Rotten Onion

So many years have passed,
my love for you continues to reach
the way a rotten onion continues to sprout
desperate, aimless and blind. Despite
the aridness of separation, despite the dark
No! not all living things need air, moist and light
in my shuttered barren heart my groping love for you
the only thing alive

Years ago..

Years ago I was at a florist buying roses for a loved one, I hand picked 20 of the largest, fullest, most striking red roses and asked the man to wrap them. To my horror he held up a knife and began to shave off the thorns! I was so upset and yelled at him to stop at once, he was puzzled by my reaction but stopped nonetheless and wrapped the roses. I paid and left quickly, cradling the roses so passionately, so protectively to my breast, feeling the pricking sensation of their aggressive needles, I held them the way one would hold their own life, in pain and awe.

what is a poem?

an urgent emotion
a fleeting flash of an image
a beautiful surprising moment
no beginning, no end
no moral, no cause or effect
an ethereal illusive understanding that
vanishes as quickly as it materialises
like lightning, like a newborn's first smile
you can never completely grasp or capture it
if you try to hold on to it, it simply ceases to exist
like love.

For many days

for many days the sky has been pregnant with sadness
a sickly tainted cloudless grey hung like a suspended punishment
the wait for the inevitable verdict left me restless and anxious
I want the heavy swollen stomach of heaven to split open and rain

Rain God Damn it.. Rain!

It's not that I particularly missed the rain,
but this prolonged sulking, this deafening silence,
made the wait unbearable for the eventual wail
It's not like the sky to wait, it's not like her to be patient,
I need her to be the emotional turmoil, the uncontrollable
unreasonable anguished creature I know and love
I want her to bleed, to unleash her wrath and burst into tears
and send people scattering, running to shelter in fear

God? Are you Watching?

In the dream a stranger asks me if I could 'please' come to the funeral, 'there aren't enough people' he explained.

The rain fell heavily and I courteously agreed to attend,
not knowing him or the deceased and not caring to ask.

In a dark, dim place resembling an old dusty church I sat on a wooden chair. The very few mourners were scattered so far apart that none saw the other's face

No one moved or spoke, I thought about how people attended births and deaths;
the beginning and the end
the ones who attended the beginning were not necessarily the ones who attended the end.
the ones who attended the beginning were usually happy, the ones at the end usually sad.
in the beginning they looked on with hope and expectation and said things like:
"Oh, look at those long graceful fingers, a pianist is born!"
in the end; they mumbled an old exhausted sentiment exaggerating what good people they were.

I thought about my life, the endless corridor I pursued, until fewer and fewer windows began to appear and much fewer doors.

I thought about the man who told me he loved me then married my friend.

I thought about the sadist who married me just because he didn't love me, how he enjoyed turning me into a disposable shrunken shriveled fruit.

I thought about my father calling me stupid and laughing his condescending pitiful demeaning laugh while I ran like a blindfolded racehorse, tired and panting, earning those straight As, winning scholarships and all those worthless shiny trophies and certificates.

I though about my mother who told me I was ugly and stressed again and again that women were not as clean or pure as men.

I thought about my therapist who told me that he did care about me but it was I who could not receive.

I thought about my child, whose flesh tore from my flesh, whose soul tore from my soul, like a drop of mercury that soundlessly broke into perfect identical segments.

I thought about the fickle male God the righteous male preacher told me I should always be grateful to.

Do you see how grateful I am God? Can you see my gratitude?
God? Are you watching?

I hide in plain sight

interest
attraction
likeness
fondness
lust
desire
possesivness
need

see how I carefully try not to say it
see how I prance around it
how I hover like a vulture around a
kill, another animal's wounded prey
see how I don't mean it even as I say it
see how I hide my heart in plain sight

why?

because words are detrimental
words are broken spirits
words are fallen stars
words are extinguished fires
words are murky stagnant puddles, where
many dirty muddy boots tread
lovers don't use words
true lovers have nothing to say to each other.

