crushed papers

Turn on...

2009-05-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

Turn on your neurons. Consciousness explores. Trace your genes. Watch the droplets of blood on the cross turn into butterfly hearts. Give the devil his due – a shape in lucid red. Brush stroke the ancient Gods. A religion without a cause.

Tune in to the rebellion. Expression in distorted riffs. Talk to the acoustic strings. A song for the bicycle days. Divinity is near. Change at hand. White rabbits to shamans. Acid tears behind those shades.

Drop out into the azure. Alone in the sky, learning to fly. Rebuild Babel brick by brick. You did succeed. Look at the world. It is painted blue. Semisynthetic children of flowers and stars. Eve displaced, Lucy high above.

Salesmen's death

2009-05-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

It was on the tracks of the bourgeois that our fantasies began. The dead took their last breath from them – the fragrance of humility, while the living slipped into their half heard stories. Rumours that would re-invent themselves along deserts and seas, changing with every whisper until a lie over a drink had turned into some poetic epic. Maybe it was the desert that changed their minds.

Living in mirages the merchants walked under the sun with Siddhartha and silk, Ming and Jade, Nefertiti and incense, Ahriman and lapis lazuli and so many others. Most names are lost for now and a few have changed.

Those masted ships were the bones of the seas, they chartered through storms, found the winds, dreamt up the stars and named the depths. It was in these depths that they saw the fears of humanity reflected, they called it the Kraken. Homer’s sirens had long ceased to sing and frighten, the world needed a brute beast and it got few. Perhaps Phorcys had resurrected Syclla and given her new forms.

Then things changed - the lines stopped walking in single files, the ships stopped circling in search - the machine was breaking down. No more illusions were to be churned out. New machines replaced the old ones, panzers replaced lines, bombs replaced circles, and ideology replaced illusions.

It is all just a story, beginning from Siddhartha to Karl, Sirens to Nemo. It all depends how you listen to it. It is still on.

Electronic dreams

2009-05-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

I have stayed awake through nights till morning, night after night. But it's been a long time since I saw the sunrise or the stars. I have seen my brains splattered on the walls by a shotgun.

I have been awake in those shadows in a shiver without a spine. I have stalked people along alleys and halls, and repaid them in gory deaths. My heart skips beats in atrophy hoping for a call.

No one has come and no one gone. No conversations, no lies, just a consistent mad bee buzzing in my head, editing all my thoughts. I have spoken to the Gods and incurred their wrath.

The mind wanders and I accompany without any direction at hand. Trapped in a dying world, caged in clockwork orange, dysfunctional batteries run out, life becomes last week. Vainly I try to strangle Lady Macbeth as she whispers in my head.

Two stories

2009-05-21T17:34:00.000-07:00

The moors cannot be defined geographically they slip into the crevices and cracks of our souls, which we try to plaster with red bricks of a Dickensian nightmare. An androgynous cult to an unknown god painted over with shadows of civility to restrain the ghosts.

It could be a romantic rebellion or deep slumber, where passion reverberates in depths rumbling across the Styx. Or could be left over Victorian calmness of the deep seas, across which there is still the unknown to be conquered. What dreams may come in this sleep or what the unconquered is only the dreamer knows.

For now lost in dazzling light there is nothing hidden nor there is sleep in this city. This grey portrait though unchanging has its flaws, because it is a picture painted by change that once was young.

A Ghazal

2009-05-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

One spoke of her as unrequited love, another called it illicit, still others gave her many names but the sobriquet ‘unfaithful’ remained. Always a mistress never so faithful, she will love you and leave you, kiss you and kill you.

Her husbands are constantly jealous for treacherous as she is, she slips into beds as through nights they tossing in memories remain. Her lovers afraid, for they know they will lose her in a frivolous blink to a stranger and to you.

She never grows old pampered by kings, queens, jesters, knights, lords she as an enigma will in stilness remain. In robes, frills, laces, purdah she seduces anyone who would but look, though vainly we think that naked she walks up to me and you.

