Habits

I am a man of habits

I got to this conclusion

because I flash-realised

that I am hoping

that someone, someday

will see the patterns

the routines

nurtured for years

and wait where

we both expect

myself to be

Lichen

The blind woman next to me

fidgeting in her seat

visibly uneasy

brushed my arm

as if in need of help

with her train ticket

but she tricked me

her hand hovered

over mine, her

fingertips the texture

of centuries-old lichen

their pulp supple once

yet gentle still, attentive,

finding the folds in the skin

with such exactness

such deliberation

she smiled and

pursed her lips

fluttered about the scars

for she was but looking

for stories in hiding

for life, she said without words,

happens at the cracks

she held my wrist

the coarseness of her skin

made me wonder

if one day myself

I’d ever see

the way she did.

home again

The buzzing in his ears subsided a little

– the pain, the pain, though –

lying on his back

he couldn’t feel his legs

– what had happened though –

he was running and

Jack on his right was running too

and then, and then

too much noise

too much light

“Jack? Jack?”

the noise was still there

pounding

Jack didn’t say a word

perhaps Jack was too far already

he lifted his head

scanned the ruins

and then he knew:

war had happened

– he recalls the officer

on the campus saying

“War can happen, son”

– he had nodded his consent –

– he was bang on, that officer –

and war hurt like, like,

like a volcano

the burning searing

through the flesh

and then

his da was there

kneeling next to him

shushing him

(he knew his da)

(had passed away)

(when he was ten)

(he smiled at him)

his hand

tapping his chest

(his dad looked young)

(as young as himself now)

(his da smiled too)

“it’s ok, son,

it’s ok,

you’ll be home again

soon.”

This heart

 
This heart of mine
isn’t mine

It’s been used
I can tell
it was broken, once
but it’ll be
nonetheless
the best ever

I was given it
by a stranger
who wasn’t heartless
when they passed it away

I thank them
with their whole heart
and take it to soul
to make them proud

this heart of theirs
I’ll make it mine

 

Arranging flowers

You’re arranging flowers

the same way each day

getting lost in the art

– you always ask me because

you always forget it’s ikebana

– but you remember the legend

of the tamatebako

I made for you, 

and keep it on the shelf

with your favourite books

on the verandah

your hunched silhouette

– the chaos of time within

briefly made visible

in the slowness of your gait –

you seem inert almost

but you are bustling:

vivid hands dusting leaves

nails nipping dead buds

and withered petals

surgically so

whispering to each plant

telling them they’re home

the water holding in the plates

only thanks to surface tension

is somehow like you

– come to think of it,

you’re the plate

and the plant –

briefly you look outside

hand like a visor

the rising sun flooding

the warming room –

the clouds seems to be pushed

by an invisible hand

– it’s the tide, you say,

it pushes the rain inland –

I know at this moment

a memory is being made

– I relished it then –

– fondly recall it now –

sitting in the empty verandah,

the flowers and plants

withered in dry, flaky plates

and cracked, ashen soil.

Norrsken i fjällen

 
The moon glazes
snowdunes silver
streaks the fjäll
with argent strands
only as we think
auroras commence
burning the sky
the hoary threads
bind us to the glacier
slowly combust us
until only remains
tar-like scorched marks
and haphazard footsteps
in the refreezing snow

 

Calendars

 
Calendars measure time
differently from clocks:
they are a record of
our perception of events,
like town square statues
suffering rainshowers,
winterstorms and heatwaves
and the annual
deposition of wreaths.

Yet they can be
like clocks
when they tick
year in, year out
acknowledged
unfailingly —
until we’re no longer
conscious of the time
passing at the
back of our mind.

 

Strynefjellet

 
In Strynefjellet, one feels the vulnerability our ancestors must have resented then, when skin on skin did little to shelter them from the fierceness of their gods.

One cannot hide from the frost among the congealed peaks.

There seemed fitting to depose a memory, nestled in a crag where it froze upon touch. Soon it was sealed in ice and snow, never to be found again.

The sense of abandonment is strong.
There is a feeling of loss and uncertainty.
It is a place beyond danger, beyond peace.

