffeine-injected insomnia
with a throng of petitioners pressed against your desk

the afternoon’s washed out, anonymised, betraying
neither your first, nor latest, bout of cognitive regress



qasida #54

leaves & branches are the exiles here 
on the paved shoulder of this makeshift lair

such is your dubious dream: to secure
a freehold getaway from everywhere

repatriating yourself beyond the billboard poles, 
wasting your days talking down dead air

shivering in a shapeless woolen jersey
between a service road & the thoroughfare –

you flash a smile to each passing car, 
slumped at your instatent on a plastic chair 



qasida #55

you’re left no choice but to watch the ice encroaching 
on the moonlit river, constricting its flow

no rising current to urge you on towards home, 
just the abstract dread of an undertow

discerned through a haze the moon’s light fails to pierce,
each shadow & glint ablur in its glow

with a shine on the woods that leaves your eyes estranged
to a dimming faith you no longer know

you gaze up & reclaim that cold forgotten world,
digging your heels into the snow



qasida #56

don’t take the clipboard down, nor the bone-cutting shears,
you can’t deliver this one through on the punchcard’s time

slip off two finger rings… a gold loop that adorns each ear…
bracelets from wrists… charms your sutures cannot bind 

set chin & ankle, a cheek turned away, the sheet’s white veneer –
force a practiced scoff your choked back sobs deny

but these intrusive sounds can’t damp the bloodless cheer
pulsing its cyclic, whirred antiphony that grinds

out chiming tritone fugues to euphonise & square
you with a death you prep enough to eulogise

stamp its cause as prosaic, yes, but why stop there –
incise that last post-mortal wound & expose the crime

native convocation

CONTINUE the subsidy. although most of their powers have been transformed, they retain some rights with respect to their options, their purchasing power. it is our monument we deliver to investors & stakeholders, claimants in this respect.

               a glass display case
               pulled tight on a steel-tipped frame
               spotlights old black robes

& every matter, except foreign visas, will be honoured by your invitation. IMPLEMENT optimal fee reforms. language, whose aboriginal powers continue to decline by 10-20% on the tongue, GLOSS OVER without too many distortions. BETRAY a residual influence on academic dress, exquisite, & very fully still there.

               rolls of starched papers
               clenching hands of convenience –
               sleeves caught in the act




David Jalajel is the author of Moon Ghazals (Beard of Bees Press, 2009), Cthulhu on Lesbos (Ahadada Books, 2011), a chapbook in Dan Waber’s This is Visual Poetry series (2013) and Rhyme & Refrain (University of the Western Cape, 2017). His work has appeared in a number of online and print journals, including Otoliths, Shampoo, experiential-experimental-literature, Recursive Angel, The New Post-Literate, Gulf Coast, Anti-, Lynx, Mizna, and Eclectica.

 
 

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