POETRY

TRAVELING

I travel alone.

I keep trying to travel alone.

To be the one who sits in the corner to take it all in as a mysterious loner the one who no one

knows much about but finds slightly interesting because she's alone and she doesn't care.

I'm not her. But I still travel alone.

WHAT I CAN'T SEEM TO FIGURE OUT

And I can't not but cry.

even now.

I'm everything

but

stable.

How could I stabilize?

I like poetry. Maybe these count as poems, maybe they don't. But this one, Seer by Maxamed Zaashi Dhamac "Garriiye", certainly counts. Somali poetry:

‘If a poem is a farm

then how things truly are, that’s water;
the best words for the best thoughts,
that’s how it begins.
Justice is your only compost,
life itself is what you hoe:
just squeeze truth from what happens
and in its own time it will sprout...

‘It’s not sold for coppers,
it’s not for praising the powerful;
to put a price on it, any price,
cheapens it and is forbidden

‘It’s riding bareback on an unbroken horse –
you don’t hobble its heels.
Those who fear for their hides
and won’t ride without a saddle,
those lacking in the craft, can’t get near this:
lies have nothing to do with it.
Poetry is a woman you do not betray,

to abuse her beauty is a sin..."