Freedom
Freedom alas, is also
Two flags tied to the horns
Of an overworked bull
Pulling a cart of drunken men.
thinley 19/8/2007
Witchy Nights
The currents of pain
On the dead man’s sleeve
Have begun to ebb,
They have no business to be there,
They must find their calling
To the face of some newer moons.
She is showing him
A horizon less sunset,
The sun sinking
Into a hungry sea,
Its fire quenched;
It vapours into the saffron
Of a monks robe.
Indigestion has him in pain today,
He should not have eaten that junk,
Her delight meets his grimace,
He explains, she sympathizes and
Then she throws her potion of words
On the new moons face,
Which flees fearing unkind blemishes,
And He watches the tides in the distance ebb,
And feels the currents of his pain recede.
thinley, 2/08/2007
A lot unlike love
I have nothing to give you
But a dry, sterile vacuum
Touch like
The kiss of gallows
On a dead mans lips
A formal show of affection
To the one he has devoured
Words like
The cleric’s clever answer
To questions that no one
Really cares about
But it’s “important” to ask and answer
thinley, 1/8/2007
Hide and Seek
Remember when we were children,
We loved to play hide and seek
And you were more industrious than the burrowing mice,
You sought places in the depths of the earth;
I would sometimes wonder if you were
Being called by forgotten faces,
Could you smell so well their scent in digested bones?
Now blood, vessels and tissues of the promising worm
That wriggles in the bowels of the earth,
Searching or imagining or desiring a forgotten sight;
For I could never find you
Until I gave up and called out your name,
That sounded so shrill as if it were a whistle to the absent,
Might it have pierced the slumbers of the dead
And blotted blank dreams with jets of blue or black?
For the winter branches on the tree shivered
And a crow perched upon it
Made a dive for the worm that surfaced,
Then you appeared with a mischievous glee
And I ran across to you
To hear from you the places you had been,
And we both looked across and thought we saw
An eyesight wriggle in the eyes of the crow
Until a merciless catapult shot
From the neighbouring boys
Had it grounded and we saw in shame
They sing joyous songs over their prize
Of a roast perhaps,
To, did they know were ancestral scents?
thinley, 1/8/2007
“STAND on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—”
La Figlia che Piange by T.S.Eliot
Weaving
The golden veils
You weave in your hair,
From sunlight- sunbeams, soft and gentle
Of some dying suns,
The harbingers of death will take with them
To shroud the dying suns.
thinley, 1/8/2007
On a Saturday…
The bucket of clothes you left a week back
Soaked in detergent of white powder
Has entangled itself in such dubious knots
It leaves a black bed and a stink, you would not like
To carry with you to confession or to her
Which makes you remember what you told her
That it was all a mistake
A familiar mistake beside the painting
Of the Fall of Man
With Adam, Eve and you the Serpent
And all this while you have been thinking
What pizza you would order for dinner
You have lost patience with vegetables
They peel so easily and boil so modesty
They don’t quite deserve that effort you think
You see the first wrinkles on your forehead
And remember a song line
“To enjoy the power and beauty of your youth”
That you are now on a shopping spree for jeans
And T-shirts and stepping inside the latest salons.
So you flip out that phone and drop down list
And call out an old colleague of yours
And say “Hey, its me here, long time, how have you been doing?
And you can hear her cough and sneeze at the same time
And say “Hey, am a bit busy now, How about if I call after some time”
And that colleague of yours never called up
And you have tired yourself of sitting and watching passerby’s
And thinking about all the possibilities
Till the most modest of them “You being hungry” disturbs you
And you are soon feeding yourself on burgers and ice tea
You would love to have someone to listen to you today
You think you have metamorphosed, you are no Mr Purfrock
You are an engaging, smart, spirited young man who dares to eat a peach
Till you bump into a local policeman on duty
And he collars you to show the face of the chicken you are
“Next time ill crack it,” you say to yourself
And resolve to make a start again
A clean table and clean sheets of paper
Until the second question on the prep book
Confounds you and you know you are just kidding yourself
The weekend you have waited all this week
To make a start is here but all you have to show
On Saturday evening, is you in bed with the FM on
Your table littered with page three news
And on the bottle of the half drunk coke a fly is perched
You walk into tomorrows thinking about tomorrow
You think you quite missed her giggle that day
You are in retrospection now “What If indeed
Everything you had ever been looking for
Was contained in that giggle of hers that day?”
You have walked here as summoned
For your redemption, and like the timid customer
Who cleared his dues on notice; you severed all your ties
While you still fear notice for notional and opportunity costs
You quite forgot your karma playing catch up
A crowd of amused faces have gathered besides a drain
A man that’s fallen inside it emerges drenched in stench
“Couldn’t he find a better place to die”, a man tells you
“He must be having his problems”, you tell him
“But that doesn’t mean he make a show of it here”, another tells you
Which all makes you play out in your mind
Those last lines of that novel by Camus,
That novel you had read once but now forgotten except some fancy lines
Like the one you are trying to remember now but don’t quite remember
Until you Google search it as:
“For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate”
thinley, 30/7/2007
