Asylum and Other Poems

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.