Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Love
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
If It Could Be Said
We would not muddle over mojitos
All night. We passed by this road
And kept getting lost at the same
Red light. Turning a violent green of the
The heart. But it aches and nothing will
Kill this pain. Not until
It has been said.
He slapped me for no reason she said.
When Emilia asked what the blue face was all about.
Then she thought of all the other men she could have been with right now.
Men who had sworn to love her perfectly.
And amongst them she thought of that boy,
Who, would stand under her window,
Drunk like the gondola he was on
Plucking an elaborate tune on his guitar.
She thought of his slightly ugly face
How his hair had curled, in all the wrong ways.
She thought how pathetic he had seemed back then
On his daddy’s boat.
But today she took out her phone book
And called him before she could change her mind.
She wanted out of this prison island for good.
And his daddy’s boat didn’t seem so bad after all.
She dialed his number, hoping he’d still be there.
It rang and she could tell he was on roaming.
First ring, second ring, third ring, she decided she’d hang up if he didn’t pick up by the fifth ring.
Fourth ring, she was desperate…she decided to hang up on the seventh ring.
Fifth ring, then a beep and a voice on the other side said “hello”.
She lifted her head and looked into the mirror. The voice said “hello” again.
In the mirror she saw her life with him, in shades of pink and blue.
She ran to her bathroom because she thought she would be sick.
She hung up.
But that night she went to bed with a swan – song and a dagger.
The song was for her husband. So was the dagger.
Tomorrow she thought to herself, as she lay in the dark for him to come to bed.
Tomorrow will be mine…
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Spring...is a very long wait...
one day a very sudden day
the sun will be just right.
And its heat will travel deep into
the bones of an old woman
so she exhales with all her might.
This smells like spring.
After all the solidity of drudgery
one day everything begins to float
not on water but on nothing.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wednesday
..because you bring with you the hindsight of hope
and the foresight of heartbreak...
sometimes you're like an impossibly bad film
at others you're a friendly cafe in the middle of nowhere
when I've walked for four hours and there's only four more to go...
*"You are like a wednesday"
These lines are from a fantastic play by Sarah Kane called Crave
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
To you all; the keepers of my culture,honour and shame...
Dear Boys from the Ram Sene (and such like),
I admit that I have been a complete failure at upholding my "honor" even though I am an educated, intelligent adult citizen of this country. I have been quite vexed at my own actions and I must confess my crimes immediately to you -
-occasionally having a quiet drink with friends at a pub.
-going out dancing because I love to dance and have always thought it a great way of unwinding after a long and tiring week.
-going back home on a bus with a boy who studies in my college. I see why even though we live close to each other we must not get on the same bus to go to college (i will suggest to him that he should always take the later bus, so what if he misses a lecture...afterall we're talking of "honor" here).
-wearing "western" clothes because they're comfortable and easy to manage.
-speaking my mind and striving to forge my own identity as a woman and a human-being.
-falling in love and showing the person I love that I love him.
-acknowledging my body and its needs and desires.
You have opened my eyes now. But I regret to inform you that since I've spent too many years in the habit of being shameless try as I may I am unable to do things differently. This worried me quite a bit until last week when I saw you all on t.v. I am so delighted that I no longer have to worry about my honor since you have decided to take care of me. What would women like me do without you?
And so I am thrilled to send you my pink panties today. As keepers of my shame I hope you will take care of them. I will now roam the world less burdened with this matter of my honor and reassured that my shame is well taken care of by all of you who have so graciously taken the role of being the "keepers of my culture, honour and shame."
Yours sincerely,
A Shameless (& now obviously panty-less) Indian Woman.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Gaza
And no one is able to say who started it.
There, people shrouded in glowing white
Move around, mostly children.
It is a silent procession through broken down buildings made of alphabets
A playground that came apart under lights, like a nervous acrobat
With a spine of cactus.
A little farther down the road, is the " Dead Mothers' Lost and Found Dept."
"Finders keepers", they say, "Losers weepers", they say.
Continuing into the night, they will find their favourite film star,
On fire, frightened and not such a hero afterall.
He will die, forever, and the thought will break that girl's heart.
They come upon a barbed mirror and ask;
"Are we on the wrong side, or is that the right side?"
Then the youngest and weakest of those children
That boy right at the back of the amnesty queue
Who has silently been fitting together these pieces of alphabets, acrobats, dead mothers
and broken hearts into his jigsaw puzzle memory,
that boy will say
"I can't wait to grow up and find out"
Do you ever wonder
about the terrifying whirligig of time?
Monday, January 12, 2009
Love Song for Mephisto (1)
In your eyes, Mephisto,
Are promises of a hellish love
I'll take it; Because you see
In these years I have come to doubt
That there is any other sort.
www.oleanova.com/
By the artist Olea Nova
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Monday, January 05, 2009
Why are we taught to fight all feeling? Especially feeling that might make us honest or vulnerable...Truth is fragile and often breaks like old women's bones. A broken heart. A scattered smile. The wish to draw tortoise shells on all the walls and breathe life into them...But
Never go so far that you may not return. After all death is so incurable. Static and stubborn like a finishing line. It takes away the beauty of a place, borrowing from it its eternity - never, never to return that moment of the sea.
This is who I am. Who I wish to be. Why must I fear that eye which looks at me. It is mine own. I must speak because this silence will drive me insane. Sometimes the music envelops me - lifting me from this room and beyond the forgotten owl's nest. Only sometimes.
Then what of those green burdens? Can I leave them for the cart to carry when it takes me away? Power, Courage, Honor, Right, Success - I try to believe in all these things. Perhaps I even do. And it shames me so the believing and the non-believing only because often I get greedy for an answer, which is which, who is who.
And then you say there will be time for everything.
Ah! that these days might have passed by a blue sea or in sun flower fields. But now these things; the blue sea, the goldmines of a sunflower field, aquatic life, other galaxies and the sadness in the music that the Cello brings - now they must be collected and pressed into folds of words - one day, a Spring day, to be found out again and thrown away into that place where we throw away everything that ever mattered.