Goddess

This is an odd sort of poem. I'm not quite sure what to make of it.  I'm also finding it very hard to process the fact that I wrote this twenty years ago! I feel very mortal! Old. And somewhat disoriented. Is the past really so far away?

I remember that I wrote it after attending a Bharatnatyam recital in Bahrain. The dancer's name was Kalyani, and she was brilliant. She was not a young woman, I recall, and when she danced she gave off this incredibly sexual, sensual aura. (Perhaps I am her age now, but I think the resemblance ends there!)

It's not a personal poem:  the words didn't reflect my feelings for this dancer. I suppose her performance inspired me to dream up this little story and put it in words. I find the jagged flow and breaks in the wrong places interesting, because they seem to bring out the crazed angst this man feels.

#

Goddess

I didn't want her to dance.
Her sari was green and gold,
the curve of her body
clear to me beneath its
heavy folds.

Don't dance, I said. Dance
Only for me.
Isn't that enough?
No, she said,
and picked up her make-up
again.

I hate red lipstick.
I despise black eye-liner.
I would rip the flowers
from her hair
if she would let me.

The lights dimmed and
the curtain quivered.
I stood at the end of the
hall watching
the scent of anticipation
rising from the backs
of their oily heads.

They applauded,
they joined their palms
in namastes or bowed
into adaabs.
They did not dare touch
her, I knew
the power of the deftness
and the softness of her fingers
the invitation in her eyes
her lips, her every move.

I would crush her
(for this is love)
burn her in my flames
cut her to pieces if she'd let me.

Afterwards, she cast
aside the bells from her
ankles
and gave the rest to me.
The paint that stained
her palms and soles
remained to taunt me.
I washed the dust off her
feet, and kissed them.

#

I wonder who this man is supposed to be, this obsessed, tortured chap. And I wonder how this poem related to me, as it must have in some way, but I can't find the connection. Can you?

(written way back in 1992, first posted here in 2008, edited and re-posted today)

The moon wanes

The moon wanes
parchment yellow in an inky sky.
Crisp with age, come upon suddenly
like an old love-letter I never meant
to read again.

#

(Written on 24/9/1994 at 9:05 pm)

"They went looking

I wrote this in the nineties, and turned it into my Christmas card for that year.

They went looking for a king,
and came across a baby.

They went in search of wisdom,
and came away with love.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

"We who have no right to grieve ..

 This poem is no longer true to me. I still do feel this way at times - guilty for all that I have, judging myself and my depressive illness - far more harshly than anyone else might judge me, in fact. But I call this poem untrue because I have learnt this: EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO GRIEVE. To hurt, to cry, to want more. We are human - and rich or poor, safe or uncertain, we all have the right to our feelings.

We who have no right to grieve,
grieve the death of great ideas.

We who have no right to cry,
cry for the little we do not have.

We with everything at our feet
look at the moon with longing.

We whose lives are full,
look at the emptiness inside.

We with all the time in the world,
sit and weep so many moments away,
thinking our lives colourless and gray.

In other worlds,
there is the colour of night,
the colour of blood,
the colour of one against another.

In other worlds,
they fight for their right to smile.
Their tears are not wasted on the grief
we have the luxury to entertain.

(4.23 pm Sunday 22 Dec 1996)

"Shadows crossed my window ..

Shadows crossed my window one night
(trees across the path of a garden light)
I thought it was the Angel of Death
(though it might have been the wind)
and in the morning I heard
women wailing next door.

Tonight he was here again
but he knocked and went away.
I think it was his way of telling me
he'd be back for me one day.

(written in Jan 92)

"Across unexplored distances ..

Across unexplored distances
part of our souls are entwined
in an intimacy that can't be explained.
We know each other,
but are strangers.
We may never meet again,
but we have come together.
A man and a woman,
but not as men and women do.

There is a bond,
and there are no bonds.
There is a kind of love that cannot be called love.
There are secrets behind each other's eyes
that we are beginning to understand,
and secrets we are too remote to share.

Finding everything my heart has longed for,
and nothing of all my body desires,
I cannot call him friend or lover.
He is both less and more.


(written for R,  on 13-3-95, 1.45 a.m.)

You complain that love is fickle

I suppose I wrote this when I finally ventured into another chance at romance. The only trouble is that I don't think it's entirely true that we can heal our hearts and move on. We always carry the scars and perhaps that is how it should be.


You complain that love is fickle.

I am thankful for this mercy.

I do not think I could have carried
a broken heart with me all my lifetime.

#

(wrote this in 93? or 94)

Edited 11 April 2014

"The promises we never make ..

The promises we never make
are the ones we never break
but the hearts we keep to ourselves
for the fear of hurt or hurting,
break anyway.

(written on 24-2-95)

Beauty

This poem is how I wanted to be.


Beauty without function is not beauty.

Her mouth is beautiful when she smiles at a child
and speaks tenderly to an old man.

Her hands are beautiful when she touches souls.

Her eyes are beautiful.

With them she sees each shade of a sunset
and the perfect symmetry of a flower at the roadside.

Her eyes are beautiful when she cries someone else's tears.

Her ears are beautiful.

With them she hears symphonies in the wind,
and music in a wristful of bangles.

Her ears are beautiful when she stops to listen
to what no one else wants to hear.

Her body is beautiful
when she forgets
that it is so.

(written in 1991? 1992?)

Reading this today, I think, just maybe, I turned out beautiful after all.

"Wouldn't it be lovely ..

From the drug-abusing poems of the eighties to the alcohol-guzzling ones of the nineties. Which just goes to show: it's no use getting rid of an addiction if you don't deal with the SOURCE of the problem. The addiction is always a symptom of something deeper. So if you manage to quit one, you can be pretty sure it will resurface in a different form sooner or later.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we didn't need?
Wouldn't it be easier not to feel?
Wouldn't it be nice
to have a heart made of ice?

Then we could chip it to pieces
and put them in the kitchen sink
and our drinks would be deliciously cold
all evening long.


(written on 5/4/97 at 3.04 a.m.)

Edited 11 April 2014