Some lives

 

Some lives, arduous, indocile, unbridled,
need not be shunned but embraced –
they show where strength can be found
– when all one sees is woe and pain –

These lives had to trudge through deserts
and snows and tundras, so now they know
how to balance a mountain at arms’ length
and not yield under the impossible weight
– how to bend the darkness to find the light –
– how to cradle a pulsar, tame it, and love it –

These lives are wont to carry heavy things
– hearts, breathing, silence, boots –
they know what to do with the dark
– fold it like an origami – dense like
ten hundred thousand suns –
– seemingly effortlessly yet
their shoulders bent and their gaze away –
– paperfold firmly set on their bedside table
glowing shadow in the unlit room –
– a constant vigil so it doesn’t unfold –

These lives hold the maps to emptiness
– had to find paths through unmarked lands –
feeling their way with outstretched hands
– unsure of step and yet adamant on
learning how to harness the darkness –

Those sheer voyagers of the soul
pay no heed to us who carry joy
like a handbasket on a Sunday morn
– they carry chagrin like a moving globe –
– thus we may sit still, unmindful, on the grass
unsuspecting of the pain we’re spared –

A knowing nod, an intent handshake
would lighten their selfless toil
– if only a little for a little while –
for carrying what we couldn’t has a toll
which would make our joy trivial
and our issues embarrassing

in the face of some lives.
 

Mothers

 

"Men don't understand what mothers are. I am no different from other women except in the wrong done me and the wrong I did, and my very heavy punishments and great disgrace. And yet, to bear you I had to look on death. To nurture you I had to wrestle with it. Death fought with me for you. All women have to fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless, wants our children from us. Gerald, when you were naked I clothed you, when you were hungry I gave you food. Night and day all that long winter I tended you. No office is too mean, no care too lowly for the thing we women love--and oh! how I loved you! And you needed love, for you were weakly, and only love could have kept you alive. Only love can keep any one alive. And boys are careless often, and without thinking give pain, and we always fancy that when they come to man's estate and know us better they will repay us. But it is not so. The world draws them from our side, and they make friends with whom they are happier than they are with us, and have amusements from which we are barred, and interests that are not ours; and they are unjust to us often, for when they find life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them. . . . You made many friends and went into their houses and were glad with them, and I, knowing my secret, did not dare to follow, but stayed at home and closed the door, shut out the sun and sat in darkness. My past was ever with me. . . . And you thought I didn't care for the pleasant things of life. I tell you I longed for them, but did not dare to touch them, feeling I had no right. You thought I was happier working amongst the poor. That was my mission, you imagined. It was not, but where else was I to go? The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin."

Mrs. Arbuthnot, in A Woman of no Importance (1894), Act IV, by Oscar Wilde.

 

Mermaid

 

Strange calls in the night
songs unsoothing the soul
the place where the gods had left
I had arrived

I was done, so done
I was ready, at last
I unwaxed my ears
sank my sail on the skerries

woke up tangled in kelp
a mermaid glaring over me

both wondering why
I was still breathing

I asked her to sing again
and again until I drowned

I saw all my pain and grief
manifest and explode
but it didn’t kill me

I taught the mermaid
heartwrenching songs
and singing she spun me
round and round
down to the bottom

but I wasn’t drowning
so I forged a blade
for her to spear my heart
opened my shirt wide
showed her the beating flesh

she stabbed at it, twice, thrice
her nails clawed it out of my chest
squelching blood in her angry fist
beads of pearls on the sand at our feet

but I wasn’t dying

we embraced and shed tears
we tried a million different ways
time lost importance, even for her
she consoled me every time
I woke up breathing

something in me wouldn't let go

one day as she held my head
on her lap, she stared at me
for so long days passed
weeks perhaps and
in time she said I love you
and plunged in the ocean

I waited for her, and waited,
suns and moons in harvests aplenty
she never swam back to me

the ache, the ache was so great
that finally the wild went silent
and I closed my eyes

 

A voyage home

 
The way long and long out of sight
Bearings and light leeward lost
Darkness abounding de-fettered
Night lining out our hearts
Even in daylight plain

Resolve dissolved in blood
Dreams a-throng yet wraith-hued
Picking bones for lack of food
The hands of the gods against our fists
Lost, utterly lost in the glaucous glen

Seas gnawing at our sides
Gulls sending false omens
Winds whistling us mad
Shunning our sun-seared sails
Though offerings were made

We had memorised how to recognise
Warriors, witches, and death
The nostos inked onto our palms
The eye keened to keep the way
Lit by lunar glints atop the waves

