National Poetry Month (okay, not really, but I only need three poems to fill out the month)

Quatrains by Mahsati. Translation by Deirdre Lashgari.

Better to live as a rogue and a bum,
a lover all treat as a joke,
to hang out with a crowd of comfortable drunks,
than crouch in a hypocrite's cloak.

Unless you can dance through a common bar
with a vagabond's step, you're not going to make it.
This is the road of the reckless who gamble their lives;
risk yours, or you're not going to make it.

National Poetry Month (okay, not really, but only two more!)

Traveler by Heather Sommer

Your first time out of the country
of your own skin, I didn't bring a map.

You always hated that I'd been lucky
enough to pick my way through streets

I couldn't pronounce to find cathedrals,
graveyards. If you were a city, you said,

I'd only like to know your suburbs.

If you were a city, I said, I'd like to know
your poor neighborhoods, your inner parts.

Read your graffiti. Drink your tap water.
Feel your smog and dirt stick to my sweat.

Hear your orchestra of sirens and gunshots.
I'd know which of your streets to walk.

If you were a city, I'd expect to be robbed.