Words have no weight here, and names no longer bear any meaning, even its own disperses, windswept.

There are two forms of life: trees, and snow, and they cannot be told apart, are one and the same, having no bearing within our sphere, the experience of them only affecting our senses.

It is a desolate rift in every direction, where no one should have to go unless a memory needs be cradled in its lap.

When I drove away Strynefjellet closed behind me, deepest night curtaining all light, the snow a mirror to that night, the blizzard raging indiscriminately.
 

Stone to stone

Graves half buried in snow

— their greyness like exposed rocks

on streaked mountainside —

resolute mourners shovelling

the white compact down

to the hard ground

to place photophoroi

— however diaphanous 

and dim the lanterns be —

to show the living

the place where

they chose to

remember

and pray

 

On thin ice

 

The Sámi told me
to pay attention
to the bear and the elk
— also to the wolf
he had tracked an old one
prowling for a last kill —
but above all to
pay attention to
snow-covered ponds
their surface ice too thin
yield under the weight
— the Sámi said to be quick
with the puukko, wedge it
deep into the ground
before the pond swallows
and snowfall covers it all
— he said to be weary
of clearings and circles of trees
follow the tracks, if any
— even that of the bear
for they knew where to tread

but the moon had bewitched me
draped in faint clouds and auroras
pearl white pupil pulsing
in the benthic blue dome
clouds an extension
of the mountains
snow lining the rifts
pine trees like raised down
on bare, pure white skin
the blanket of rime
groaning underfoot
much like
cracking ice —

 

The gloaming

 

The street lamps downtown
drowning the gloaming
hardly fend the night off
come sudden lightfall
and the rise of auroras

 

something in the wind

 
something grows
on the gale-made dune
sand-covered crows
watch the esplanade
stale rampart against
the rampaging seas
and that force that plows

something flows
borne by the howling
that constantly oppose
and hollow out the guts
courage storm-tossed like
food for careening gulls
with deadened squawks

something froze
in the mammoth clouds
casting immense shadows
and dull implacable fury
bent on stopping the day
by toppling down
all the clock towers

something glows
in this willed squall
diablerie like claws
human in other climes
now monstrous, blind
hostile beyond nature
frivolous beyond rage

 

I dreamt last night

I dreamt last night

it might not sound much

but it’s been months

months without sleep

months without dreams

cultivating seeds of chaos

planting them in the heart

here and there, now and again

harvesting rage and insatiety

drilling the void

digging the scars

with whitened knuckles

gripping a bloodied hook

food and love-starved

when half-mad and cornered

came the realisation

that, faced with shadows

the soul was trapped

the body yielded

getting sustenance

finally, from within

first a speck of light

dancing like a floater

then summerlike sunrays

and all of a sudden

brighter than a quasar

warm, delicate, vibrant

and all I could do

after that dream

was to gowpen its light

take it to my heart

until it fused with it

so now I can

welcome the night

Wove and laid silhouettes

 

I am a ghost among
-----------------------

wove and laid silhouettes

------------------------------
hosts of see-through people
--------------------------------
drawn on Kozo paper
-------------------------
never really touching
-------------------------
like a raven’s silk wings
---------------------------
only ever brushing
----------------------
the obsidian night
---------------------

A whorled story

 

***
Don’t know how long it’s been,
six months, maybe a year?
I was fine, mostly, really.
Mh? Yeah, mostly.

***
I know it’s been a year.
I’ve been doing ok.
ups and downs,
you know how it is,
maybe.

***
It felt longer at times
– longer than a year, I mean –
long days were bad days,
short days were good days,
as simple as that, really.
– so long in fact that time
felt like a volume, comprising
all axes, terms, signs, results.

***
This year has felt like a decade.
Some hours stirred tumult and tears,
and terrible truths, sometimes smaller
than a grain of sand, sometimes
larger than the Laniakea.
Other days brought silences and smiles,
great quietude filling the mind
– a Boötes of the soul, unperturbed –
the lucidity actual, irrefragable –
the mind palace like an anechoic chamber
memories seen for what they are:
starkly untinged, and evident.