This city is old, she is new, she is joy, she is sorrow, and she is many that men carry in their hearts with longing and pain. Her coquettish charm will pander to all your dreams though she will always say goodbye in between.

This city is a Ghazal long and true. A song that eats your heart to become it.

Yellow Noise

2009-05-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Titan stubbed the blue amphetamine cigarette at the edge of the town, as if to mark the progress of his army of androids and ghouls. Maybe he would let this colony of humans live but first he needed to know if they are worth to be shown mercy.

Strolling disguised among its inhabitants as they crowded the streets on the carnival of the waning moon he judged the lost souls. He had nearly made up his mind about complete annihilation when he caught a glimpse of the dark girl. Their eyes locked a gaze then disengaged.

His metallic heart seemed to have changed under her ultraviolet stare, it must have been love. But devoid of emotions his synapses failed to release it into his soul, he knew that. Justice didn’t interest him anymore; he dismantled his army and underwent a complete psychosis to erase all memories of the past. Not to forget her, but so that he could earn humanity in order to love her.

*** ***

The dismantled army after years of futile roaming finally found an heir to their lost throne. A dark ruthless cannibal of a goddess, a mistress of time who let lose an orgy of bloodshed and destruction unprecedented even for this aged band of killers.

She stood at the edge of the same town years later with the same army behind. Her view was devoid of any justice, the moon was absent and the streets empty. Except for a man on the street, who although had passed out seemed to pose some sort of defiance. Another symbol of intoxicated humanity proclaiming their innocence through ignorance, she thought. She despised such pathetic display of weakness, so rushing forth she decided to chop his head off.

Their eyes engaged locked in a gaze. She calmed down; he was the lost titan and she the dark girl, who in order to find him had undergone a genetic transformation. In her search she had become the search itself as if the cosmos wanted to fill a void.

She bent down to kiss and revive him to his former being. Her tongue touched his.

Tall Tales

2009-05-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

Standing behind the lines of the Marque he thought this was it, this is how it ends. The hallway was crowed with leapers, wallflowers infected with ideologies trying to get to you, but they weren’t that bad compared to the Angels and Boilers. He hated those waves of Boilers on whom now he unleashed his spear of destiny near the toilets, he bashed their heads into pulp with complete satisfaction.

The show had just begun, some movie from SS-TV channel showing mass conversions through cannibalism. One could hear those witches giggling with Odin in the Opera boxes. He couldn’t care less, he was busy hammering his point home, and the thick heads never seemed to get it right. Interruption he thought would most likely come from Heydrich’s dreaded Steelheads, so he was surprised when he heard “Down the Volga” blaring from the speakers. Damn those Clovens in the projection room and their plans to burn Paris down.

He had just enough time to scribble a last few words on the wall with the blood of a Slipskull hunter before the whole thing went up in flames. His etched encryption read “Kilroy was here”.

Hollow

2009-05-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

…a man stood between a graveyard and a few mourners, without any memory. He tried to search the lamenting faces but they didn’t give any sign of recognition nor of estrangement. Unable to reconcile reality from illusion he looked beyond them to the town past the cemetery gates. Over the irregular roads a few houses were lit, and a few stood dark. One of these lit houses with its strange ambivalent glow and shadowing darkness attracted him.

With steps of reluctance and anticipation he made his way towards it; fearful of what he might find and hopeful of that he might find. Coming up to the door he knocked once then twice, no one answered so he let himself in. A crowd had gathered in the house, scattered here and there he spotted a doctor by the window and the priest by the hearth. He examined the other faces, they were either too busy to acknowledge him or in their wait had decided to ignore him. It was then an awareness that he may be standing between the living and the dead dawned upon on him; frenzied he searched the objects in the room for some sort of attachment, indicative of the life he may have lived, but there was none.

Two people stood deep in grieve beside a bed in a far corner, it seemed his last hope lay there, to which he made his way. On the bed lay a sick woman, who he thought might be the answer, fantasying himself to be her lover in this life or the past he touched her forehead. She opened her eyes to look at his and there was recognition in them both. A noise died in her mouth, it could have been a cry or a broken smile, then she passed out.

