a journal with poems written on the fly without much ado |
Night Letters .I. How terrible to fear the darkness when night opens old notebooks in giddy intensity? No doubt dismal dreams spilling over wrinkled pillowcases invite deeper examination of self or an avalanche of denials. Yet, Yours Truly here, possessing a pencil, diminishes the white space on sheets and calls it night’s poetry. The pleasure, if any, aside from complacency, could be communication with the thing inside for I am my only real audience. .II I thought I saw a shooting star somewhere around where the bears dipped down and a night bird sang in tuneful confirmation of one fragmented moment --I am not sure existed-- like the time when one hot word after another left his lips sounding like my name. .III. Once in a park, at night, we tangled as lovers, unfurling certainty and brave flesh; although we never knew what was needed to last a lifetime. The naked branches of the winter trees must have blessed us, then; because, forty years later, our fingers’ shriveled tips still touch as we sleep side by side like seeds about to burst open with the full moon. .IV. I don’t care anymore when people protest when I make a mistake. This is guaranteed: I’ll always make mistakes and the protestors will come after me with their silence or with their savage words, not knowing I now possess the hush of a ghost, a night ghost, who doesn’t care where she haunts. See, I am determined to go through walls with my back full of knives. .V. Why this hurt -akin to night fears- visits me so often? So far away you are in the next state, and our no-more home turns into a crate-like edifice tacked down by the loss of grown up children. Broken off my stem, we chased after them through light years of distances, without looking over our shoulders; even, while knowing they’ll never be back. “A moment that changed your life.” I remember the red dissolving the edges of her eyes, as her gaze locked into mine. The tears swelled, trickling out on her cheeks, drifting on to her ebon dress; she wiped them with the scarf that covered her hair. When she opened her lips and spilled out her whiny words, my heart grew hard and thorny. I felt she was campaigning for my true involvement, but I resisted in disbelief, all kinds of suspicious things tossing and turning inside my head, cramming this moment into the vault of my mind for the safe keeping of one bulging fact she uttered. My grandmother was telling me of my father’s demise; of the bullets in his brain, not by other hands or by accident. Family Feud (Maya's Poem - from a novel to be) She appeared at the playground out of nowhere just to see me --the mother of my father-- after he died, not by accident. I remembered Nana telling me to run away and hide from her, but there was nowhere to go. So I played leap frog and jumped into her view, just like a mistake that can’t be hidden, me being the mistake. I was glad to have seen my grandmother one last time, but when this was found out, Nana’s claws tore at my seven-year old body. I still can’t understand, how she expected me to vanish from view just like that. And the feud continued all our lives. When there was no Papa to fight over, they resurrected me in his place to tear apart like vultures fighting over a carcass. But I was not a carcass. They never saw that. |