Fresh-off-the-shelf candyfloss,
Like ideas you thought were there,
....melt-in-mouth affairs
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
Flicker
On your brow,
those lines, they are mine.
I’ve seen them before.
There by the mango tree in the garden,
down which the grey-blue caterpillars of summer inched and itched onto the ground, going crunch crunch under your big boots?
I winced as you walked, but you went anyway.
You had things to do, places to visit, people to see,
Important stuff that you couldn’t explain, I wouldn’t understand.
Don’t ask why you said, it just had to be done…
Ghosts laid to rest so they wouldn’t come haunting you again.
Lifetimes of debt counterbalanced, from your savings of many births.
Pockets of your soul were they now full enough,
Now deep enough, now generous enough,
As you walked, the loose change, it jangled.
“What will I do till then?” I asked.
You shrugged. “Find something”.
But, you half-turned, and frowned. Don’t lie. I saw it.
The white madras cotton fluttering against your steely shoulders…
The line and the cut and the curve of it all
Is mapped into fingers that have been searching across lifetimes
So unlike you,
that flicker of doubt.
The memory of it unclouding you from the rest for eternity.
That was a few lifetimes ago.
The tree’s been felled,
The caterpillars still appear from time-to-time.
And lest you think my feet have turned into the roots you planted them by,
What I’ve been doing with myself since then
doesn’t concern you anymore, so don’t ask.
Are you done? Let’s go inside
Coffee is freshly brewing
I have no more patience for long absences and karma.
those lines, they are mine.
I’ve seen them before.
There by the mango tree in the garden,
down which the grey-blue caterpillars of summer inched and itched onto the ground, going crunch crunch under your big boots?
I winced as you walked, but you went anyway.
You had things to do, places to visit, people to see,
Important stuff that you couldn’t explain, I wouldn’t understand.
Don’t ask why you said, it just had to be done…
Ghosts laid to rest so they wouldn’t come haunting you again.
Lifetimes of debt counterbalanced, from your savings of many births.
Pockets of your soul were they now full enough,
Now deep enough, now generous enough,
As you walked, the loose change, it jangled.
“What will I do till then?” I asked.
You shrugged. “Find something”.
But, you half-turned, and frowned. Don’t lie. I saw it.
The white madras cotton fluttering against your steely shoulders…
The line and the cut and the curve of it all
Is mapped into fingers that have been searching across lifetimes
So unlike you,
that flicker of doubt.
The memory of it unclouding you from the rest for eternity.
That was a few lifetimes ago.
The tree’s been felled,
The caterpillars still appear from time-to-time.
And lest you think my feet have turned into the roots you planted them by,
What I’ve been doing with myself since then
doesn’t concern you anymore, so don’t ask.
Are you done? Let’s go inside
Coffee is freshly brewing
I have no more patience for long absences and karma.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
The Others
Sometimes, I wonder if
(between you and me)
There’s a third, we do not see.
That person, whom you think you know,
Or whom perhaps I imagine you to be
Hidden in an imperceptible gap of reality.
For when I clink my glass to yours
(I could swear) there’s a moment’s pause,
In which the one you think you are, slips right through those unseen doors.
For when you tell a joke of which
I don’t approve, but laugh anyway,
(I do believe) someone leaves, even as the rest of me stays.
And when you greet me do you find
Just that part of me you don’t really mind,
The same you say you love, but don’t, well, not nearly all the time?
Is that why when kids break glass
They say instantly ‘it wasn’t me’?
As though there could be someone else, someone there, implicitly?
When a badly dressed woman in clothes far too gay
Hits the road in the middle of the day
I want to ask, was there someone else in the mirror this morning, what did she say?
And when a couple unkisses and unbends,
Winding up on the counsellors' couch,
"I never knew him" she whispers bitterly, and aches over every sigh, kiss and touch.
"Was none of it for real?" she asks him,
and he has nothing to say.
For he wasn't there, it wasn't him, but then again it wasn't her, it wasn't they.
Who are these Others,
Who slip between, into the crevices of you and me?
Who haunts the incompleteness of being?
Look at yourself hard, if you succeed,
There's two of you,
Being seen and seeing.
(between you and me)
There’s a third, we do not see.
That person, whom you think you know,
Or whom perhaps I imagine you to be
Hidden in an imperceptible gap of reality.
For when I clink my glass to yours
(I could swear) there’s a moment’s pause,
In which the one you think you are, slips right through those unseen doors.
For when you tell a joke of which
I don’t approve, but laugh anyway,
(I do believe) someone leaves, even as the rest of me stays.
And when you greet me do you find
Just that part of me you don’t really mind,
The same you say you love, but don’t, well, not nearly all the time?
Is that why when kids break glass
They say instantly ‘it wasn’t me’?
As though there could be someone else, someone there, implicitly?
When a badly dressed woman in clothes far too gay
Hits the road in the middle of the day
I want to ask, was there someone else in the mirror this morning, what did she say?
And when a couple unkisses and unbends,
Winding up on the counsellors' couch,
"I never knew him" she whispers bitterly, and aches over every sigh, kiss and touch.
"Was none of it for real?" she asks him,
and he has nothing to say.
For he wasn't there, it wasn't him, but then again it wasn't her, it wasn't they.
Who are these Others,
Who slip between, into the crevices of you and me?
Who haunts the incompleteness of being?
Look at yourself hard, if you succeed,
There's two of you,
Being seen and seeing.
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