Before it is finished...

I have come to touch you.
To put my fingers in your hair - oh!
it must be thick and strong
does it stretch or curl? - run,
through parting until somewhere, there,
I feel little depressions where a crown was once fitted.

I have come to touch you.
To run the side of my thumb down your spine - oh!
It must be straight as an arrow
each vertebrae precisely placed - stroke
and find a story everywhere, there,
written across your back in rivers of scars and hills and mountains of knotted flesh.

I have come to touch you.
To slide my palms along your shoulders - oh!
how strong they must be, they bore, the tree and the world - rub
gently down your arms until there, where,
your slender wrists met the forge, there,
there is my heart become stone.

I have come to touch you.
To bow low and reach for your feet - oh!
how beautiful they must be, we,
deign to wash them? - touch
the tender place there, somewhere,
where in roses
sprung in indescribable perfection of
torn tissue and ripped muscle, spouting
spewing, spitting blood, blossomed
everlasting life.

I know
deep inside, strong inside, unshakable, immovable
that you. have me.
Lungs burning body cringing every hair reaching for you.
I fly for you.

You know
I write you poems because
deep inside, strong inside, unshakable, immovable
you are beautiful
Only, now, your eyes explode me your voice unmakes.

But enough.
of seeing
and hearing.

Now come.
touch me.
Break my sternum crack my ribs rip through my lungs pound
diamond to dust.
crush.

So I can finally give you the one thing you ever wanted.

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

God is breaking the box that I've been trying to put Him in.

I've tried to close Him up between a number of walls: prayer, worship music, bible reading, animated discussion and sermons. I seem to have decided I will not hear Him or see Him in any other situations, and that if I don't "feel" Him in the situations I've laid down, then something is wrong with me.

But He is breaking through that.

He is speaking to me, despite my lack of discipline. He is speaking to me through my illness. He is speaking to me in "sensible" thoughts. He is speaking to me.

He is telling me I have become religious. I have a system I've developed for myself. A system of rituals like prayer, worship, bible-study, cell and rules like not swearing, not listening to secular music and not dressing a certain way. They are drawing me away from Him because He is love and grace. And there is neither love nor grace in rituals and rules.

Sometimes, it really is about letting go. And that's why love and grace are so important. We let go, and by His grace we don't fall. We let go, and in love, we are saved.

How terrifyingly simple.

How God-like!

Steady

In the deep heart of the morning is that moment of unknown
Between sleep and waking on the edge of a dream
The fragile border of transparency
Between black and white

The storm swirls and the dawn will smudge in
The sun might seem not to shine
But in the deep heart of the morning you are there
And I will hold the hope.

Soul Food

The thing you’re not going to forget about this kitchen is that it has a lot of yellow.

Not the kind of bright yellow we usually associate with kitchens, but a deeper, almost ochre shade. It says something about how she loves: happily consuming all, yet deeply, committedly.

At the table against the wall is where we sit long after meals or tea, talking, laughing, teasing, arguing. I often accidently take the old man’s wooden stool before he gets there, and he will improvise. He and the two boys are gracious in this, making allowance in their home for people who don’t have a claim.

They share space and love like the sunlight that streams in, all day long, through the window framed by white-blue-green curtains. It glitters, bouncing off the floor, lighting the place up.

In the late morning and afternoon, when there’s work being done, the place is like a factory. Sizzling, bubbling, aluminum lids tapping against pots, constant chatter and worship music on the radio.

Sometimes it gets so hot that someone must go round the back door to let the bamboo blind down on the outside. This is the only time I am glad to be barefoot, when the cool cement tiles soothe our bodies, from the soles up.

Those already passed on are missed, their padding through, mewing, zipping between the table and stool legs as they get to bowls of food against the other wall.

Funny there were never any ants in their food but always some in ours.

In the cake cooling on the stove, in the ceramic jar of sugar, in the juice, with the cookies, the chocolate. There is obviously too much sweet stuff here, tempting the ants. I keep spotting them, like the boys sometimes joke they find funny stuff in the food.

“Oh, it’s alright to eat,” she says. “I pray over it as I cook.”

The old man laughs, his voice booming, and the table erupts.

About the other man…

 

It’s crazy what a song can do to you. I want to apologize.

