Asylum and Other Poems

Description

Bound by the need for breath

We lie on beds of foaming rubber.

But the room is filled with

The rhythm of blood and need and the story.

We lie quietly, listening.

The whales are singing each to each.

It is my last article of belief:

They understand their music.

You and I only have words.

Outside the window

The sea, the sea.

Searching for safe havens; wanting to cut loose. Trying to make peace with

death, love and madness. Learning that we can wound and be wounded.

Looking for solace and meaning through rage and confusion.

Jerry Pinto's debut collection of poems, Asylum, established him as a true

original, a writer unafraid to be vulnerable, to take risks, to open the door

and blunder into the world or let it sweep in. He travels, wrote Imtiaz

Dharker, 'the breathtaking spaces between madness, luminosity and quiet

rebellion...This is a writer who draws precise lines of control, and then, with

surprising tenderness, crosses them.'