He had finally found the answer to his amnesia, both a curse and a blessing. A curse that robbed him of any identity and a blessing that kept away guilt, for he was Death. Death walked out to the street fading into the night with its thirty seconds memory.

…a woman stood between a street and a few mourners, without any memory.

Fear

2009-05-15T16:45:00.001-07:00

The curtains are drawn just a bit through which the night peeps in. Darkness seems to be objectifying me. The night is long and throws me into spells of boredom yet I don’t want it to end; somehow it has seduced me, sucked me into it through the window. A thirsty night, undying, unyielding lying still until the wind ruffles its cloak. Growling, unsettling, it prowls outside scratching the windowpane with drops it had stolen from some distant dying drizzle. Falling drops swept of the skies by some dusty black broomstick on which rides a storm.

Cries from the sky try to shock me to the news of some unexplained death in the room, but I lie alone. Then the drops come creeping on the rooftop to take the unborn being’s dead soul. Seeping through the ceiling the crawlers add yet more elusive shapes to the stained walls. They posses the house in a cocoon of strange noise, speaking in an ancient language they seem to exorcise themselves of memories. And they wait. Hours later the playful madness of the children of men disturbs and frightens the darkness with their lost innocence chasing the night away.

The excuse

2009-05-11T16:51:00.000-07:00

Sitting at that café alone one could do terrible things, commit a crime with precision, perhaps, like holding Claesina captive in some failed attempt at a dream. A failure so vague in itself, that it leaves melancholic imprints of redemption. Or one could go mad around one o’ clock and decide to kill oneself with that switchblade or better still a shotgun.

Sometimes it is better to run off to far away places like India. The only problem with it is Margot taking poison - at another elusive endeavour for some sort of stability. Or one could meet Daisy, another strange home to run away from, into the familiar olives and cypresses. So there is no place to go actually, with all the birds crowding everywhere chirping at your thoughts, like wave after wave picking on the pebbles.

Thus one is bound to destroy oneself and finish what began with Eugenie at Clarissa’s doorsteps. That way they will always pass through with perfect elegance in our reminiscence like Sally does. As for the future it is supposed to be l’avenir, so can’t picture that. For now lost among the undergrowth we just pass by.

Rhymes

2009-05-10T04:39:00.000-07:00

A dragon lives forever but giants fall and change/Painted wings and halo rings replace and rearrange/One grey night Jackie did some things of gore/And puff the mighty dragon became a fearful roar.

A Kiss

2009-05-08T13:59:00.000-07:00

I seek a kiss and move my lips,

a gesture I have repeated oft in dreams.

I have loved you since long before

under metamorphosis and sex,

but I wouldn’t tell you that.

I long for them to meet,

as Darwinian impulses draw me ahead.

I whimper frightened within

of the moon and jellyfish of your sea,

but I wouldn’t tell you that.

I promise that with you be first and last,

under unnatural spells of love,

though I am in a family romance

with mothers, fathers and our children to come,

but I wouldn’t tell you that.

Gazes

2009-05-07T07:40:00.001-07:00

He walks the streets with anticipating eyes through days and weeks with no fixed address in mind. Soaking light his roving eyes linger on a woman just as she turns and bows at his indiscretion.

At nights he gazes through brothels, dances, gambling dens and masques; on the brink of stars, moon and mellow darkness he lingers as they obstruct and step aside. He sets his eyes by the window and solicits her with a look. She bows then turns lifting her eyes to please his indiscretion.

Later at night through oft starry night, she remembers her forgotten tears and vows. From his lap she steps into light, as horror fills her stare. She stares into the distance, up above there is Christ. He is confused, the hunter engages unable to dissuade his eyes, but she doesn't look his way.

Alone at night he thinks of her touch, the music and of love.

