Nothing pinned

In one flick I let it go

like a knife-thrower at a circus
and it strikes home
trembling at its place
beside your face
but nothing is pinned
it leaves you free
to walk away

 

Did I tell you

my foremothers
were hewers of wood
and tillers of land?
they had nothing to do
with throws of sharp edged knives
at love or life.
Or poetry.

How then have I wandered

into this marquee
in sequinned
leotards, you and me?
distorted blood in my veins
knife in hand, between my teeth
cutting silver arcs
in the air and nothing pinned.



For OPL@dVerse

Lovers' Cove Challenge #4

 

It's that time again! Time to head on over to apd-loverscove.blogspot.com, otherwise known as Lovers' Cove and take part in this week's challenge! Please read the Guidelines and Q's & A's thoroughly before entering! In short, you must come up with a line of 15 words or less and your line must continue on in thought based on what the previous person on the linky wrote!

 

Andy

"Behold! I am renewed again, for the spirit of love has descended upon my heart!"

  

Crystal

"Years, I've wandered aimlessly through the midst of the shadows trying to elude the dark."

 

Elen

"Darkness isn’t always so dark becomes hope when our imagination wants to look for a light."

 

Radwa

"A light that has been trying to find its sight through such darkness night."

 

 

Kriti

"This darkness becomes me, I am but the light of our shadow that quivers."

 
 

Eclipse

"Yearning for a flight towards the dream, away from the claws of fear."

 

Lubaina

"And I rise, rise towards destiny till what the heart wants seems so near."

 

My line

"Yea, and  so I rise, wearing this darkness that’s also light, like sapphires beyond price."

 

Not eternal, but still sure

Whether you are here, or somewhere remote
love doesn’t spare distances a single thought
when you are here, and when you are far
I am who I am, you are who you are

 

I’ve known that somehow, without knowing anything

though days are frittered misunderstanding
the connections between us, but it’s always true
that I am still me and you are still you 

 

Love isn’t frail and it doesn’t waver

whether we’re apart or we’re together
I claim nothing about eternal, but of this I’m sure
I know who I am, and I know who you are.

 

It’s just that these eyes as they get old

well up a little quicker as you cross the threshold.

RFW Challenge 43: Romantic Picnic

 

The night’s starry and fine

Let’s not waste our hours indoors
I’ll lift your mood with mine

 

Wouldn’t you prefer to dine

On the leaf-layered forest floor?
The night’s starry and fine

 

Bread and a bottle of wine

Under canopies of sycamore
I’ll lift your mood with mine

 

The learned poets opine

True lovers need nothing more
The night’s starry and fine

 

There’ll be firefly designs

And moon-shadows to explore
I’ll lift your mood with mine

 

Let our laughter combine

And forget your troubles sore
The night’s starry and fine
I’ll lift your mood with mine



This is my first submission to Romantic Friday Writers.

The back lanes of grief

Let us go back then, along the footbridge from stranger,

wider roads where the dented single-decker buses
sag with the weight of droopy passengers
breathe out a long sigh and move on. A street urchin washes
some indeterminate materials at the tube well
maybe they were once clothes, no-one can tell
what they are now, sudden onrushes
of winds? exhausts? makes them swell
out in grey and khaki. Messy romances
start and end by the wayside in sudden flashes.

Let us see if we can somehow recover

the same tracks of miracles and mistakes
though a million feet have trampled them over –
the tea-beakers shattered into terracotta flakes
mixed in now with the muddy rainmade brooks
flowing fast and surreptitious in the nooks
of the kerb and the road. But retakes
are rare.  All loving is messy if one looks
close enough, and associated heartaches
need not end though there are gaps and breaks.

The evening closes over the city and us

like the parted waters of the sea come together and close
after the gods have churned them for poisonous
swills and immortality elixirs.  The wind blows
a streamer of scorched smells from the welding workshop
over our heads. We are compelled to stop
at all the places of our past waiting in rows
to be made over into the future. The stars drop
into their spaces overhead, a bus comes and goes
without us dangling from its bony elbows. 

We’ve spent the first mists before darkness

in walking fairgrounds beside the strangely wide road -
the grasses creep up, the clots of people get less
the odd jobber wraps up his mask and electrode
the lampposts switch their lights on in one sweep.
Come now my love, along the back lanes of grief
stories may get messy but must be given what is owed -
an ending, a disclosure, and an unshaken belief
that mistakes too are precious, equally hallowed;
that its gold may be thin but will not corrode.


Linked to : Blog hop Saturday

Missing you

Where are you? I sorely miss the poetry

of your presence, though it’s nothing iambic
and I miss the flick
and flash of your tools, the free
flow words, the offhand trick
of slow turning thoughts, the silence slick
with them, flooding into me.

My days are the vast bare plains

when the bright small spots of the tourist balloons
have floated above them and then left, afternoons
of ancient tombs, honeycombed terrains,
exhausted birdcalls losing their tunes
and a lone heron pacing out flamingo lagoons
among flocks of indifferent standstill cranes.

Closet

The shutter creaks open, peeled paint

flakes into a crude mask of a grimace

brows knitted together in some faint

puzzlement, at any rate a close enough likeness

Why should it take so long to clear cupboards

of diaries and dresses and shoes someone wore

of post-it scraps, scrawled numbers and words

stuck on the back of a wooden door

Why does it take so long to return?

Why do hands pause at the drawer?

before making a bent key finally turn

this last time and then no more, no more

the shutter creaks shut, the sound high and thin

the flakes of paint fall gently. Clods on coffins.