I haven’t been exceptionally horrid I guess, considering I’ve been sick. It’s just difficult. You know, how you have a million things planned and you find that all that can actually be done is precisely nothing. First you lie on your butt, then you lie on your face, then on your favorite side, and then on your other favorite side and then you start wondering if you can lie on your head or something. And the sweating? It’s supposed to help get the bug out of your system but its just infuriating to be first cold, then hot, the cold, then hot, first dry, then soaked, then dry, then soaked. What happened to the middle ground!? I forget there’s no grey areas with you.

I know I should have been waiting for you. But its difficult. And sometimes, it’s just plain boring. So I start thinking. And when you’re sick, you don’t think straight. No, I’m not trying to justify myself or make excuses (only YOU do that) I’m just being real.

I tried to keep my mind on you. But honestly, I can’t remember the last time I saw you. I’ve forgotten what your voice sounds like. I’ve forgotten what it feels like when you touch me. Well, almost.

He’s just so much closer. And that makes it all that much easier. I’m sorry, but you’ve see him, you’ve seen what he does to me, and I kept you in the loop, so I might as well let you know – this is all your fault. You should have stopped me before it was too late. Why didn’t you do something? I mean, I don’t pretend to understand what you do, but I let you do it, don’t I?

Yes, I am petty. I am petty to blame you, I am petty to not take account for myself. I am petty for being a woman, petty for wanting a man that will stand next to me, hold me, smile at me, laugh with me. I am petty for loving that he’d hold my hair tight and kiss the corner of my mouth where I’d forgotten it burns. I am petty for finding reassurance in a voice that I can hear, petty for being pleasured by a form I can see and touch, petty for being a human with a body and a soul apart from the spirit that gives me life.

I am sorry I looked at what I saw. I am sorry I stared, and made him speak. I am sorry that when he spoke, I had to touch him and make sure. I am sorry that this still all about me.

All I have of you now is a vague memory of something I never perceived. Help me remember. Please.

In Equilibrium

Monday morning was super weather. The sun was out but there was considerable rain also, and the heat and humidity of Colombo mid-morning was lifted by the coolness of the drops of liquid breaking free of pregnant clouds. Such a long and ineffective sentence.

I sat on the front steps leading up to the old Walawwa where I’d spent the night, gazing through the lush mango and jack leaves now greener and looking heavier, for the water. Once in a while I’d suddenly find myself staring into the rays of rotating sun whizzing momentarily through the foliage to stun me. The gravel is purple-brown-orange. The picture is simple and serenely gorgeous.

Closer to me is a row of little plants with dripping flowers and rebellious buds. The tiny leaves are so gently and effortlessly curved that I wonder, as I often do, whether God caresses each and every one to just that way each morning. What love that must be!

The rain has stopped. On two of those God-finger-curled leaves I find droplets of water growing. This is an amazing thing. I think, “how many photographs I’ve seen with this exact image focused, shot, color-balanced, brightness-edited and published!” There is something so lethargic, stagnant and still about these pictures; even the ones with the bright sparkle hiding inside the droplet. How they all fail to capture the energy and intensity of the connection; the inevitable dependency.  But this leaf and this droplet are so flabbergastingly alive!

I am jubilant because there is life!

And then I think, which is it? Does the glittering droplet cling desperately to the thinning end of the leaf, or does it strain and strain to be free? Does it alone, or do they both?

“This, too, shall pass.”

Sometimes when things go wrong – or right, just not how you planned them – it’s a good idea to deal with shit before it hits the fan. Most times, it’s good to leave the world alone.

I develop this idiotic urge to verbal-puke when I am in a “rush”. This is what I am doing right now. Technically this is not true, since I am not quite in a “rush” right now. I just want to be, I want to create some drama for myself. This is usually just my personal universe of boredom escaping via my skin, but today it is utter dissatisfaction. No. Disillusionment.

It was not there.

I knew it was not there.

I knew it was possible it could be there. Now,

I know it is not there. Because,

It is not there.

How boring when you realize you really were not expecting the unexpected. How utterly drab to find your self among the masses. How blah that your imagination can’t run riot in your world anymore and turn your biology into a whirling cyclone of blood, bone and muscle. How clear that all this is so unimportant!

What’s done is done. Tough *ish.

In Praise

In the praise of a man…

 

In the praise of his flowing hair

I forgot, O Lord,

a crown of thorns.

In the praise of his mellow voice

I forgot, O Lord,

the breath of Life.

 

In the praise of his strong arms,

wrinkled elbows, the tender crook

I forgot, O Lord,

shoulders. bearing weights.

heavy weights.

burdens.

sin. fear. shame. anger. lust. hate.

