I think of you often, Deucalion. Of how you cared for me when my mind was torn apart on seacoast rocks. Your eyes were massy, bold. They saw into my heart, so sad and lost. The fingers of your hands like the kind roots of the fig, wrapped around me; lifting me gently from that bloody rock, Tarpeian scourge, which I had known so long. You kept me hidden, sang to me, kept me safe inside your soft membrane, through which I watched the silhouettes of waving trees, heard the call of insects and the pulsing of bio-machines. I felt your presence so often in those days, so often at night when my sobbing caused the soft walls to reconvolute, I would hear you sighing too. We belong too much to others, Deucalion.
Tenant
she rented
this room
next door to mine
i often heard her crying
late at night.
whenever she saw me
though, she smiled,
said she wanted
to improve her life,
enrol in courses
to be better qualified.
i remember
laughter
coming through the wall
look, a shopping list
numbers, scribbles
her weekly budget
a picture, names of books
to read, pages ripped
or creased…
recently
at different times
i heard screams
when i saw her
she looked scared
scars across her skin
then she was evicted
we never met again
कमल
ripeness the reward
of patience
the weight of duty
measured by the hours
attendant on that bench
head hung
shoulders hunched
back bent
cycles of deep quiet
parse into him
he contemplates totality
the rush of time
pushing
outward to what is
the beauty
of the rise and fall of light
a great god
sitting breathing
staring deep into the world
light falling on their faces
whose untroubled mien
hints at secrets
not yet betrayed by life
the light stays longer now
it spreads
grows ripens sheds
its warmth
then is allayed
by some hidden intercessory
there is a swathe
a living space
opening in time
the buried seed
becomes a lotus
one cannot die
one may reject
a course of action
yet one will nevertheless
be forced to act
because of karma
the inevitable actions
of character formed
in a particular way
a saint cannot be stopped
once dead
dead inside his life
alive inside his death
this is the basic premise
his power held in check
until such time
men grow hungry for the truth
his blindness meets the sun
into his wounded mind
a sign flashes
his flesh screams out
the trial begins
the witness begs
to leave and the jury
will not answer to the judge
to try this man will bring
judgement and their end
Mango
in yellow ochre
a girl just smiled
the umbra
of her face
blushing ripe
a mango
alive with sunny light
Horrors
1
First time up I found I was middle of the file. That scared me. I felt a target. As if my being end of the line would have helped. Doing time, you come to learn about the futility of resistance and the powerful logic of brute force. You have to find a level in your dealings with yourself in relation to the other men. In time, just through letting yourself be counted, you acquire a certain status. You are done with the truths you held with respect to yourself. You become the bean flicked up and down in the abacus held by the strongest inmates. The way you put it, it sounded like you thought prison was all about holding out. It isn't. Its only in here for the first time I learnt to let go.
2
Year after year he had visited the area, but this time around, despite returning to the same coordinates, he could establish no connection with the past. The rules which built reality had shifted. The heat forced one at every point to stand still and contemplate the next move in advance. The fall of darkness offered great release. An unknown creature whooped from a thicket on the pampa. The animal bore purple stripes down her thighs. Her breasts formed of pink sponge like protuberances. He wrapped bandages around the wound in her side still swollen from infection. The panier of water he urged gently to her lips. One day he would understand what all of this meant. His repulsion of her body lessen. Her monstrous form provoke desire.
3
The question as to whether I should stay or not was decided for me by the junta. I applied for a leave of absence which was not granted. I asked many people but none remembered her. I saw how in death just as in life a memory is betrayed. What law or spiritual jolt had imposed such fear ? The city was engulfed in suffering but none of it visible. Yet I noticed how the young men wrung their hands. How the women bowed their heads and kept their distance. I guessed her body had already been disposed of. I asked about its where abouts but no one knew. Its difficult to speak about that time in my life. The events of those days are like objects whose definite outline or mass is obscured under a heavy blanket. I'm not sure for how long she was tortured. Perhaps over a period of five days. Her hands were swollen blue her wrists tied off with wire. The pelvis smashed legs broken one foot dangled by a tendon, its shoe half off. Her eyes frozen in a penetrating sideways glare like fear expressed in stone.
4
A knock on my arm. A woman begging. Her clawed hand an image which repels me. Her child tugs at my trousers. Sluggishly incanting. The poor use the language of infants yet we refuse them.
5
The windscreen had shattered on impact and the woman in the front passenger seat flung onto the road ahead. The car steering wheel was embedded in the ribcage of the deceased driver, his head snapped backwards. A toddler screamed from a baby seat behind, now pushed forward so that the infant's writhing hands were wedged against his own face.