Missing things

I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me

coarse and greased with its intimate fluids
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free

the broken hollows of the darkwood tree

limbs frozen in sky-battle, wearied
I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me

the prods and blades, the spikes of weaponry

the paws and claws of scrubs that look timid
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free

heartsongs of deserts carried as winds’ confetti

grains within grains singing soft but lucid
I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me

dove-grey afternoons, monsoons, the galaxy

of starspined raindrops and pierced eyelids
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free

the clean cleft coasts by the salt fringed sea

the lethal cuts on lands minced by liquids
I miss the nuggets the earth once threw at me
I wish I hadn’t frittered them, pushed free.

Four quarters of the day

The newspaper collector comes around with his harsh call

shattering the humid Sunday morning beyond my wall
a couple of rickshaws lazily twirl their conjoint wheels
and a sudden squeeze on their lo-tech honker feels
like the televisual scream of dying birds that tumble and fall
plummeting from the sky in a strident cosmic drawl.

The noon comes veiled, in the guise of some evening

when the light turns murky well before it’s time to bring
each hour of the day together in neat pleats and tuck
them into the waistband of the sun, and to chuck
this neutral light over her left shoulder, splitting
the day from dark and the twilight’s final fling.

The traffic peaks by habit at the appointed hours

even during holidays, the hollow concrete towers
disgorge their inmates for the mandatory merry
making, a bigwig’s white car cruises, her red cherry
sits flush on her roof, the inmate sits flushed in flowers
torn and strewn around her even as her public sours.

The night is poor in stars and silence, to sleep and fade

is surely wasteful, when there is so much to be made?
A prescribed life must stay wide awake and urbanity
equals unblinking sodium eyes of a frantic sleepless city
and I too, urbane insomniac, lazily parade
my goblet held high on my terrace and arcade.

Touch

I feel your touch on my nape

across the room; when the shape

of the shadows change, and the doorway there

frames your silhouette.  The light flares

into a precious dimness like never before

when you block the light-stream at that door.

Haven’t you felt mine?  Haven’t you known

the same lightness at your collarbone?

each time I shared the same space

my fingers on your face

like soft rain on the sea

soaking into anonymity.

Touch me here again and make me flare

into dimness, into rain, into anonymously rare.

Rusty coins

Half of love is squandered on unworthy things

and the other half still kept aside for special use
through the break the years fall, and fall the springs
what’s gone is gone, and what’s left slowly devalues
the currency of love rusts, the coins aren’t shining
they glow only when they’re spent, and rot in disuse.

The migrant birds that fly out with the white tipped wings

in torn chevrons sharp against the twilight blues
they seem too common to deserve any special loving
their flights too routine, predictable, to amuse
the same mundane motifs repeat at all beginnings
and end without any drama over which to enthuse.

The grasses grow deep, at the horizon the evenings

bloom into a purple darkness, in ones and twos
the stars come in, a chiffon white moon sliver swings
up between the limbs of trees, but resolves no issues
these too are just ordinary, none of them brings
out that special love, there’s nothing to choose.

And so love is picky, and so inevitably the pickings

get slimmer and slimmer while it fusses and reviews
what it can afford to throw away, and what it’s keeping
it ends up too self-absorbed, and easy to confuse
And so it loses both halves of itself and there is nothing
left in its hands except rusty coins, and residues.

Only one road

The dawn breaks a little early, and so do I

whatever little I possess is strewn around
like headstones in a graveyard no-one comes by
sinking softly and slowly down into the ground

I have bought fresh offerings, the shredded

petals and sandal, clarified the fat
into a clear honey, readied for the dreaded
long night journey down into combat

The journeys break a little early, and so do I

not in one spectacular twist of bone and sinew
red fountains of marrow spurting up high
but bit by bit without a complete breakthrough

The dawn breaks a little early with a mist under the dome

there may be a thousand roads but only one leads me home

Inexact, diffuse and deep

Because all my losses weren’t exact

I didn’t think to mourn, or weep
they couldn’t be summed in one neat fact

Days keep them private, and time is backed

thrust into work but can only creep
because all my losses weren’t exact

Friends handle my house with muted tact

and tiptoe around where memories sleep
they couldn’t be summed in one neat fact

The smoke from sorrow isn’t easily tracked

but it’s wrong that diffuse can’t be deep
because all my losses weren’t exact

Nothing at all has shattered on impact;

for they don’t crash, just that they seep
they couldn’t be summed in one neat fact

There’s little left with which to transact

life with its sale of laughter and grief
Because all my losses weren’t exact
they couldn’t be summed in one neat fact.

Lovers' Cove Challenge : Coffee?

Lovers' Cove set a writing challenge, which you can read about at  http://apd-loverscove.blogspot.com/   I continue from Crystal's thought

Challenge #2

Word count: 30

She looked thoughtful, ” I barely know you, yet  there is a connect.  It’s odd, I’m not normally like this.  We need to talk this over a coffee.  Coming? ”

Ghazal : Take my hand

I’ve got no flashy lamps to light, come take my hand

Touch trades off for lack of insight, come take my hand

I don’t know if we’ll tread upon marshlands or common cobblestones
but we will go in together, upright, come take my hand

Anywhere you fall I’ll set you straight and I take it you’ll reciprocate
and once in a while be grasped too tight, come take my hand

Walk the miles with me, or choose to stay, the trip’ll get over either way
It’s not measured in length or width or height, come take my hand

Love’s a risk, and so is friendship we each know this about all the trips
the way is dark but the reward’s bright, come take my hand

Dark needn’t be something to fear, when it’s dark and the skies are clear
that’s when the stars come alive, alight, come take my hand

Forget the common metaphors, the stereotypes that reinforce
light’s always clarity. That’s also trite, come take my hand