 

In the praise of his fine hands,

tap’ring fingers, the shocking touch

I forgot, O Lord,

wrists.

skin bruised. pierced.

flesh torn. ripped. shredded.

bone cracked broken crushed. shattered.

 

In the praise of his shining skin

glowing soft coveted honey of bees

I forgot, O Lord,

a back.

lashed.

red. lashed.

cut. lashed.

blood. lashed.

open flesh. lashed.

gaping wound. lashed.

throbbing muscle. lashed.

screaming nerves. lashed.

naked bone. gleaming lashed.

numb.

lashed.

lashed. lashed. lashed. gasp lashed. lashed. moan lashed. lashed. teeth chatter. lashed. bladder leaks lashed. lights. lashed. blur. lashed. black.

And we are not even half done.

 

In the praise of a man

I forgot his maker.

 

O Lord, have mercy on me.

* “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the creator – who is forever praised. Amen.” Romans 1:25 (NIV)

I couldn’t find the Word.

He is like

            thehaironmyskin

the world

tells me I should remove.

             If I am woman,

             I should be ashamed-

to love?

 

And then, I am not of this world.

A Light Parody

Fire! Fire! Burning bright

London Bridge is falling down

                    falling down

                                   falling

                                          downnnn

In the darkness of the night

My fair Prince.

 

Will you build it up with wood and clay?

Or then bricks of gold?

Wash those piercing eyes away,

and the smiles that speak of old?

Singe that darkness, smoothness, brightness

I know.

You caressed to life.

      wove those locks,

      carved those teeth,

       lit those eyes so bright

They died.

Bitterly, sourly.

 

If you see a speck of dust-like

glittering, glittering

as you walk along a long bare road

as you snuggle up against that couch

as you grip that steering wheel…

 

stop.

only a moment.

Put it in your pocket for me?

 

Maybe fingers twisting

locks of curling hair,

Sweaty palms

Songs in an ethereal falsetto

rare smiles… hide those speckled monsters;

These random lines.

 

I’ll write

them back from you,

soon.

 

My mind is

Peacing itself

apart.

 

“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” Matthew 7:6 (NIV)

Breakwater

I am a fickle-minded woman.

Journalist, poet, actor, pianist, singer, model, celebrity, evangelist, counselor, composer, inspiration, instigator, intellectual, academic, corporate bombshell, director, leader, mistress, girlfriend, friend, follower, hater, lover, rapper, critic, social-worker, straight-A-student, role-model, radical, revolutionary, strong, upright, appreciative, fucking perfect.

Why must I be?

I would rather sit in a pool of sweat scrubbing floors and beating rugs because I love.

I am love.

Masturbation

I'll scream if you deny me
the throbbing-pulsing-hurting-hair-raising-uplifting
I burn and burn to shatter these glass walls of
social, moral
norm.

Here are my insides open:
the pushing-pulling-engulfing-mind-numbing-freeing.
You search and search to scatter these thoughts of
social, moral
harm.

You and I were abandoned;
the gliding-flowing-coursing-streaming-life-destroying
left holes and holes to batter these times of
social, moral
play.

Sunset

She sits on the steps leading up to the house, gazing over the hedge, past the blossoming trees into the yellowing sky. Waiting for brilliance. As she waits, she sees through the branches of the bush-like mango tree, the distinct outline of a cloud illuminated from somewhere beyond her horizon, and wonders when the sky will burst, wonders why she waits. She wonders what it must be like to feel lonely and useless; to sleep but not sleep because it is only in snatches of fitful half-hours that rest comes, to be constantly hungry but find that once a reluctantly prepared meal of basics is placed in her mouth in pinches it turns to pulp, to stare into the sky thinking but not knowing whether she thinks or not and what of.. She has forgotten what the late bat gliding out of the voiceless sunset on motionless wings knows every new evening. She waits for colour, and waits and waits. But the sky simply grows darker as the first brilliant dots the sky. Not the same, but still..

Business

The pain is still there. The yawn stops abruptly and his body slumps back onto the hard mattress. Something is wrong with his right shoulder; there's a dull ache that doesn't seem to go away, his fingers are swollen and his whole body is rebelling against its senses. There's a thick fog in his brain. The phlegm is stuck on its way down from his sinuses to his throat and it makes him want to puke early in the morning: at 11:30am. The curtains are open a crack and a hard ray of sunlight strikes him across the neck where sweat builds up slowly; never running or drying, just sticky. He wishes he had got drunk. He swings his feet down to his Adidas slippers, drags them to the bathroom, pulls the blue-green-and-purple eight-thousand rupee cotton sarong from Barefoot over his waist and carefully pisses onto the rim of the commode. Flush. The sarong falls, so he bends to pick it up; he could kiss the piss-pot on the way down. The Apple i-phone blinks, he checks the number on the screen and puts it to his ear as he ties the sarong and walks towards the balcony.