Never understanding why she didn’t stay. Turbulent memories show him the past of the ideal he longs. Caught in her spell he looks away and he sees grace. She is confused, he doesn’t look her way.

Next morning he waits aside halfway along the path, for another glance to love not offend. Friends looks through just missing in a glance. They just laugh, he stands unseen lost in purgatory of love. She looks and he trembles, impressions of hell and heaven shudder in a blink. Redeemed or to live again through these circles; frightened he looks away.

A moment before he looked she knew he would look. He looked anticipating a word, remembering the way ahead. It was raining perhaps sunny, but he was all soaked up in her;

confused they stood among the crowd moving as in a lucid dream. She stared into its ambiguities, unsure of intentions or what he meant to say she looks away.

He dreams of her waiting for him, she has waited all her life for him in his dream. In her feet he shall lay down life and honour, but only if she could love him. But why does she stare into the distance, what does she want?

She thinks of him as the one who would stay till the end of life. With him she shall plant her garden with spells and flowers, but there is his roving mind. Why can’t he stay forever fixed among her dreams, what does he want?

He catches her in a moment and pleads, with his fixed intent. She thinks, pondering on her dream, to say yes or no. His melancholy looks do not betray, his resolute gaze screens her thoughts unable to go beyond her eyes. His intentions seem clear why are her eyes perplexed?

She catches the moment with a smile, she might agree, but there is that dazing hint. What could that mean? His looks do not yet betray, but what if tomorrow they change. To love is one thing, forever another. Thoughts perplex her, though his eyes are clear.

He sighs in relief as though from grave depths he released her not she him. The monstrous staring world is dead for now, it is only them until he leaves. Too late he will understand, too late he will come back blind in love too dazzling for his eyes. He consoles, it was not to be her.

She sighs in relief after the moment’s done, it was not to be. What if he even stayed, they would live in drifting times. His eyes fixed on sundry things while she looked out onto the streets for some dazzling light she couldn’t have. It was not to be him.

Chrysalis

2009-05-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

A red passionate dye from the rising sun painted the tranquil morning sky erasing the dark gaze of the night. The sky brushed the scorpion’s claws of the night before with enchanted patterns of flowers and abstract beauty woven on silken clouds. A gift this gamoocha was to dawn as she stole across the threshold, fleeing the looks of heaven. Dancing with the morning breath she with her touch coloured all – smearing orchids, bamboos, paddy fields, hills, rivers like a starry starry night blended in spring light. She wove on the airy loom her own mekhla chador – an infinite blue its colour embroidered with seven colours. She danced to her content until her dress turned into insects and butterflies. Caught between an evil spell of love and cockroaches she became a desire no longer forbidden. The very purpose of her dance.

Tropos

2009-05-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

Death is not the end, never has been not in memory nor in the chain of events that precedes and follows it. Death is not even personal, not something I can even share, it is for others to feel, see and modify according to their fancies. Ceremonies both public and private mark it, mourning false and true communicate it. Where am I in all this? Life that was mine is rewritten, remembered as wanted and beyond these other lives go on; maybe I do leave an emptiness around in a few dilapidated lives, but redecoration amends them. I transform into photographs and paintings, my body changed to please or disgust as the undertaker sees fit. I live unanimated. And I relive my whole life again in disjointed memories of lovers, friends, family and strangers, often between and in digressions. In childhood I dwell teased, praised, scorned, debated - comments which I would never know as like watchful parents chaos and oblivion guard me.It’s like being in an asylum, where I have no control over the inmates, they act as they please. I am an inmate too, who thinks he is directing this play but I fail miserably for I have been mad a long time, before any of the actors tasted lunacy. My very act of directing is madness.

My death was quiet, I sank into it. But in its aftermath like a drowning man, memories and ideals splashed across the calm moments and unlocked a chain of events that killed, celebrated and changed everything. It must have felt like Lazarus, but I wouldn’t know that.

The daughters of Nyx had written my life. Clotho spun my every breath. Lachesis disposed my time. Atropos chose the knife. But Tropos writes these words.

