The sanctum smelled of incense and human sweat.
An airless space reverberating whispers of prayer.
She folded a piece of cloth with the holy verse
dipped in animal blood. This is an amulet.
For someone who is afraid of thieves.
She knelt across the table ready with her questions
“Do you need a husband? Do you need a wife?”
“Do you need another? Do you need a child?”
“The lines on your palm says you will be rich.”
“The card says you will find your true love.”
Then she brought in her candles, started
to light it with a match. She began to read
from a withered book- in its brittle leaves
filled with strange symbols of spells and magic.
Summoning wisdom from the invisible.
“Someone wants to harm you, better beware.”
“Keep this stone in a bottle and hide it in your closet.”
She has seen it all- customers come and go
leaving her money for that token of gratitude.
And accepting them as a way of getting by.
She keep on caressing the old crystal ball,
ignoring the signs of her grey and thinning hair.
She believed she has power to prevail death.
But time slowly creeps like a thief in the night
when she can no longer be speaking about
the future.
Solitude Amidst the Maddening Crowd
Shadow Son
Posted in Current Affairs, Literature, Memoirs, Poetry, Relationships, Religion, Social Commentary, Society, tagged alone, amble, amount, animal, anymore, become, begin, bitter, bone, bridge, chain, child, clothing, definition, disowned, distance, doors, down, dreams, exist, face, faceless, fatherless, fend, first, flesh, flight, free, gunpowder, hand, handprints, heartless, hide, himself, image, journey, knock, learn, left, life, lived, lock, mirror, molting, naked, nameless, newborn, old, own, paperbills, past, place, poem, poetry, redemption, reflection, refuse, representation, restrained, shadow, shattered, shimmer, silence, smell, someone, son, strangers, strip, sun, taste, touch, true, tyke, victim, water, way, welcome, wine, wings, words, world, years on July 31, 2013| Leave a Comment »
No amount of words can bridge
the distance of years in silence-
because the sun hides its face
like the way a tyke, fatherless
and left out into the world
to fend for himself. Alone.
Someone has to refuse
to become the victim anymore.
You knock some doors
and it is locked. You are not
welcome there. And a hand
is restrained to touch his own
shadow or an image reflected
a life mirrored in water.
Disowned molting who just
learned its first flight
and give ambled wings
to shattered dreams.
Of the smell of gunpowder.
The handprints on paperbills
and the bitter taste of wine.
None of which represents
your true bone stripped of flesh.
An animal with no redemption-
heartless and chained.
You will refuse to let the past
define you of who you will become.
And you begin the journey
to a place of faceless and nameless
strangers. You will exist
as though you just have lived
and strip down the shadow
as an old clothing. Naked and free
shimmering like a newborn child.
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