Read if you wish

Read me, if you wish, like a two-fold pamphlet

handed out at street corners by children

forced out of childhood early, their eyes set

into surly orbits of need, desperate.

Patches of limp lines, thrust out as and when

the lights turn red.  A stereotyped gimmick

thrown into cars caught with windows open

weird damaged overlarge wings in that traffic

light, and sudden fright turning to a quick

indifference, “It’s that same old thing again”.

Or read me like frayed love letters, blinking

between dusty pages. The books from when men

still wrote letters, fancy penmanship and ink

counted for, not much, but still worth something.

Pressed, not thrown.  A shade of precious even,

preserved for a future nostalgia fix;

though the addressee didn’t know it then.

Or read me as I am, forget the tricks

of metaphor, of angles and semantics,

just words written into verse and plain spoken.

Fossils, Findings, and Prodigious Savants

I have known John J. White for the longest time, from the infancy of my blogging days and since my time at Helium, which was a long time ago indeed. John had a blog called "Give It Up, You'll Never Be Published" where he wrote forthright, quirky-humorous posts about writing and the quest for publication. An infrequent blogger, but a prolific, and multiple award-winning writer. His book Prodigious Savant was released last month, and two more titles are scheduled in 2015/16.  Check out his new author website.

Today I am honoured to have him here, sharing his insights and experience. All yours, John, and many thanks. 

Finding That Elusive Fossil

By J.J. White

“Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

Ashless

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen

It burns intense, and it also burns slow -

great heat, a sheer blue flame, finely haloed

but it yields nothing, no ash, minimal glow

and there’s no charred heap once it’s out, no broad

smear on soil from which meanings can be clawed.

Yes, it’s poetry, that tiny rimmed blue leap,

that transparent smoke with its musky smell

though it leaves no trace of itself in the sweep

of its own wide dispersal.  Hard to tell,

to tease out the proof that it’s burning well.

Because that quote from Cohen just took my brain in its jaws this morning and worried it like a big cat with its prey.

The first lesson

Image credit

Hassana was a schoolmate, tall, clean-limbed,

dark-skinned with the smooth bloom of a jamun;

a modern Noliwe if you like, undimmed

by a Shaka, a vibrant, stunning woman.

The two-year-old, mischievous toddler son

of our tutor was often at her hip -

Hassana’s I mean, after lessons were done.

A male an almost-part of a female rib.

Is he a relative that she babysits?

I’d asked her once, she’d thoughtfully replied,

‘no, but I like him, and it’s good practice

to work with a child hanging off your side.’

He left one day. I saw her grieve, understood

the first lesson of love, and of motherhood.

Steel bridges

I could make up the crooked bamboo bridges,

picturesque as a child’s first sketch, a rustic

stretch of water lily, the hard mud ridges

between paddies- an instant airy trick;

but my truth’s in urban spaces, the street

choked with smoke from exhausts, rush-hour traffic

inching toward where the factory fumes meet

low river mist, those the facts; not idyllic.

The truth is our bridges were steel, robust

and indestructible between this side

and that. And yet.  And yet the connects just

snapped, no way to the bridge, to firmly stride

back again through the lanes of smoke and dust,

across the river and close the divide.

Because I heard Lopamudra sing Sunil Ganguly's poem, Sankota Dulche (the bridge is swaying) ....and because of a death anniversary, you'd think that these dates would slip one's notice after some years, after all so many other things do, memory isn't what it used to be, but no, they somehow wriggle into the brain...and also because a friend mailed me...and my Sundays happen to be your Mondays... a multi-pronged attack of...not quite the blues, but blueish... autumn is a time of many personal milestones, some happy, some sad, a bittersweet season.

Long, long ago

Those days too

I looked at you

and laughed off shopping lists;

and I forgot

to follow the plot

and keep the dialogue crisp.

I kissed your brows,

overlooked laws,

kept too many doors ajar.

I left every side

too open, too wide,

stayed too long and went too far.

I touched your cheek,

swooshed down oblique

planes of your body and brain;

wherever I went

my life quickened

with this mad lovesong in my veins.

I lurched and stopped

every dream that plopped

away from your lashes and mine.

Of course things change,

feelings rearrange,

but that’s same after all this time.

For the love of all my lives, this and the next six..