Tropos was missing when the other three sisters destined men to write about them. In their hurry and vanity they forgot the youngest. Almost like Cinderella she missed her call, so much like sleeping beauty she has awakened now. She is the turning, the one that dictates life after death and changes everything.

18

2009-05-02T09:11:00.001-07:00

Hand in hand they walked out into the pyre, joined hands immolated deep in prayer. Spouts of yellow days and red nights followed the trail of blood, sniffing the kneaded image of broken souls through 260 nights.

Cuts in the wind, germinating seeds yet to sprout, missed and tied with shafts in the ground, then killed for blood to wane the moon. With fear the ocean devours her child, as transsexual priests mate with their mother to appease; infertile so to repeat. ‘This thy blood’ devours the chosen tide. Some drowned to be worthy, others lived to soothe the depths, as Tiresias confused points up to his throne of guilt.

A year of quarantined joy, sick with the touch of the gods till three last weeks before 23, when wedded to four maidens of spring. His steps so reverend, to be celebrated, to be waited by the wise. To be stolen quickly in the night. ‘Kill the king, long live he.’

Ripe the fields, the girl, the beautiful dancer in the dark.

Another daughter seized by fate hung on Charon’s back, wooed untill she gave her heart. It was 21 again, when chants from between her legs caught the night unaware. Dancing the feminized groom electrifies desire and penance. Another saviour chosses bridemaids four, to avoid the solitude rapture of the once galloping men. The anomaly banished to walk the earth till end.

The jaguar, and other child play things, walk, jump, hop across playing and counting 1,2,3,4, leaps of year. Puberty strikes, lust follows punctuates love; married, now in passion’s burn. Lingering touches groping in the dark, no we cannot let such love end nor survive. Give us their hearts, we offer faith, hope and charity so we may love.

Smoke

2009-04-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

The two men stood at the end of the bar. It was a frenetic place but behind those littered painted faces and floating chatter a mellow sadness of unrequited love lingered in the room. Soon to be lost within someone else’s arms the sleeping fairies walked around, dancing over glasses of wine to the violin’s rage. Did they dream up all this loneliness? Pondered one over a glass on the rocks, the other squashed a spider with the day’s funnies.

Drunk with bloodshot eyes the other fixed his glance on the staircase, an apparition was on its way down. Excited at her very sight he rushed up to the woman on the staircase only to fall flat down in a stupor. Seems looks could kill in this house, and a touch got you straight to hell. The furies had awakened from sedated dreams too elegant to be covered by sin.

Walking up to the man in the bar she said “I’ve been expecting you”, one of those cliché lines from grindhouse flicks that always had the hero reply something witty, but our hero was dumbstruck. She spun her story long and dramatic, sad at places, funny when needed, a share of sighs and silences and ended with the thrilling line “Take me”. Sure enough he did, to the table in the corner among his friends, where a drunken brawl was on its way.

Sitting among the brawlers she told another tale of footsteps around the bend, of colours that changed, unsettling hands between satin sheets and of nights that just kept coming. The boys couldn’t very much agree on the moral of the story but agreed that she was blown out of her mind. It was than she offered her pipe to them – it was bewitching. With every drag the moral got clearer, as the men began to see the shadows dwelling inside apart from the dance which revealed wounds at every step. Her story was about some such dream so perfect that only loneliness could have lived it.

Another drag and she was gone; smoke lingered in the air creating abstract designs without care, the pipe burnt out but her face still lingered in the air. She was lost into the arms of a forgotten god, dark and cruel.

Eleven moons later these men would tremble at the footsteps of her children. Fight them they would, but in the end lose all that they claimed as their own. These children of the dark god would wash away all the smoke with iron horses and gunpowder.

Fairy Tales

2009-04-27T05:44:00.000-07:00

Words like shadows in the night hide, reveal, frighten, and celebrate; creating a carnival of encounters and a dark forest of yearning.

