Visitors from another world always keep time,
never lose their way through the traffic,
crowd of the city, multiplexes , garbage heap.
I hang the patch of day on the clothesline. The crow
with glass eyes fixed on me offers message for the day
in return for the rice ball that I keep in aluminum plate.
Day 14 NaPOWriMo
I leave no reflection and shadow when I enter the womb,
the inky lake deepens in darkness, falls silent like the womb.
I swim through dark channels, see a man and woman make love,
knotted in lust and hatred, gelatin of desire greases the wall of womb.
Ball of misery seals the opening, drowned in sea of stinking muck
I gasp, take lung-full of prayers and bubbles of breath fill the womb.
Shirts fashioned with care are spread on the shelf to choose -
what will I wear, what body will I inhabit and into which womb?
I hold on to a robe whose dye is drawn from lotus seeds,
the fabric is soft on skin, the tint casts a warm glow in the womb.
I clean the floor, decorate the walls with vermilion marks,
fill with smoke from incense cones every corner of the womb.
I am the Buddha waiting to be born, the seed is chosen with care.
As the stars race and the moon moves up the sky the womb
opens in receptivity of the light. My mother sighs in her dream,
perspiration of the humid night on her neck like the pearl in her womb.
Day 13 NaPoWriMo – Write a Ghazal
Ghazal is a poetic form that is composed of a minimum of five couplets, and not more than fifteen. Each of the couplets are autonomous. The first couplet ends with the same words, in the subsequent couplets the second line repeats and picks the rhyme of the first couplet .
This poem is also the final part of Bardo poems. Sidpa bardo is the final bardo in the cycle of human existence. It is the bardo of becoming, or transmigration,or rebirth.
“Give me a hidden eddy
a residence free from dust and noise
paths of newly trampled grass
clouds above for neighbors
birds to help me sing
no one asking for sermons
spring time for this saha tree*
nowadays lasts how many years”
—The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain
Dig the soil, move spade full of earth
the way a fisherman rows his boat
the oar dividing the water and making a path,
the helm of furrow disappears
as the water converges.
Cultivate the karma tree:
choose the seed, watch it grow on your palms,
the cotyledon bursting your skin.
You don’t want a tree
whose flower you cannot hold
whose fruit like ghost rears thousand heads,
sliced to reveal a rotten core.
Seeds that I secret away under books in my study
bear life in sin and silence,
sneak into view at unwelcomed moment.
* saha tree is the karma-bearing tree
Day 12
The corona of light is wrapped in cellophane. Initially hard to touch, it relents then, crumbly and dissolving like great sex – orgasmic like the tremble of white snow. My wind pipe that is coated with craving, fibres of yearning like hairs of anemones in water, waving and alert to touch, goes breathless with pinches of snuff. Obsessively I rub the sin of sensation on my palms and pass my tongue over the grains, they grate at my throat like cluster of consonants, choke and give me a high at the same time: sins always do it and so does lust. I do not have to pick every sound that floats in the air, tune every vibration to music, and frame in my vision a lamp waiting to be lit.
Day 11 – NaPoWriMo
Write a poem of five senses: “Pick an experience that is very sensory, and of which you have a strong sense memory — like hearing a train whistle, jumping into a rain puddle, catching that first whiff of lilac on a spring day, eating ice cream at the beach. One of those might work for you, or you might have one from your own past (eating jelly sandwiches in the woods springs to my particular mind). Then try to bring all five senses into it. What do you see, smell, feel, taste, and hear?”
A crystal of camphor can be a dynamite of sensory experience!
Skin of her baby was smooth, she rubbed almond oil
felt warmth on her fingers. She took her breast
that swelled with milk to his lips, pressed them open gently.
The child got heavier each day, never opened eyes;
the milk overflowed and stained her robe. She held
the child close and rocked in grief, ball of pain in her chest
from the nine months that she bore in her womb watching
the life that was filling in, limbs emerging only to be laid to rest
in an unnamed grave. Forgotten, claiming no lineage and family.
“For today’s prompt, write a shady poem. I’ll leave the interpretation of this prompt up to you. It could be a poem that includes shadows and/or shading. It could be about a shady part of town or a shady person. Or well, something else.”
I interpret ‘shade/shady’ as ‘out of light’, ‘in darkness’. The poem is on the love child of David and Bathsheba, who was cursed to die the seventh day of his birth, for the sins of adultery of his parents. David’s journey of atonement and healing is narrated in the text, the grief of the mother is left for us to imagine and create.
Read the story of David and Bathsheba here and here.
band of heat pounds on the walls, becomes a sheet of light
dark moons are formed by steel pouring into the cornea
the blue of sky so intense, appears like a large amethyst
papery yellow blossom of copper pod tree races on the tarmac
like a child tearing across the road. Trapped in a snarl of weed
dragging mud in the wings, it becomes limp like a fruit skin
birds have fallen silent, even the koel from eucalyptus tree
the banyan leaves are pale like breast of a parrot: the green
I apply as mascara to cool the eyes, shut away summer heat
Day 9 NaPoWriMO
Take a walk and write a poem: “Take a walk, or a drive. … Take along a notebook if you can. Take notes. Maybe take a picture or two. And then sit down in a park or in your yard or on the corner, and write.”
I took a walk in the neighbourhood. It was a warm afternoon, but the copper pod blossoms were lovely!
King David rose to his feet and said: Listen to me, my fellow Israelites, my people. I had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it. But God said to me, ‘You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood.’ 1 Chronicles 28: 2,3
The divine presence led him through wars,
years of struggle to take his people to the land
promised by the Lord to his ancestors.
Dust from the desert settled on the letters
when he brought the scroll to Jerusalem,
he pitched a tent to house the ark .
He looked out of the window
from his palace built of cedar wood,
the smell of myrrh hung to his robe.
He left untouched the jar at the table
filled with pressed grapes from best vineyards,
purple like the midnight sky.
The dust laden tent emerged in his vision
as the mist lifted from the horizon.
He heard worms eating under his feet,
razing the ornate palace to the ground.
A temple must be the tallest structure in Jerusalem,
but it was not for him to house the Lord.
