Blood

As the world rises down in flames, there is still the possibility that our hearts can remain open. Blood binds us all. A transfusion of possibility. That’s the one drop rule that men born of women did not need to legislate for it to be true.

My empathy rides the crocodile. My tears hold me accountable. Protect my hope. Love is a protest, witnessing in the dark with the delinquents who make a claim for the light. I dare to see you. Not through you. Where you crawl. Where I hide. Marrow of bone. Matter of life. A bridge between aspiration and despair. I’ve climbed your timeless stories that tell of what you saw before you knew. Babies. Your babies. Before you knew them. Before you saw the world through their eyes.

Mothers & Daughters

Blood is only as thick as the cake mix added and stirred with it. You can put blood in the spotlight but it won’t dance on command. The blood howls. Its lashes out. It bites. Its unruly. The splatter is our history. Maybe blood will not reconcile with blood. Maybe they will find sacred ground and tread lightly around the pain. At a distance they might greet cordially and in their small talk they might reveal things they will not explicitly say about how they feel. That cake mix is not going to hold together the fragility and mistrust. Time won’t cast lots and aspersions to see who surrenders a position of advantage on a Chess board. But a thousand words in a photograph knows all too well that it won’t matter in the end. Who was right? Who was wrong? Did she hold you firm? Did she kiss your cheek? Did she brush your hair as your helpless torso rested on her lap? Did she watch you crawl to her when she returned from work to a cold appartment shared with hangers on? An abode of drifters taking refuge with a half wanted child and a mother who stayed the course, when the river pulled at her hem. Mothers and daughters and the waters between them….

Painting by Piyali Muni

Unlearn

Fumbling treasures, we are wreckless, wild, word to the wicked. But if a child is a father of the man, there is hope of mouth to heart resuscitation. Cross words, quized and crossed out of bridges built and belted out of the mouth of babies.

Hmm….
Love on the hope lines drawn on calloused hands. And no Island is a man. Womb for rent. Love for sale. For free? Hate off the scale. Weighed. Expensive cake. We’ll eat it too.

Hmm….
Dingling. Dangle. When you choose to. When you unlearn to love. When you see how you kill your child everytime you kill me. Unborn. Unknown. When you see. And no man is an Island but he is seed to be planted. Where will your hate plant me so that I might flourish and grow down and strong enough to eat your children’s children? Dead or alive. Unlearn to love you. So deeply. That I might find you. Embrace you. Twist you. Turn you. Stir your eyes to acknowledge my death as I stare at the prize. Blood cries out. Abel holds the cain now. The dead are hungry too.

Small Death

Mother tongue is cool, and you can be the conscience of my indiscretion, or the remedy that triggers a poet’s latent talent out of the comfort zone and complacency of a reclining chair. Dormant, but not dead. Though he used to die a small death everyday, he thinks it would be best to live a lot, stop the rot from dot to dot like her heart forgot to die again today. And now we come to you and I, and now we wonder how and why? Wondering how high…is the drop? How long…till it stops? Its not the pain that troubles you, cause death serves a purpose of its own agenda, though I’d sooner be a warning sign for danger than the fool that got in the way of a stranger called Providence. And if it bites like last winter, and sister warm blood tastes better, then you should know that the fraud will be the block buster ’till further notice, but notice how your past reminds you of how far away your future cast you, drawing doodles with your minds eye, can’t see too well with your past life, and dearly beloved is a dwelling place for the restless, rowdy like premature ambition, a mission statement wears your age with contempt, crowded with sentiment on insecurity highway, down below, the parched valley raises up another question mark to consider in cubic shapes of monochrome colour, yeah underneath that red Sun, rising to fall, waking to sleep through fog, the distance, the drift, and your wondering how high is the summit of your desire, to climb back up from your small death, on the string of the loose change that barren land loaned you, the countless grains of Sahara’s sand timer tickles the unfancied soles of your feet into motion, defeats stagnation, anticipates the storm, marches on like the aftermath of the Somme, but will not carry the dead on depressed shoulders, and empty stomach.