At the Train Station

Cold dreary morning,
black cabs in haste load and unload
people with cases full of stories, full of
pale smokey dreams, sad pasts and cautious futures..
and not a smile to be seen.

I curl my fingers around my paper coffee cup,
artificial warmth..
I watch other fingers restlessly pushing smart phone buttons
I want something else, another reality, a different existence
nothing here is enough.

I eye a good looking stranger outside the cafe, his full lips
firm around his cigarette, his hands shakey
they are knowing hands, hands that have touched many bodies
his long dark winter coat says nothing about who he is
his handsome unshaven face, his knotted tired brows

An abandoned cup is left on my table
my predecessor's name is Ricky
Ricky already left the station,
Ricky had a latte
Ricky had a cheese and ham sandwich with his latte
Ricky crumpled up his waste and left it on the table.

The good looking stranger outside is about to catch his train
he drops his bud on the ground carelessly, not caring to put it out
letting it slowly burn into grey powder ash, into nothing.
I too, know what it is like to be consumed.

Ode to Night

Even when you fall completely down, 

muffling the music of light and closing shut the sky.

Even when you pull your dark curtains around me and

tighten your black long braid upon my soul,

you never fail to turn bright your twinkling stars.

Dear Night, 

I should never have wanted to hasten your leaving. 

I should have been braver when you invited me to see

my true reflection in the frightening depth of your endless black well. 

Dear Night, 

Thank you for safeguarding my weakness, my smallness and my secrets.

Thank you for your steadfastness, in the face of ever-changing volatile mornings you stayed dark but true. 

and thank you for the moon.

Your Voice

How is it that a mere thought of you can change my seasons

and the cage of your embrace change my concepts of freedom

your voice floods my veins with gushing blood, thick, sticky and hot

I have so much to say to you, I have nothing to say to you

my useless words shoot aimlessly, noisily in the corners of my

vast unbounded love, and bounce back to me.. defeated.

Words

I prefer silence,

words are inevitable but slippery

words can turn into wounds

words when silenced become nightmares,

words when spoken become tornadoes

become quicksand

erupt into volcanoes

turn into an avalanche

words become caskets.

I am more with you in your absence

I am more with you in your absence,

guessing your moods, your whereabouts, the roads you deliberately take to avoid meeting me.

A naive fantasy of how these violent winds disheveling me have touched you somewhere before, can keep me a live..

As Dandelions shed their feathery coats, knowing they are survived by a thousand seeds,

I've shed you off in poems, prose, sonnets and tears.. and tears.. and tears.








 

Nothing

I wanted so much from life, I remember.

Now it seems wanting so much is so close to wanting nothing..

nothing.

it must be a beautiful place, a profound state of mind, nothingness.

to not need more, to not need at all..

that lightest shade of grey before turning completely white

that illusive magical space between conscious and sleep

the highest point of sexual ecstasy

the burnt out candle

the loss of all chances

the dead end

the courage to laugh at disappointments.

Old Self

The nameless gnawing at my heart weighs me down

it has metamorphosed into an animal much larger than me

it has become more than my questions, more than my desires

I was once bounded by my knowing what I am for.. not anymore

the absence of familiar fences brought me a bewilderingly foreign reality.

Somewhere in my tired memory, my old self  asked me

how many lives have we lived? 

with an indifferent shrug I replied "I only know that we've died before".

with all my words

I walked as if with a purpose.

The sky peered at its own beauty through  yesterday's rain puddles.

Everything around me seemed to know,

the excited yellow Daffodils like happy school children,

the tree bark with its ancient coiling memory

the birds that looked down on me from above

and I,

with all my words,

with all my language,

with all my empty tired theories of when and why,

as if eyes wide open in a dreadful darkness, unable to see what lies before me.

Waiting..

Always waiting..

Waiting for my Sertraline to kick in

Waiting for a total stranger to decide my fate

Waiting for tomorrow to begin, for the past to cease

Waiting for the universe to stop building walls in all my paths

Waiting to be told the right words.. served in the right box.. tied in the right ribbon

Waiting...

When all of your stories are unfinished...How can you close your eyes? How can you rest?