"Baby, good morning!"

She's chirpy.

"Hmph"

"Did you just wake up?"

Chirpy and asking questions.

"Yeah"

"Did you sleep well?"

Still chirpy and more
questions.

"No, I woke up from a dream and couldn't go back to sleep"

"Aiyo angel, I keep telling you no..."

A year and half and still the same rattle. She loves him, he knows; but there's nothing to say and she wants to talk. The phone starts getting hot and his ear sweaty; the sunlight, the dead air and the flies doing jumps-and-saccades around the balcony table don't help. There's a throbbing behind his eyes. He takes up the pack of cigarettes, flips the cover and carefully picks one. The white-gold lighter with his name engraved on it clicks and he puffs, then inhales, wincing at the smoke.

Release.

She's still talking.

"Here, I have some work to do; I'll call you when I'm free"

The chirping stops.

"Ok... I love you"

"Hm..."

He knows it hurts her, but it doesn't matter now. A fly settles on the edge of his mug and washes its hands in his tea.

"Bye..."

"Bye."

The real-estate man hasn't called. The offer is not good, but he doesn't care. The ancestral home with the surrounding paddy, villages and thickets are worth at least five million dollars, but he's desperate now. If he gets five hundred thousands, he can come clean. Anything goes now, everything.

The house? sold.

The car? sold.

The family name; his children's heritage? selling.

But he knows the man won't call.

The there's the woman. He could sell her. She loves him; she'd do anything for him. She's all he has left; and the Magnum 45.

The Origin and Purpose of the Bubble

Love is the offspring and mate of Time, born of Time himself, in order to mother his other offspring. Yet as Time grew, Love grew tired of Time and went in search of other Elements. In order to win her back Time devised a plan. He brought together his most powerful faculties and planned the greatest performance in all time: Creation. Calling Love to view his awesome powers, he formed before her the darling of the universe: Earth. In a final act of gallant hopefulness Time gifted Earth to Love. Completely overwhelmed, Love was full of adoration for Time. Yet Time soon came to realize that this adoration was not for him, but for his creation, for Earth. When Time gifted Earth to Love, he had made the biggest blunder he did not know he was committing: he had given her power. She looked at Earth and saw in each and every being that dwelt therein, a reflection of her self, for they were both of One. In every creature that walked the lands of Earth, in every shadow that swam its seas, in every spirit that soared its skies, not one was not she - except the humans. In the humans she saw a certain uniqueness she despised, in them she saw Time mock her. This made her yearn to claim the humans as her own. To achieve this purpose, she disguised herself and came to Earth: The Bubble. Time, in his anger at having lost his fight against Love, claimed a price from The Bubble: its freedom to expand without limit. Considering this a fair price, The Bubble now exists to entrap humans and absorb their identity, that it might erase the marks of Time from their faces, claim them as Love's own and redeem Love from her mockery.

Thus The Bubble waits, in many places at once, for 'ready' humans to entrap and claim. The humans The Bubble claims always come in pairs. Some willingly step in while others must be forced and some others are completely unaware of what happens. Either way, when two people find themselves within The Bubble, there can be seen either of two reactions: "trapped!" or "safe :)". When both humans react with "trapped", The Bubble finds its captives unconquerable and immediately frees them. When the two react differently, The Bubble waits until they are at harmony with "trapped" or "safe". When both are "safe", The Bubble takes flight and Euphoria begins to set in. Drunk on this hallucinatory gas (which probably sparks off the luminosity and the 'glitter of the stars'), the inhabitants sense nothing except each other. While the effects of Euphoria last, and The Bubble is expandable, they adjust according to one another's wants and needs, getting comfortable in the illusion that Time cannot claim them. These adjustments happen in different ways, in different degrees, in different cases. The general rule though, is that to accommodate the other, one must shift one's place or push against one's wall, forcing The Bubble to expand. This moving around requires energy, and this energy is acquired through the inhalation of Euphoria, which creates the illusion of greater necessity for expansion. Thus the cycle continues, Euphoria creating an illusion of need, need requiring energy, energy acquired through Euphoria, Euphoria creating an illusion of need etc… What one is kept unaware of is the fact that the inhalation of Euphoria causes the discharge of personality. This discharge of personality is what allows The Bubble to absorb its inhabitants' identity. Once the inhabitants' identities are completely absorbed, The Bubble bursts, Euphoria expires, and the inhabitants fall to the ground. Some continue in a false sense of the state they were in while they were within The Bubble, living in an illusion of the original illusion. Some recover, forget and continue as they were before they were entrapped, only to be caught again. Some accept the truth, wake up from the illusion and walk away, determined not to be caught again. Yet these are the most likely to be recaptured, for they regain much of their identity and because The Bubble is transparent.

