Our Own Little Places

We have to spend our whole life getting up

each morning and see the many suns

rising courageous from the horizon.

A simple life- who knows when to retire

at night time and hug long-time companions

called pillows and dreaming dreams.

 

There are episodes here, which send ripples

into our seemingly monotonous existence

everyday. And we have to wage battles

with boredom and her sisters- called mediocrity

and irrelevance. But not all were lost.

Somebody needs to learn how to befriend them.

 

Some may think that something was lacking,

but perhaps in the company of silence we find

orbs of thoughts in the usual grind of days

like the fowls of the air having simple cares.

Season after season. Day after day. Aged

but content to the simple things that matter.

 

The small country talks over the weather

and life in the farm begins with asking folks

how the young are doing these days at school.

The familiar warmth of seeing old friends at a gathering.

The joy of witnessing someone else’s milestones.

 

The farewells and well wishes when someone

is leaving our own little places to discover

the bigness of things. There goes a little prayer

and a hope that nothing is wrong when one decides

to stay and carry on doing their tasks each day.

 

We might spend our whole life thinking it’s good after all, 

though it has never been easy and there are rough times.

 

But it will never stop us believing that peace within

is the only dwelling place, our enduring shelter

when the day comes that we will never be able

to witness the sun and it has forgotten to rise.

 

In the darkness, we hope our soul in its own little spaces

can see the moon and stars light up the evening sky.

While the wind whispers- all is well, we’ll be calm as the sea.

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For The Ones We Left Behind

Think about the pen and the fingerprints

romancing in the glistening dust against the sunlight.

The faded photographs with watermarks

of remembrances salvaged from the past.

Brittle to touch and slowly turning to ashes.

 

Think about the bookmarks of dried rose petals

and the faint smell imprinted to the pages,

rescued from the years of forgetting the ones

that mattered most. And the dreams that never

meant to be owned like the earth where I stand.

 

If the promise of coming back becomes a distant memory-

counting each sunrises and every new moons. Let hope

travel its feet while I sit beside by the window waiting.

For innocence will turn my graying hairs to white

and youth will leave me like the wilted leaves of autumn.

 

The season changes and they say time heals every wound.

But the scars of our love-thorned lives remains relived

in our book of days. I wish the summer winds will carry

the ashes until forgetting. I wish sleep will banish the things

which I failed to tell you when you left me. I moved on.

 

I have written letters with the pen until it dried out of ink

I have recorded our memories for fear that it will be lost too.

And my waning mind gave birth to words I have bookmarked

with fresh flowers that blooms from the same earth I will lay

with my dreams. I am not afraid anymore of the longest night

 

until tomorrow.

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Zoo Logic

Freedom is an open door to a cage.

Yet another cage must be opened

like animals, we are hesitant to move.

For the years we lived in it, self-made.

A niche. A home. A nest. A dungeon.

The city streets became a zoo

and life has turned us into one.

We migrate and roam like animals do.

Constantly in fear that patterns change.

Season after season. Year after year.

Territories we keep from somebody’s

breaching our personal space.

We accept no disturbance to our boundaries.

Yet we think we are free? Alone.

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Autumn’s Leaving

There’s a suitcase in the hall.

And emptiness will soon occupy it.

Something which kept me immobile,

quite undecided to test the wind

or its aged leafless trees outside

 

where the silent pavement beckons

and my own shadow as a companion.

How should I, in the permanence of seasons

would not be keen to grasp the clues

that promises were never made to last?

 

I thought I could be strong enough.

I thought I would not have a glimpse

of that leathery box which collected

my yesterday’s dust of missed chances

that dried up in the passing of years.

 

I thought I could forget the barrenness

of autumn’s leaving another space

which I tried to fill with the leaves of days.

Un-withered, but soon became faded letters

that I will be keeping in this humble suitcase.

 

Memories of old coming back to me now.

I will turn the knob to open another door,

and walk into another painful journey

of beginnings. Never ending days catching

the falling leaves as remnants of moments.

 

And when the falling snow in the winter comes

and rest on the branches of those leafless trees,

like the way I carry the weight of my suitcase.

I will try picking up the pieces again and slowly

survive another night without the moon nor the stars.

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Montage From A Stow-away

I can feel it now across this table

in the old diner of this no man’s land,

The sound of shuffling deck of cards.

Or is it the leaves in autumn falling

in September- that he will remember?

 

Do you know what it feels like

to be buried in cans and tins of paint,

blurring away the sun, moon and the stars?

The distance masked from the past

drowned in ebbs and crests of time.

 

He searches his soul among the shambles,

the printed letters fading on the pocketbook.

I sense the mad rhythms and cadences

of cursives and scribbles in melancholy.

The dead poet speaks uneasy like this.

 

He seems to be trapped. A vagabond.

A tyke on his cell who think he’s free.

Swimming away like a salmon

undisturbed by the changing seasons,

lost in migration to the new world.

 

He traded a king of hearts

and settles for a jack of spades.

The wind is rough, blowing in with sand.

This is not the gentle breeze of the prairie.

A tune. Unfamiliar, humming in my ear.

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The Trader

His face is a map of caravan years,

weathering the desert sun and

the seasonal flood by the riverbank

which brings in salt for a modest living.

 

As the sand windblown and collected

in the seams of his linen turban,

anxiety constantly snake through

the mazes of his troubled mind.

 

He needed money.

 

Like how the puff of smokes

from his cigarette escapes

are fragments of his ancestor’s past

excavated from walls of antiquity.

 

He is mulling to leave the landscape

of ancient ruins, the mud-dried bricks

and clayed houses and desert wilderness

for the glowing lights of the city.

 

The mosque signals the call to prayer

and he sat down on his cushion

unfurling a sheaf of parchment,

reading through his mangled glasses

 

the fragile scribbling of faded ink.

On its brittle yellowing pages appears

like gold. This manuscript he wants to sell

to tourists he is waiting to pass by.

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Watermark

We abandon the place

after the flood. When

the alleyway became a river

detouring its natural course

meanders into two directions-

separate

 

until that gap

spans the vast expanse of the land.

Wider than the ocean,

for years now.

 

Long pauses between seasons.

Winter. Spring. Summer.

Fall. A silent  rain

muttering through the night

whispers becoming promises,

dewdrops of tears in the dawn.

 

Time have weathered

this young couple’s portrait

left hanging in the wall.

Silhouette and shadows

in muted remembrance

among traces of dry mud

and moss,

 

mildews

eating up the torn

and brittle edges-

the vows to our union.

The floodwater left

its ugly stains

of pain. Unreconciled

 

between two people

lost in the randomness.

Of things. Searching

to belong in another’s embrace.

 

Which can’t be found

 

even if the storms

have finally subsided.

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