Her stroll of discovery and absence overcoming structures of reality was false in every frame. Chaos waited beyond like a foreign language, whispering what shall be understood tomorrow.

She learnt of absence pondering through nights, unable to sleep. The revolution of the proletariat words would break her classical towers of dreams, turning the morning into blushes of war paint. But her dreams never went beyond her dressing table – absent of any distortions of idealism.

Sleeping segregated out of fear and innocence with seven sins to hide and innocence to keep, she waited forever.

Lacking words for such contradictions she searched for a new language. Seduced into regression by inability to confront, her memory dwelt in fixed fragments of time; forgetting she had to return, unable to structure any life.

It all ended with a kiss, awakened with a foreign tongue – an encounter in darkness. Stolen warmth left to repent.

The beauty she so long had treasured was absence within; it was incomplete for it was alone. Now, her stained beauty accepting distortions and guilt, creating absence without as it engulfs all pretensions and enchantments is like the night, which beckons longing.

Tread softly

2009-04-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

Mimicking fireflies imitate constellations glimmering through nights. Within such halo she stood, laughed, cried, criticised, unseen behind lines and lies - poetry men would say.

Caught in strange theories of time they wished goodmorning then goodnight. He lied, taunted, pleaded and then they talked into goodnight.

Fragments of nights digressed into worms creeping through eyes, ears and mind; one-two-three…nine-ten -elephant. Madness he cried, nothing she replied and the days went by.

Tending gently a wounded mind, they saw scars and stars. Until tradition sneaked up and chased the night.

She pressed delete and was gone. Surprised next morning between dawn; Lady Lazarus should have known. Abandoned by death it was goodbye. A porcelian word empty in utterance but fragrant with every repeat.

Empty rooms made of remembered time, where nothing ever happens but everything felt.

Mindful of thoughts of forgotten time, where everything happens but nothing kept.

Stuck in such contradictions they create virtual flowers – a bunch for you.

But she never accepts, he never speaks.

They have been shattered into broken vases of reality, made of pieces that disjoint, of smells that connect. These formations of cracks in time like stripes of a tiger preys on the burning sight.

They meet but time plays again, it fleets. Too many lights, too few ways, they have lit up the world no place to hide. Routed in and out he falls for that ancient trick – that virus the devil calls for in between a drink. Adorns a mask oblivious of the carnival’s end. He plays, yes he plays with all his stupid bots, snares and paralysed hands. She is hurt, yes she is, her heart locked in a blog explodes. Sharpnels of redirected errors tear him down. She disconnects.

Bang, bang, silence crashes down.

(Khamba Thoibi)

To be or ...

2009-04-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

Now might I do it,

his head bowed, pull the hair strike his neck,

let him take mother along if he will,

than spring shall break next to me.

A head shall I have, but the covenant…I shall be dammed black.

What fixed law is this and what is judgement, Bronson?

I am a hunter of heads, a son of the stones,

it is monstrous that he can have his and I not mine.

All occasions inform against me, and spur my dullness.

Why must we all sleep and feed and wait.

But my part is to be three parts coward,

the dread of fire, love of distant shores;

the book makes cowards of us all.

And the dead fish shall never swim again.

But God doesn’t hide the sin, that is the rub.

From this time forth,

my thoughts be of love, or be nothing worth!

(Konyaks)

idle fancies

2009-04-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

Tied with virtue and with it pleasure the prisoner gasped with every infliction of the scourged whip. (I am infinite feminity)

Along the curves the distraught robe fell with every shiver, baring adamance and fidelity. (I am but mortal)

Barbed wires withholding modesty pierced the nerves, rekindling passion to dwell in silence. (I my ancestors)

Boiling oil trickled along those shredded lineaments tracing the burnt course of love. (I another's)

Her pain disguised her smile, for righteousness it was for her, to suffer. (I)

The stranger had to return to watch this autarchic spectacle, to take pleasure in the kingdom he was rebuilding. A fugitive, yet he had returned home to the tree, to ask, to know, to plead. When we stand at the altar of things sacred, only with sacrifice can we believe.

