on the wind

// on the wind // I heard your name // on the grass // a long time ago // had to be a thousand years, at least // in the night // the thought-memory of you // like a seed // like a tree // in the soil under the fingernails // your name was there too // for such a long time // the sky too overcast to notice // cacophonies of feelings and yellings // no longer drowned therein // only whispers // this unsilence for such a long time // though not the right time // the hawk ascending on the wind // on man-made moonlit mythical wings // finding time slowing down in the shade // wanting to be near // holding hands // with all those years of gestures, silences, thoughts, questions and learnings // gowpens of tragedies, love, carry-ons and acquired smiles // that was the right time // on the cairn I made on the knoll // meant the wait had been the rainbow // how I learnt to make everything I do and say // a long time ago you had been there and stayed // carefully telling everything your name to be remembered // and found // to never end // on the tip of the ear and tongue always // there // gut-feeling me through the ground // never quite lost // like a bonding of molecules with no definite centre // here but also there // now but also then // the most negligible of forces // like the faintest of rustles // on the wind //

Homemory

 

I’ll mark you in my book of memories

between sunfires at dawn and dusk

and meteor waves jolting the spheres

the memory of you will be a home to me

as the sunshafts after the rain are home to me

as the goosebumps from music are home to me

as feeling the last page of a book is home to me

you will be a home to me

in my book of memories

though the shades have darkened 

and the pages will have faded

as the storm of the century raged

home to me, home to me

Circumstances

 
Where have you been? Missed you so.
You haven’t changed, I’ve moved on.

Both are scary, what’s come over us?
Perhaps because no one’s letting go.

All them big words and no brawn,
but we’ve never been ones to fuss.

Had nothing to do, so I moved mountains
and a third of the sky off my way:

never be a hostage from geography –
always prefer wild seas to fountains.

Twenty-one grams lighter we weigh
now on our sure sway to apathy

had nothing to do so you froze right there
deer-in-the-headlights of a human being

tried with all your might to stay real
blinded and scorched by the glare

– no cure for that sort of pain –
– you don’t have it in you, sweet girl –
– no cure needed as you’ll do it again –
– chaos in immobility you are –

looking for something which stopped becoming
when you silenced your symmetry

bending space on opposite sides
won’t make it come full circle
we couldn’t even if we tried

or we might have and

we might be, different

 

Scattering of flower

 
Strewn about the vase
the petals a vestige
of a gone beauty
randomly, perhaps

Gathering the withered
soft and dead dryness
the mind but wanders
in the palm of the hand

Left alone in the field or
left to wane in the house
plucked or unplucked
the flower’s sum and parts
ordered by a deeper chirality
disperse long before they were a seed
arrange long after the end of time
yet mathematically arranged
yet unordered, perhaps

By plucking its petals
one both gathers and disperses
the beauty of the flower
contained elsewhere
randomly, perhaps

 

Fragment #23

Shot down like a deer in the dark

lying dead, the wound soon a door

for dirt dwellers, bugs, birds and boars,

to feed on my dull, rancid carcass

my soul delves deep in the core.

Fragment #122

 
She is one of quick ends and violent means 
– the long game but a string of skirmishes –
– blood and brood the only option for women –
– there’s hope in honour till it vanishes –
– daggers and poisons and sharper wits
make for faster peace through perfect blitz.

 

Corps memory

 

She turns towards me while opening the door

— The two cavities under her collarbones,

dark under the scorching lightbulb —

— Her shirt now three sizes too small —

Never have I seen her so frail, so hesitant

— Her angular silhouette penciled on the floor,

unnerving now, even more so later when —

Her lips parting, her voice hoarse and spent

— Her spindly fingers crooked on the handle —

She fades, featherly light, as grief wanes

 

Handshook

 

All it took was a handshake

to unsettle the masculined gaze

All it took was a kind look

– the warmth of a handshake –

for him to avert his teary eyes

All it took was a “Hello, Jack”

– the second-too-long handshake –

to expose the chink in the armour

to make him chin-on-chest humble

All it took was the simple kindness

– a handshake like an embrace –

of one who fought unseen battles

recognising one fighting another

telling them without stoic prattle:

“Feel no shame, and be brave, brother.”

Every cycle worse

 

“No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. […] Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses... The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!” 

Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government (1909), by Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American politician and academic, Governor of New York, Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, and US Secretary of State.

 

8 stades de notification

 
Insignifiant

Indésirable

Informatif

Intéressant

Important

Impérieux

Improbable

Impossible