Home and Garden

 

'Aparajita' or unvanquished. Blue pea.

 

I.

You plant something and you think – this is mine,

this bougainvillea, this blue pea vine,

this periwinkle and dwarf screw pine –

in time I’ll be calling them home.

 

Home’s a garden, a chair, a balcony,

a particular drape of a fig tree,

the end of the road and tranquility.

But bear in mind nothing’s your own.

 

The annuals bloom as per their schedules,

and the blue pea doesn’t follow your rules,

it puts out shaggy tendrils, minuscule

protests against the frame it’s grown.

 

You know the perennials – the neem and lime,

if they take root, they’ll be here a long time

and they’ll outlast you, even the blue pea vine

will grow back in springs when you’re gone.

 

Home is where my plants are – that’s what you think.

But know in the end, the red, blue and pink

will fade and regrow and you’ll leave with nothing –

there’s no garden you can call home.

This is the first part of a three part poem, 5X3, 15 stanzas in total, each with a 5,5,5,4 beat and an aaab slant rhyme scheme, with b being repeated throughout in monorhyme. I don't know why I am telling you this, because it shouldn't matter a jot to the reader anyway, however important it might feel to the writer. It's taken me two weeks to complete. Its symmetry feels like an accomplishment, it's pleasing. I'm hyperaware that it might feel boring to someone else. What do you think?

I'm still afflicted by the same old same old bee in my ancient bonnet - the prompt for this one floated up on my feed somewhere, it was one of those framed-text wall art and it read - 'Home Is Where My Plants Are' in a squiggly decorative font,  suspended over rather a lush container garden. 

Tbh, that statement in my case should read home is where my books are. Ennyhoo. My own container garden is anything but lush at the mo, incessant rains and the painters' safety tarps hung for months on end have taken their toll, but I'm happy to report the plants are now recovering. On reflection, I find that I've unconsciously put in the plants that I've seen around me growing up - hibiscus, the blue pea, periwinkle. Recreating in miniature on my balcony what was once planted in and around our home in Maiduguri many yonks ago. On further reflection, hibiscus  has been a part of my balcony/garden/home in every single country I've lived in as an adult as well. Neems and Flamboyants have been part of my microenvironment too in some unobtrusive way. Some flowers/trees just define home even when one thinks it is better defined by books or something else. 

The second and third part of the poem get into the ultimate garden, how unpossessable it is and how expulsion/exile is its defining feature. And then humans spend all their days longing for it and trying to get back in.  I guess for most of us with ordinary childhoods, that is our eden which we try to recreate and of course we fail - the past is past, there is no recreating it, there is no selective reliving it in any format whatsoever. There is only the present and the planting. And if successful, someone will enjoy the show down the line after one is gone. 

Hope you and your plantings are defining beauty, tranquility and whatever else you want them to. Have a brilliant week. 

Don't Have a Thing to Wear

 

Screenshot from the Guardian this morning. Spike in hate crimes in India as well. 

Should I tell my children not to wear a scarf? –

be it chequered black or otherwise,

the public seems to have stoppered its heart

and some people have hate in their eyes.

Should I tell my sons what to wear and when,

should they for now strictly shun the hoodie?

The governments link crime with clothes and skin

the police and the public seem moody.

 

Should my old father give up his upaveet,

and my old friend stop wearing his skull cap?

The powers see the world in black and white

and paint in splotches of red on the map.

 

Disposal

 

Anywhere on earth, in the hills or plains,

when the last one’s drawn, and no breath remains - 

lay the withered grass down on any terrain

and there’s no need to disturb the gods.

 

Feel free not to chant prayers at the pyre -

and by the way, either would do, soil or fire -

home isn’t a point, a place to retire,

because home is, after all, a road.

 

And if you’re feeling brave, when I’m gone

let the birds have the flesh, the sun bleach the bones,

neither fire nor fuss, nor digging nor stone,

just a slow collapse into the clods.

 

Like a small footprint washed off by the sea,

a paper boat sunk after its short journey,

atoms imploding into eternity

without markers for where they implode.

Don’t disturb the gods, don’t disturb the soil,

don’t sully the air with heat and huge turmoil

don’t light up the lamp, don’t pour out the oil,

lose me gently to this bay that is broad.

Keep it light and soft, keep it natural

both the print and tread quiet, and erasable,

the end a laying down, no special disposal,

let me scatter where I fall with my load.

Reflections on the painting of an unknown artist in the previous exhibition at Harbour Gate

Imagine first a rusty strand of barbed wire,

then a bird sketched in soft russets and sapphires

perched beside the spines, painted against the sky -

just inches from pain, yet also free to fly.

This week I am a participant at Confluence – an exhibition of collaborative art and poetry at the Harbour Gate, organised by Bahrain Financial Harbour and the Bahrain Writers’ Circle. The exhibition is the first of its kind on this island where poets and artists have got together to make some awesome artworks combining images and words. This is, of course, not the first time I've done this kind of collaboration, check out this post and this too, but putting poems up at an exhibition? - that's a first for me....However, it's not what I wanted to tell you today. 

What I wanted to tell you is that I was at the venue last Wednesday. The artworks were being dropped off in preparation for the display to be set up on the next day.  And the previous exhibition, a large one of some 40-50 artists from Philippines, was being taken down to free up space for us. One of those paintings caught my eye and inspired this quatrain. 

Life is about perching on barbed wires and knowing when to lift off, about balancing the risks with the toeholds. I guess I am that bird in some ways. And goes without saying, I am also a tube light - wasn't nimble enough to take a photo, or the artist's name, before they whisked it off the display, otherwise you wouldn't really have to imagine the barbed wire or anything...

