The pages of the foretold past
are going to be held in shivering
hands, lips stuttering syllables
as they spell out the untimely death
of stories of little children and
little hands, and little hearts, all
offered as a bargain to keep the
disputing heart at bay;
the dried up blood, the broken
pieces of people covered in white
sheets will be too pale and too two dimensional,
the pixels carelessly dilated into the empty
eyes of the people who lived and lived;
there will be elaborate euphemisms
in quotes, they’ll quote us in their
notes, they’ll swiftly put the input
of how terror woke the unsuspecting
sheep, how the wolves howled,
but the bears and their bigotry
shot and murdered and pulled at the skins
till there were none to speak,
the mouths will cajole the harsh “r”s
of terror, like a flower bud pinched
to drown out its colour,
but that only happens to our skin:
the chapters of their history will
drag out the troubling world of
fear, and all they’ll say
is that we wrote poetry
about the love we never gave to our kin.
Floating
How fickle are the heavy minded,
trudging to whatever satiates their lies,
whatever makes them as they were
the guise of the future is hidden behind the proletariat love of life,
the insignificance that lies in the heart of my soul is light.
The embrace of the cradle of love is heavy,
it digs deep as the fickleness of my mind
it swiftly procures the screams of my mother
as I leave her house, under the impressions of a lust for life,
the closeted emotions that surface as tears escape the sights of my neighbours are forgotten.
Incredulity struck me, the gravity of symphonies
carrying with it the terrible lightness of being,
crackling the fire of love and distaste, burnt cigarettes and hands
that were choking hazards to their own chemical composition,
unsettled in its atmosphere, sits the loneliness of life, the terrible life of being.
maniacs
[set in a psychiatric centre]
i.
Our eyes dripped of dust and caked sweat,
hands caught up in between explaining
the mechanics of living
to the heart beats
that felt dead inside,
our fingers frozen in the gestures
they forgot to make into words,
into the words we would rather
spell in the empty air about us than speak;
the chronic symptoms of depression latch
onto your neck, dripping the colourless blood
they call therapy and
my lips shiver when they
unground our bodies from the skin of our beds,
the skin of our skin, the skin long slept-
mother told to stay away from them:
“the clairvoyance reeks badly,” she told me-
lips sealed, lips curled,
perforations dwindling extremities
safely, I learnt how to scream silently.
ii.
The lines foretold
our hands braised
of the afternoon when panic came for us,
our clothes discarded in the coffee shop:
“they were seven years old,”
they were seven years old,”
I heard you mutter under your breath.
How eyes cross checked each blink
like the memory of a lost lover was surging away
and the words we speak,
your voice wouldn’t repeat.
iii.
I remember a lot of screaming
and blue, doctor scrubs,
and my hands crossed on my knee
and I remember a lot of screaming-
was that usually me?-
in the halls, near the ECT,
behind the trashy literature
they insisted you read-
you never did,
you never derived your secrets from their mechanics,
you drove right into the nuthouse
and I refused to talk-
mother thinks of us, she told me:
“sisters, no blood,”
and I keep weeping.
you broke the desk
they wrote everything on, yesterday,
its dark red splinters calling out the raven,
dust collecting on my cheeks and your lips
as we sat still for years:
the silence still pleading us
to go back home
to breaking things,
to fixing us.
Forgotten Gods [Day 30]
The uncertainty of universal lies
resolutes itself much like a hungry snake
around the skin of its prey-
the unseen, the unknowing, the uncharted,
finding recharges in people, in sacrifice, in sickening blood,
till the conviction spreads to the limbs of their dead,
till the screams are chants of appraise, of love;
cherish the old gods and the new,
cherish the dedicated deaths, the forseeable lies,
one day, the world must be forgotten,
and only then can you hope to die.
Liability [Day 29]
In times of disarray, the war trudges on,
my battered clothes, fishing out dangers long gone,
wallowing up to the scheming of fortune and play
the wheels of life rotating, bidding my way
Silent lies creep through valleys-
high up and down below, all too blue, too blue
to my left stand the scandalous mountains,
glaciers of love simply melting away
to my right, the sea breeze picks up its current-
the ways are but waves, washing away
the horizon lays down its gaze,
I’m welcomed by monsters with hearts
made of clay;
Shining diamonds pick themselves up and disobey
commands to lull me back to sleep,
I’m the commanding force of pain brutal and sheer,
I’m the mother of all that is, the Gaia
and yet, yet my lips tremble, my core dozes-
I’m a compromise, a liability at stake;
Who must call on the forces of evil to fix
all the wrongs of the dead?
Who must call on the liars, cheats, deceitful men
inside fake plastic trees, to win over my child of wild,
to set us free?
Love Affair [Day 28]
Butterflies are fluttering inside your
teeth, lips, lungs, stomach, fingers cheeks
trying to slither out into the words
slipping down into the fiery mouth of a dragon
quite unambiguously insisting on plastering
their blues, greens, reds onto the skin-
a dead, important picture frame-
the dead, important, crushed laughs
of bright colours
plastered across all of your cells,
don’t you know?
your cells remember,
they carry it with you
till the end
Puppets [Day 27]
There’s an old locked door behind the
wooden locks of another old locked door
and there you’ll find the riches
of a little woman who fumbles in her touch:
there’s trinkets, and bobby pins,
little scraps of torn paper –
there’s bottled love, some potions,
a migraine inducing cry stored inside
the lovely casket of ‘goodbye’ and there
are boxes of hearts, very literal in their
details, very rouge-red-pink in their colour
simply waiting for time to flutter by;
There’s an old locked door behind the
wooden locks of another old locked door
and there you’ll find a treasure
from the time of sorrow, lust, greed:
behind the curtains which surround the people
you’ll find a tasteful glee inside more locked
doors, with more keys- always a little too out
of reach, and in there there’s always the little woman,
with her friends made of ceramic, having tea-
covered in little holes for skin, very literal in their
details, very grey-blue-black in their colour,
simply waiting for people to turn into nothing-
Palate [Day 26]
The taste of the air:
metallic, rustic, therapeutic
in the sense of a future that corresponds
to the very idea of existing: simply, carefully,
as the dust settles in to give the zest, as required.
your tongue frolics inside your mouth, rushing
away from the tang of the humidity settling into
the nest of your insides, the rain sputters
into the scene, and the expansive sky
seems to find your sweet tooth.
The taste of air:
lovely, wonderful, free.
Le Temps [Day 25]
Printemps
infinite clouds
birds fluttering away
the setting sun stays
hope
Automne
bearing trees
growing paler now
the lush brown greying
forgotten
Hiver
shivering branches
suffocating the breaths
white sheets of tomorrow
pretending
Reveal [Day 24]
The incessant cries of a mother on forgetting her only child:
don’t tell her life belongs to the heavens, she’s not even
begun to realise of how empty her house is when she is
alone; don’t tell her there will be others who will take her
in their comfort when she is old, how her man will be her
man when she isn’t his woman; don’t tell her they will
remember her son a martyr when he died of his own
forgetfulness, mistakes, lies, she’ll begin to think of the
dreams she’s going to have to forget; don’t tell her that
the little boy left himself behind in some ways, for if that
is so, why does she look at his existence in distaste?;
don’t tell her the people he used to be, the people he
would’ve been, the people he could’ve been, for she
knows of it, and she always will, because for a mother,
her child is never dead- not really- until she herself is
no longer the mother the dead child calls to in the morning
for breakfast, at noon for lunch, in the night for comfort;
forget about her, don’t tell her anything:
she is no longer who anyone could be.
Elusive Mummers 