More important information on the captives when I return (maybe tomorrow)!

The Bubble

I've just been trying to explain to Haren that I'm acting "weird" right now. The definition of "weird" here is, reading long emails written to the ex-boyfriend in the middle of a relationship crisis and appreciating HIS position. Now, why I'm being this definition of weird is this: Love has died. The relationship which was the long-standing definition of the phenomenon among our friends, ended. There are no clear-cut one, two, three reasons as to why she decided she doesn't want him anymore, and he is still pressing her to give him ONE. This exasperates her, and has led her father's phone bill for this month to rise considerably.

She believes she spoilt him by giving him everything he wanted – in terms of intellectual space, authority to take decisions etc… – and ended up feeling cramped and sick of the whole thing. Thus she made a little hole in their happy existence, found it was big enough, and escaped, leaving him to handle the crashing shards of the once-expandable bubble that was their relationship. I want to look at this bubble. I want to discuss its properties and their functions, its purpose and its result, the creatures that get caught in the beauty of its transparent luminosity, and their purpose and result. Maybe one day a few years from now, I can expand this post into my final dissertation for my Philosophy class. But saving the dreams for later…!

The properties of these bubbles are:

• Transparency
  
• Limited Elasticity
  
• Growing hardness (no pun intended)
  
• Probably contain a hallucinatory gas which runs out fast
  

The Bubble just hangs around our environment, our society, our culture, waiting to be occupied. The transparency of The Bubble makes it invisible to anyone without, yet to someone looking out from within, there is that special luminosity, that glitter of the stars, which makes everything without seem dull and lifeless. Limited elasticity allows inhabitants to feel a sense of being accommodated, and combined with the transparency, a feeling of unlimited space. Once the elasticity has run out, The Bubble begins to grow hard (again, no pun intended – this is a scientific exposition), fixing itself in a certain shape and position until it is unchangeable except through destruction (or explosion – pun intended). Reasons for the elasticity to run out are still being debated upon, but there are two possibilities. The first would be the simple passage of Time, which claims this property from The Bubble as payment for not being subjected to him. This exchange seems justified, yet it appears that once Time has claimed the fee for being free of subjection to him, The Bubble is subjected to him. While this paradox is being considered, let us look at the second option we have as 'reasons for growing hardness': a certain mysterious gas contained within The Bubble. It seems scientifically inaccurate to state that it is the gas (let's call it Euphoria) itself which is the cause for the growing hardness, as it is the expiry of this gas which is the actual cause. Euphoria is what initially keeps the occupiers of The Bubble alive. Yet the nature of the gas is such that it is addictive, making the desire for it insatiable, leading to acceleration in the consumption patterns of the inhabitants. This is, in its essence, accelerates of the expiry of Euphoria, which, substantial evidence proves, leads to the expiry of the inhabitants of The Bubble and thus The Bubble itself.

This brings us to the Origin and Purpose of The Bubble, which I will discuss in my next post.

Happy blogging! :)

Pondering

I have been thinking about the void mentioned in my last post. Something somewhere tells me now that it was just fresh memory that made it feel like a void. Now it seems more like a scar. Not an ugly thing that distorts the features but a beautiful mark which accents them; something that defines a part of who I am.

Scars are personal things. Some are large, ugly and most disturbingly visible. People will want to know how you got them. Some will ask, some will not; depending on their discretion. When they ask, you might decide to tell them, you might decide not to tell them; depending on your discretion. It seems that explaining what caused the scar seems the wiser decision, in order to prevent speculation. These are the visible scars. The small marks in the dark places are precious; you struggle to keep them hidden. Once in a while though, someone gets close enough to discovering the writing on your skin, so you choose to pull your sleeve back and let them see it. The unspoken agreement is secrecy. Some people don’t understand.

Some scars are so precious that you covet them. They are valuable enough to lose your oldest friend over. If they were ever really your friend.