Choice
drawing a breath between each
sentence, trailing closely every word.
— JAMES HOCH, ‘Draft’ in Miscreants
1.
some things, I knew,
were beyond choosing:
didu — grandmother — wilting
under cancer’s terminus care.
mama’s mysterious disappearance —
ventilator vibrating, severed
silently, in the hospital’s unkempt dark.
an old friend’s biting silence — unexplained —
promised loyalties melting for profit
abandoning long familial presences of trust.
devi’s jealous heart misreading emails
hacked carefully under cover,
her fingernails ripping
unformed poems, bloodied, scarred —
my diary pages weeping wordlessly —
my children aborted, my poetry breathless forever.
2.
these are acts that enact themselves, regardless —
helpless, as I am,
torn asunder permanently, drugged, numbed.
strange love, this is —
a salving: what medics and nurses do.
i live buddha-like, unblinking, a painted vacant smile —
one that stores pain and painlessness —
someone else’s nirvana thrust upon me.
some things I once believed in
are beyond my choosing —
choosing is a choice unavailable to me.
Winter
Couched on crimson cushions,
pink bleeds gold
and red spills into one’s heart.
Broad leather keeps time,
calibrating different hours
in different zones
unaware of the grammar
that makes sense.
Only random woofs and snores
of two distant dogs
on a very cold night
clears fog that is unresolved.
New plants wait for new heat —
to grow, to mature.
An old cane recliner contains
poetry for peace — woven
text keeping comfort in place.
But it is the impatience of want
that keeps equations unsolved.
Heavy, translucent, vaporous,
split red by mother tongues —
winter’s breath is pink.
* * *
Matrix
for psc
Birds fly across the pale blue sky
cross-stitching a matrix in Pali —
a tongue now beautifully classical
like temple-toned Bharatanatyam.
Dialogues in the other garden
happen not just in springtime. Yet
you stare askance talking poetry
in silence, an angularity of stance
like a shot in a film-noir narrative
yet to be edited to form a whole.
What is a whole? Is it not a sum
of distilled parts, parts one chooses
to expose carefully like raw stock —
controlling patterns in the red light
of dark, a dark that dutifully dissolves.
There emerges at the end,
nests for imaginative flights to rest,
to weave our own stories braving
winds, currents, and the elements
of disguise. Fireflies in the grove
do not belong to numbered generation —
they only light up because line-breaks
like varnam keep purity alive —
enigmatic, disciplined, spontaneous.
Let the birds fly tracing angular paths,
let the dancer dance unbridled,
let the poet write unrestrained —
natural as breathing itself.
Matrix woven can be unwoven —
enjambments like invisible pauses
weave us back into algebraic patterns
that only heart and imagination can.
She walks porcupines — as you do — and
listens to the sound of the sea in a conch.
* * *
Almaya, Jaffa
for Ya’ir Dalal
I like to keep my doors open —
It is like sitting in the desert —
Under studio’s arched ceiling flutes,
roof-paint uncoats, peeling lime white.
Reverberating invisible sounds —
oud and violin, and a lone desert voice.
Outside, the sea picks up its waves
in harmony. Inside, there are red
oriental rugs, an uncleared stage
with notes from a concert past,
kettle for sage tea, Iraqi sweets,
bottles of various shapes, and chairs —
lots of mismatched chairs
like relatives from different tribes.
I like to keep my doors open —
It is like sitting in the desert —
‘Two flaming loves can burn you,’
you say. A Japanese girl
who once heard you at a womad
concert in Australia stumbles
past your door, then stops
to look inside. ‘Is that you —
the one in the poster on your door’,
she asks. You nod humbly
in your oblique quiet way.
‘Almaya’ — the name of your space —
is christened then — ‘the universe
that embraces the waters’.
I like to keep my doors open —
It is like sitting in the desert —
The calm of the desert,
the turbulence of the sea,
the early whistling of winds
before a gathering storm,
the Bedouin’s elongated cry,
the brothers’ lisping embrace,
hand-woven cream pashmina
shawl -— all score, the elements.
I like to keep my doors open —
It is like sitting in the desert —
* * *
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