***
Three hundred and thirty-eight days
sixteen hours and twelve minutes.
Every single one of those seconds
as long as a mercurial day.
March 2nd was the worst, for some reason.
I hadn’t thought about you in weeks
– well, more like afterthoughts,
caprices of a winding/storied memory –
you flashed before me
particle ignoring all matter
I relived the hours together
slowly, not savouring but observing,
your contours more defined
– like a coastline under a satellite
then as through a microscope –
in endless, excruciating precision
the acuteness of the scrutiny
which made me understand, finally
why it had been so hard to go over you.

So I sat there with that mental origami
pleating and creasing ever smaller folds,
each one revealing a finer trait,
and I knew once I would be watching
from the comfort of space
where we always fly for a reason
I would finally see the finest
tales of embroidered memories.

***

 

Floating

 
It could be the
surface from below,
perhaps
clouds from above,
perhaps

Suspended,
up and down,
floating, floating.
Weightless, unpulled.

It could be the
air, water, light
– so precisely anything –
floating, floating.

Ground. Seabed.
Stratosphere.

Salt on the lips
– ah, yes, the ocean,
that vague memory.
Aren’t clouds made of
saltwater or dustwater,
dunes or oceanfloors
– floating – floating.

A gowpen of cottonwool,
a thoughtful of smoke,
all could be inside my mind
– subfaces and surfaces –
mirror of mirrors of mirrors
slowly spinning on myself
dimensions lost to the senses
I am nothing, floating, floating

if only the moon, a bird, a fish
I’d know where I
floating, floating
was – stars perhaps
I’d know – floating
why I enjoy
floating, floating
so much

 

in the subway

sleepy, serpentine subway

slithering in the pulsing deep

late train, perhaps the last one

carriages swinging lizardly

like elastic metronomes

one after the other, following suit

when they finally align

a violent explosion flares

at the far end of the train

the ball of fire quickly

engulfs everything

tongues lapping posters off

teeth ripping seats apart

claws slashing clothes

everyone wreathed in fire

muted cries of terror

sheer, primal panic in their eyes

the blaze shockwaves through

incinderate the bodies

yet I remain curious and calm

watching the fast-moving inferno

my last picture of this world

is that of a train exploding

relieved it’s the end of the line

a bit surprised I have to say

but welcoming quietude

ready, my time here done

feeling it in my old bones

like the storm before the storm

the heart beating freely, firmly

in the flash, bang and whimper

of the blast of the furnace

all turns to a film negative

dark-rimmed, pearly glass world

suspended

for a long time

— and then

resumes 

clearly —

as if

nothing 

will ever have

happened

when the illusion dissipates

unsurprised and poised

I remain curious, still 

equanimous, smiling

either are there

waiting

 

would you

If you miss someone you loved

and you still see them, somehow

faint, fraying silhouette in the fog

and you look for their ghost

on a park bench, on the sofa

in the café you used to go to

there as if in remanence

– what if you did

what if you saw them

what would you do

would you go to them

and ask

how do you do

do you miss me

even just a bit

can I sit with you

would you

and everywhere you find their face and traits,

trace their mannerisms, and smell

in everyone in the metro and on the bus

in every footstep you hear them

and every time your heart

misses a beat

you hope and dread

that it’s really them

– what if it were

what would you do

would you run after the metro

tap the person’s shoulder

turn them around

cup their face into your palms

and kiss them tenderly

would you

and you still think of them

watching a video, reading an article

baking a rhubarb crumble

for the world made more sense

and food tasted better with them

and conversation with strangers

and sex with strangers

feel dull and deepen the emptiness

– what if they suddenly called

would you pick up and tell them

the world disappeared comfortably

with them around you

with them in you

would you ask them what they think

because their voice

filled the void like no other

soothed the tinnitus

would you chat with them

until dawn like you used to

would you

and you imagine them

in someone’s arm, having sex

kissing, cuddling, embracing

and it wrenches your guts

and you still extend your arm in bed

in the silent dark of nights

your fingers expecting to touch their body

– what if you did, what would you do

would you hug them so hard

you couldn’t breathe

would you say you’re sorry

tell them you’re happy

now you’re in their arms again

would you

would you