BUT...on the other hand - think I'm on target as far as the writing of teeny tiny with superlong titles goes :)  

I'll let you know how the exhibition turns out - wish us luck! 

The carrom men

Credit

Like the discs of carrom, we friends too, are

gathered in a circle here, every day;

at the first strike we too are scattered far,

and some fall, while some remain to play.

Sometimes the game is close and passions swift,

and the player might miss a couple of men,

the queen plays hard to get, or drops a gift,

but the one who wins her loses her again.

It’s all shatter and change at every strike

in carrom as in life, it’s just the same

you’ve got to play it, like it or dislike,

you take the board you get in either game.

A few days back, I saw an image of four men playing carrom, not this image, a different one - one to which I have no rights and can't digitally sneak in here :) But being rubbish at digital sneaking does not stop me from drawing word-images in my head. Incidentally, the discs are technically called 'carrom men' - which is what sparked off the whole thing. 

Carrom always reminds me of long afternoons and evenings with my mum, playing various board and card games. By the time this posts, I'll hopefully be on my way to her, but there won't be any carrom played when I get there. No games left in that house. But the parental home is always the parental home, carromful or carromless...right? 

Because I'll be travelling off and on next few weeks, it might take me a bit of time to scramble back online, but I'll get here whenever I can. 

Meanwhile, stay well and keep your game on and lively! :) 

Breadcrumbs trail

If you're looking for my A-Z post, click here.

If you’re into A-Z

and you want a visit back

then do follow what I’ve said

leave a trail, please leave a track.

Leave a link with every post -

of course I want to visit you,

but it’s easy to get lost

Blogland’s great, but confusing too.

Leave a mark wherever you go

leave a link and leave no doubt

a Blogger profile doesn’t show

which one’s in, and which one’s out.

If you want me to swing by yours

please keep the path lit and clear

no breadcrumbs on the forest floor -

drop me an exact link here.

It doesn’t have to be clicky

paste it plain, and that’ll do,

without a link it gets tricky

for me to find my way to you.

I am not technosavvy

don’t set me a detective’s task

I need little to be happy

leave a link is all I ask.

I’m just bad at navigating

blogs, and life - cut me some slack,

make it simple, leave a link

so as I can visit back.

Okay I know I said no poetry, no rhyming, but it's Sunday, and April's the Poetry month, so hard to resist :)...I was catching up on the reading and returning, and felt a bit frustrated at not being able to track down a few A-Z visitors, therefore this request. Leave me a link A-Zers, please, pretty please!

And it's the start of the Holy Week - to those observing - greetings for Palm Sunday!

Another way to return

You still go back panicked, groping the old songs,

blinded in tunnels, to soothe your roughed-up

spirit. The muddy river comes along

in broken down wooden barges, loved up

smooth old piers, worn rusted cranes dipping

their necks into the water, and no-one

comes to greet you, and no-one is gripping

fingers tight in comfort, lifting your burden.

You can hear the sunlight playing, somewhere

on the waters, a cowherd with cattle;

but here it’s just four small, chocolate squares

of light on blank concrete, and static crackle.

The news comes on in the evening, and it’s

floating seaweed, there’s gunfire in the distance

mushrooms of smoke and dust on wizened targets

and faces still lean out, clenched in resistance,

and refugees are portioned, as if we’re

barbecue nations. You don’t know if Suzanne

will show you her harbours, if she’ll let you near

the river’s wavelength, or if she at all, can.

A lot of things top-of-mind today.  First off, I'll be returning to the  A-Z, and no two ways about that. The sign up is today. Not only will I be participating, I am in deeper than previously this year because I am a Ninja Minion on Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh's team. (If I knew the exact emoticon to express the yayness I would totally insert it here. But since I don't, just fill it in yourself)  I am also all signed up to participate in the Colours of Life Poetry Festival scheduled for mid-April, which is a(n offline) poetry event in my local community.

It's the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution today, so my friends there are very much on my mind too. Hope it goes safe and smooth and that they each get what they wish for in 2016, politically and otherwise.

Anyways, the upshot is - April is going to be a superbly amazing month! Can't-wait-but-also-love-the-waiting-and-working-writing-researching-rehearsing-part emoticon here. 

Have a great week!

First gold

Nature’s first gold is leaf, and grain;

far easier to love and obtain

than mere metal, however rare.

Yet grass is ignored, metals reign.

Another day at the circus

The space for dissent narrows to a thread,

violence now a religion, terrible bread

by which man insists on living alone,

heedless of what is defaced, mangled dead.

Brimming still

Yes, I thought of the wine and cup

and of course you sprang to mind, my love.
The night half-full of stars, the streams
brim with your absence, and flow rough.

 

Too blind tonight the lamp of moon

it rises too fast and sinks too soon
half empty its crescent thin glass gleams
on still dark waters of the lagoons.

 

I thought of you and the wine and cup

and this brimming emptiness felt enough
what’s full is full, what’s empty seems
too precious still to give it up.



 

Under an urbane sunlight

Midafternoon. The sunlight’s hard.

Intractable. Like raised placards
in the hands of silent citizens
pushed beyond frontiers of words,

 

far beyond bafflement and ken.

Exhausted men and women,
clock hands, numb bells, boulevards
ringed into rallies. Some broken,

 

bent contrails, spent smoke, and yards

of straight gun barrels and guards
and this hard smiling sunlight, fallen
on random faces, slogans, and hazards.

.

I’ll paint you a picture - easy dozen

birds to a cloud, speckled, sullen,
twisting in the sky, tugged homeward
under an urbane sunlight. And omens.

No explanations

I snap a flower with a trembling raindrop

folks admire the colours, applaud the whole job

so I don’t really have the heart to explain

that there is no colour to a drop of rain.