The cool of sunset soothing the burns
Laving the day’s salts and sweat
As days unnumbered themselves
Spinning inner songs of despair
No amount of wax would seal away

Death-scorning hubris we felt
For it had shied off of us still
Though countless times met
Thwarted by elden craftsmanship
And centuries-honed skills

Until one fateful moment when
Many auguries unclouded became
Whilst the sea rent the ship a-twain
Our invisible shield of hubris
Cloven in one fell stroke

Many of us drowned
Many of us in our prime
A handful stranded a-shore
Bloodied and cut and humbled
Yet clear-visioned and resolute

Like a first-time whore strutting
Unsure of step yet gut-driven
Embracing fate more than ever
We knelt to our urns in awe
Dumbed by wonderment

We knew our Ithaka out of reach
Nost-algia clouding the breath
Like agèd wine to a sour palate
Too many shores and sunsets
Dreamt of yet memory-lost

The sweetness of the stalls’ smells
Tip-of-the-tongue forgotten
Almost, almost at last remembering
A gossamer veil we couldn’t part
Weighing more than mountains

A tiredness unheard of
Marrow-burrowing
Deeper than the spearheads
Holding the tents encamped
Where we waged war

Life was odd for we were
longing-looking for home
Yet at its very doorstep
Unreckoning uncrossing
Oblivious to the signs
-
Walked on, distraught
As if blindfolded
By some callous hand
Unwishing us home
Undeserving of the kindness

We wander the wilds still
In-transit through constellations
We know never to attain
Aware of our self-brought doom
Cursing ourselves even more.

 

Fragment #24

 
Home being an Ithaka of sorts
I find it where most stop looking
Even in the smell of rain

 

To the girl waiting under the tamarind tree

 
You could have had your elbows
propped up on the parapet
of the ferry to the kampong

You could have sighed
at the sunset faded
from the lone harbour

You could have taken a selfie
off the river Mekong
with a yūgen gaze

Yet you chose to sit shaded
chin cupped in your palms
under the tamarind tree

where you looked most beautiful

 

Redolent

 

The smell of mannered flesh
forcing itself up the nostrils,
coaxing the downbeat soul

self-hate feeling the urge
the exorbitant behoving
flatter and flout of the self

the mind battling the pulse
buckling under the pressure
finally, giving, in.

The travellers’ tales omit
the indelible stain of shame
the sense-agripping scents
forcing itself up the nose
the cheap perf cramping the guts
at the split of night
the retching too close
the hating, right there.
Every, single, second.

 

soul and bone

 
the soul thought firmly set
until love ransacked it blind
lungs, tendons, heart and all

the spirit ethered off
left but bled-out tissues
their fate the colour of mud

adamant to carve through
a paring knife, twist-gnawing
right where soul meets bone

 

Salt and ash

 
It was the last promise to be kept.

My grandparents reposed
where they had longed to be,
at last. For yes, I had tarried.

The morning sea was calm,
yet the hot air already at our throat,
cooled somewhat by the northeasterly.

The brief echo of thirty foghorns,
following long seconds of thunder,
resonated across the bay
with a harsh finality.
Those on the shore, invisible
but who later recounted hearing
the chilling call to salute and mourn,
bid their farewell, too.

Glints of tears and sweat
were quickly wiped,
though both were meant
to soothe body and soul.

The words exchanged on the boat
were perfunctory, hard as I tried.
The other words had clotted up,
lumped in the pharynx.

I was also distracted;
I was disappointed that I had
forgotten how heavy an urn was,
and the sheen of the sun
spangling on the wavecrest
caught my eye more than necessary.
They danced like dragonflies.

The urns swiftly sank out of sight.
My grandfather was with his wife,
my grandmother with her daughter,
my partner hopefully greeting them
with open arms and soft words.

I felt like the guardian of a time
of yore submerged by the seas,
a watchman over invisible ruins
whose existence only I could attest to
and point at on a map.

My word, as the last one alive and willing,
had been kept, yet the light felt heavy still,
unbearably ubiquitous and constant,
proscribing darkness also,
an offering on a propitious day.

Back on land, memories
were carried and shared,
glasses were raised,
as much to celebrate the past
with ones who mattered
but were no longer here,
as to hail in the future
of a resolute few who,
though tossed about by the waves,
had managed to keep the boat afloat
and their gaze fixed on the horizon
that we had been bequeathed.

It was the last promise to the dead.
On that day we the living,
amidst the silence of the seas,
where the sum of our love was,
dispersed yet present yet calm,

salt and ash parching our lips,
set foot on the shore to start afresh.

 

Haiku #5

 

The moon uninvited came
Smelling of daffodils, her lips sweet red wine
Swaying her hips like a lover