Jaffe is an internationally known and an award winning writer, author and poet and founder of 'Poets Beyond Borders' (a group dedicated to human rights and reform) and iSpeax his personal writing forum. Jaffe impacts audiences and readers with a rich emotional range, masterfully crafted, written from the heart and soul with clarity and understanding. Jaffe has read his work in such distinguished locations as the Japanese American Museum, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Tolerance, the Jewish Museum and the Museum of Literature in Prague and the Dylan Thomas Centre in Wales. Jaffe uses the uses the aesthetic power of poetry to bring understanding to the world. He was the 2007 recipient of the Saint Hill Art Festival’s Lifetime of Creativity Award, the first time given to a poet.
Beyond Samsara*
I wash my hands with posterity
they have never felt so clean
My ideals have triumphed
over the insolent and the misbehaved
My inner doubts have quieted
I have achieved something akin
to defusing samsara*
It is beauty relived
and incarnate
It is eternity on a spoon
I fly with butterfly and eagle
I run like gazelle and cheetah
I have reached my
and no longer becoming a stranger
And I am as infinite
as that figure 8 on its side
∞
*Saṃsāra (Sanskrit: संसार) (in Tibetan called khor ba "སམསར", pronounced /kɔrwɔ/, meaning "continuous flow" and in Sinhala called sangsāra "සංසාර" meaning "eternal cycle"), is the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (reincarnation) as well as one's actions and consequences in the past, present, and future.
Bogota
I have Bogota on my mind
it has become
a place of healing
from a place of war
Drugs grew from the architecture
the populace swimming
through an addiction of violence
Money clashed with coffee
and cocaine gobbled land
Suddenly an inspiration
of happiness
cued a coup
of universal salvation
I see kids running for fun
instead of their lives
Police State
Flowers fall
without negotiating
gravity
scents and blossoms
discarded
Ideas like mountains
collapse
monuments
of insurrection
A man plays piccolo
in the background
he hits all the wrong notes
yet captivates the mystics
Tears fall not so gently
in urban warfare