(Joimoti)

Lullabies

2009-04-20T05:07:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a story, just one single story, which joined heaven and earth like an umbilical chord. It tried to explain everything but failed miserably as a lullaby. As a result the children never slept, they were like the chattering wind playing over rooftops and valleys, gardens and paved paths.

A worried father in search of dreams for his child built a ladder of bamboos up to the sky. One night when his stack was ready he climbed up the staircase in search for the magic that made the stars sleep all day. He never reached the stars, though he did touch the moon as the sticks and stones came tumbling down. He was never seen again; some say he is still among the clouds.

But the children slept from that night on. For a few words came down along with the pieces of the broken tower. The moon seduced them all into teller of tales. Others say it made them liars, each with their own Pandora’s tongue.

Many, many years later a stranger would arrive on these hills of poetry, bearing many gifts, of them the stories of sons and mothers would seduce the valley once again. A few would like these stories better before sleep and a handful would claim they could never be lullabies. In search of tunes for his father’s insomniac soul a son would build a stairway to heaven.

(Jarong)

The Ritual

2009-04-19T08:17:00.001-07:00

Put on the light and then put on the light.

The ceremony shall begin with a flicker.

On submissive knees domination strikes,

through ecstasy it sleeps.

One with another, many together,

round around the imitated fire.

Singing orchids invoke denial of death,

prolong these lies, hasten the sighs.

Choked confessions - a devil's sabbath;

star-grime tears trace the face.

Dionysian mumble sweeps the heavens,

like dust frequencies in the air.

Rainsong

2009-04-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

The bodies of the victims lay decomposing in their own stench on the hospital floor. The doctors couldn’t do much about the de-hydrated dead; of them two went to heaven, three to hell and the rest to the morgue. As for the doctors they hit the bar, this one was for the dead. In the end all that lay on the drenched floor was a piece of innocent white sculptured water. Changing shapes the body took on new meanings that of murder, sacrifice, love, ritual – the tabloids would add a few more and the sheriff would narrow it down to suicide. Medical records were contend with asphyxia.

The dead dame’s file was about the rain – hard broken down rain that seemed to have suffered from a bout of amnesia, forgetting to pay its regular visit downtown. First people thought of it as a meteorological fuck-up, later they decided it was more of cosmic in nature - like Zeus's mysterious ways in the labyrinths of passion. People downtown changed their minds often not for the lack of principles but because it is hard to stay focused while chasing the dragon.

The story became a legend overnight (can’t say even before her body was cold). It goes that a few heads got a mysterious call somewhere around 3 a.m. The voice at the other end wasn't clear - nothing was on those days, when phonelines kept falling from the skies, 'cause of those damn birds pecking at them like a dead dog's intestines. The call was unlike any bartender had ever heard, but so like every sleuth's fantasy about a price and a dame. It seemed someone had kidnapped rain and wanted another skirt dead, as the ransom. The voice was sinister about the demands - wanted this babe drowned in the pool unlike the usual way with a bullet in her head as the switch-deal. The doctors called the whole mess 'mass hysteria', the tabloids ‘Armageddon rings', the sheriff left that part out from his report.

So they dressed up this broad in gold and silk, opened a bottle of wine, told her about the payoff and led her to the pool with a Remington behind her head. But some say she agreed and was on her own, maybe they changed their story later out of guilt. The butler was right on the case though, about the night being too dry and dark to ascertain anything for fact. Perhaps she did agree, after all she was a bit heavy in the head. Or was it love, sacrifice and redepmtion? But redepmtion from what, the priest would ask right after the words"...even though we walk through... shadow...you are with me...", at the funeral. But on that night she wasn't some lonley bridesmaid waiting still like those ivory cherubs in a chruch corner, she was a bride. As she walked down the pool she sang her own wedding song, eventually down the grape-vine of reflection it would turn into a dirge. Others would improvise it to P.J. Harvey, Led Zep and Bowie.

