Poets Cornered: Omar Musa, The Poetry Project

Roses are red, violets are blue and The Poetry Project is The Bookworm’s fortnight-long foray into the valley of verse. Those are the facts. Here’s another: Three accomplished performance poets – Luka Lesson, Omar Musa and Bohdan Piasecki – will take on the challenge of rhyming in front of crowds and hosting school workshops. Before that, we gave them a challenge of our own. We asked them to write us a poem based on a Beijing photograph. Here’s what Omar Musa created …

“Camera Sap” by Omar Musa

Those who are snared by a camera lens,
as if trapped in a bead of
bejewelled sap,
exhibit a certain type of melancholy,

whether they’re laughing or not.

It is a rare loneliness,
to be alive and dead, remembered
and forgotten,
spectral remnants of a yesterday
we who remain
dash towards eternally.

The scraps of commerce/
the telephones that won’t be answered/
the mirrors/
the peaked ears/
the slaps of ink and mournful stares/

captured in camera sap.

Until one fine day,
(today perhaps?)
a treasurehunter plucks the bead of sap
from the branch
and polishes it up

to be set in a rich man’s ring.

Luka, Omar and Bohdan will be performing at various events including The Bookworm + JUE Showcase at 2 Kolegas on Oct 20. Omar will also be onstage at The Bookworm on Oct 24.

Photos: Vicky Mohiedeen and courtesy of the poets