Steel Bars

I am perched here inside with distances to roam

only my eyes can see. You are out of reach.

The wind blows from distances afar

bringing me in yesterday’s news. It’s cold.

And the noise reverberates like a broken record.

 

Tell me about freedom. Day in, day out.

Of walking in circles, and the light travels into the night.

Tell me about resilience. No matter how it looks-

a hard shell but brittle and fragile within my mind

where it builds edifices of dreams. Towering

 

over my need  to run away and get lost

untangled into distances unhindered.

Restrain my hand from gripping the bars

of steel I layed propping up my self-esteem.

I will run untamed like a wild horse.

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Those Sisters’ Men

When my sisters began to marry their men,

I just stop talking to them. Eagerness

suddenly plummet into nil and I began seeing

an imaginary wall that divides me to them.

Those strangers’ hand snatching spaces,

of familiarity, never uttered a word about apologies.

Plundering the blood bond, the images of innocence

running away to far places where I cannot go… I hate them.

 

Suddenly somewhere appears picket fences,

territories, boundaries and cages

which were meant as a warning

not to encroach their line, their property.

And how then, for a split-second

they ruin the emotional investment

my sisters and I build relationships.

 

Ah, they would never understand

the weightier aspects more than

the union of two bodies to breed.

They would never understand how

my sisters and I share a lifetime-

that intimate part we found eversince

we are born, out of our mother’s womb.

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I’m No Frank

Frank Lloyd Wright

and his falling water. Masses

of concrete cantilevered,

and extending outwards

like hands reaching- symbiosis.

But I’m no Frank

and dreams might be

my little fingers clasping

hard and pushing pencils

for somebody else’s utopia.

 

The hewn boulders of rock

resisting the foundation

on which this grand design sits,

I bear the weight of expectations.

Balancing upon the scales

on which the measure of cement

is mixed in sand and water.

The lapping over of slates into a bond.

The forward thrust of hammer to nails.

The tightening of ties around stirrups.

The alternate laying of the roof decking.

 

And the network of drain pipes,

cables and ducting, and waterlines

resembling the veins and sinews

of the building’s skeleton. I build

a symbol- the framework of the mind.

The genius envisions an edifice

in his intellectual acrobatics,

justifying to the world the modern-

reality that build themselves on paper.

 

Summoning the masons to lay

its plaster to newly cured blocks.

The painter to swab the walls

in fresh coats. The decorator

sets the chairs, the beds,

the mirrors and the tables.

The vases and layers of curtains.

The lifeless sculpture pieces

and paintings hanged to the walls.

Fixing rolls of wallpaper  and carpets

over polished granite floors.

 

The carpenter assembling

cabinet boxes, ledges and shelves.

The windows fitted to the sills.

And the doors hanged on frames.

The location of the chandelier.

Installing wooden slabs on stairs.

The green patinated balustrades.

The landscaper to plant shrubs, and ferns

and vines and trees and patch of grass.

The water fountains and the waterfall

arranged mimicking a natural set-up.

 

But I ‘m no Frank.

The hours stretched for miles and miles.

The drafting table becoming wet with fog

until  the first  hours of the morning.

I can hear the mad conversations

of the vellum and the graphite saying,

“deadline nears, it’s almost here”.

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You Left Me With Things

Here, in the box are things that you left me.

It’s been years I kept them hidden under

my bed. Should I throw it away? A burden

 

that I should burn it aflame with the world

like this tongue of hatred growing each day.

Oh sadness, it lingers through days like rain.

 

I have learned to befriend loneliness. I am

a castaway and a stranger to my own skin.

Chained to asking myself of what, why or how-

 

I build myself a wall of defense in silence

shielding me from these ghosts of abandon

and fear. Believing I have moved on but no.

 

I ran away as fast as I could in circles

until the soles of my feet bleed in despair.

I hated you and I should tell you that, now.

 

The blue light to my cigarette starts another

round of stinging away this loneliness

floating in loops through the night’s surreal air.

 

The beads begin forming in my mugs of beer

unknowingly- which of those are my sweat or tears-

blurred in the sad memory that you left me.

 

Remind me of things in that box of dreams,

by the time I know it, smashed to the floor

again. Made me satisfied to learn emptiness.

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Burned Bridges

Today. I start

bringing in new logs

I felled from my fortress.

I will coat them anew

in fresh paint of goodwill.

I will securely fasten

each wooden plug,

each wooden cleat,

each wooden brace

to build us a stronger span.

Against the strong winds

and the storm that will try

to bring us down.

 

I will fortify the foundation,

reinforcing the tablet of stones-

your kind words into my memory.

As the arch of my hands

stretches out to reach you,

in peace.

 

Gone are the moments

when anger flickers

like flames of fire

among us. Gone

are the days

of charred remains-

the ebony nights, in tears.

Of the years when

turbulent waters

divide us. I start

 

to mend the bridges

I burned before.

That is to say, I am

opening the carriageway

of warm exchanges-

crossing to your side,

once again.  Someday.

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Keys to Some Secrets

We have cried together, seeing

the pages of our lives torn into pieces.

And how we knitted to rebuild it,

and washed them like dirty linens

in the laundry. Just like a potter

we build and sculpt in us

a new mold of the world

we never knew existed.

 

We exchanged our boxes

of secrets and a set of keys.

 

We swore by the heart. And

made a vow that we would keep

them locked and tightly sealed.

That we would be keeping each

other’s stories, only to ourselves

and no one else. And for the longest

possible time, it  has come to a point,

a reckoning. The seal of promise

had been broken.

 

Unlocking my box and spilling

the foam of words into little teardrops-

they fall like brimstones and fire

from the night sky, now. And the moon

must have hidden its face turning

into red, in anger and in shame. Bleeding

in the agony of a broken promise.

An impending death to a friendship.

 

Still, I am keeping my silence, thinking deeply

if it is worth to hide your keys in my pocket?

If keeping your box tightly sealed, or at once,

let them out in the open, will exact revenge?

While my flesh quivered at the thought

of why would you dare crossing the line,

betraying my trust. While my bones splintered

at the thought that I would dearly want you

squirm in your own bloodbath, redeeming self.

 

But I decided not to. 

 

Letting the ghost of your betrayal haunt you down

into your grave. A tormented soul, wandering

the dark halls searching for some kind of atonement.

Asking forgiveness.

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Kinesthetic

The walls are coarse to touch, hard and steely,

it was a challenge not to see but to feel with our fingers

sharp points that will prick a skin and bleed. By then

the grave of the earth has avenged its loss. The stair

is a winding wonder of wooden realm. Forest scent

permeates like sweat staining musk to the olfactory.

Curtains we plucked from the fibers of the grass

that exist  in some temperate savannah, polished

and handwoven by the nomads of Siberia.

The glass came from the silicates we scoured

from the rivers of Babylon, coal-fired in a furnace

by a hundred men impoverished with ten cents an hour.

And the floor is a polished limestone quarried

from some majestic mountains of the Far East. White,

cold slab, for our feeble feet resting on a tombstone. The chairs

are fabricated in hides separated from the meat of animals

domesticated and cultured for a trade in an African jungle.

We commercialized the organic in the will of the greedy generation

crazy for the avant garde. We are fond of collecting. Prized.

Natural. Unique. All, for the sake of a want  that cannot be satiated.

And at a cost, we hunger for more as we build our little kingdoms,

looking for some definition. Until we find that there is no more left

of the skin of the earth, we have stripped of its clothing

to cover our shelters.  Unless we travel to the moon

digging kryptonites to embellish facades of our own vanities.

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