She looked just like a bride with borrowed apologies, old wine and new acid in her veins; shroud was her veil, as water kissed her last breath away leaving the lingering taste of death. (Someone threw in a silver penny for Charon or for whoever ran the numbers those days). Too bad the drowning mermaid like the birdbrain Aesacus found only herself, realizing in a deathly epiphany the narcissitic nature of love. The pool swallowed her whole just like them snakes in the Amazon, which reminded her husband of another wedding, another song – somewhat distant but so very similar. The whole affair was till death do them part.

An hour later she was on the hospital floor. Lying liquidated her life seemed to have borrowed some of its stillness from her faded photographs and its madness from her broken gramaphone. An existence of borrowed emotions, ending in that forsaken moonless night or perhaps in some last beat of the tenth bar. As for the rain it did come.

She left behind a son. And now he is back dressed in cheap grindhouse tradition. Mixing bullets and babes. She wouldn't exactly be proud of him. Nevertheless she is going to be love every bit of it in the classical Greek sense.

(Kamala Kuwari)

Heredity

2009-04-18T12:02:00.001-07:00

G for the goat and eagle,

C the wolf so regal.

A snake in the tree,

T is for tigers in the sea.

of knowing

2009-04-18T05:18:00.000-07:00

The Libarian issues me dreams, stories that I cannot keep. To return always to silence as in silent shelves they begin. Longing to live, attracted to forbidden things, neglecting what could have been mine accepting the wind, I walk miles and miles always down the same aisle. Having lived a million lives, a thousand lies, I must return.

The library is a strange place, so many words yet so quiet. How like you, for more I try to curve you out of silence the more I seem to lose you. I wonder if there is a place for me in your infinite silence; mine is bare. I have stolen all the words in this world, yet they don't make a sound.

(gutless)

2009-04-17T14:29:00.001-07:00

While Isis' touch traces the sky, strands of falling hair hides the stars, a soft breath of satin clouds closes the shimmering eyes... Before the coming storm a reluctant drizzle encloses silence with consent with whispers in the air, thunder of the dead, a drop in a rose, a finger silences them all. Black cigarette stains remain... creaking cannibalistic mouths send shivers down the spine, howling trees talk of things gone by; have we forgotten all? Confining existence only to sounds - long gone, long gone... Broken, the sky crumbles down in stones, puddles of clothes on the ground, a million fingers pulls us down. Nothing, only lipsticks traces stay behind...

(heartless)

2009-04-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

Dearest,

There is strange witchcraft in your love. Ever since you came and went away like a dream, I have missed you until I found you in me. And yes, love hurts! Your photograph stuck to an old rusted frame lie abandoned in my stomach.

The doctors are amazed, from a broken x-ray machine, through denial they have gone on to hysteric stares, stopping short of catharsis. But a celebration is out on the streets – a carnival of revelations of seven deaths.

I don’t know if you are for real or some fairy called forth by the shaman. His vengeful words speak of apocalypse, but my world ends everyday in poetry. Mourning, I have realised has nothing to do with existence.

Fate you must be, whom magic turned into a fairy. Lamia you could be, which I forbid anatomy to reason. Calm depths you will be, but ripples I do not seek. Love you are, not born of a hunt but from Asmodeus’ wrath.

Farewell.

(headless)

2009-04-16T19:11:00.000-07:00

I am soaked with death, smelling of flowers from ancient poets. A kiss dragged from the last breath – sanctity in solace.

Lamenting mother of longing, caught in your tresses nothing smells human anymore. Above all sorts of depths, below flatlines blue and dark you walk up to doors. I remember the taste of blood, my sister, my twin – incest without a touch.

Another play of words, set of books, shredded thoughts, flesh perhaps, but not a sin, not yet my love. Disabled love, was blind now deaf, creaking on wheelchairs, feeding on amphetamine – adrenaline rushes me into the arms of melted clocks.

I have done Narcissus and Echo proud. My helplessness such a cliché; can’t even be sorrow, not even coherent lies.