Poetry Experiment

My winning poem for National Poetry Month

2010-05-01T10:09:00.002-04:00

http://www.cambridgelibraries.ca/poetrydisp.cfm?ID=119&Year=2010

The Walk

2009-06-15T14:38:00.002-04:00

After that day
Naive to the monstrosity of longing
and the rain
and the eyes that followed
the Bodleian could
never be the same again
Even a million books
could not distract
the senses of might have beens
Enough said.

Tears - Remembering the Asian Tsunami

2009-01-04T08:54:00.001-05:00

This poem I wrote appeared in Groundviews.

The Link http://www.groundviews.org/2008/12/23/tears/

Overrated

2008-11-12T16:15:00.000-05:00

Love is overrated
You said -
Memory strands entangled with old sights
As fleeting as Aurora Borealis
A heartbeat that skips in an iota of a second
The chill of
a certain spring
a heron on the wind
Steeples in the mist
Full moons later
Your eye threaded to this mind-weaving
motif? Was that your word..
And, love
Is ?

A Candle in the Rain

2008-10-28T14:25:00.002-04:00

If the storm began when water began
and candles burn that same old flame
a candle in the rain must feed and die at once

Great Eye of the storm let him be
Set Sail to the shores of silence

Steer on brave boatman
Oars of a drunken boat
Searcher of the stars in a sea of darkness

Look! Calmer seas surely await
As storms abate

To Him

2008-07-24T16:56:00.001-04:00

So it was I that found him
And you the bereaved taken advantage of
By funeral directors
Coffins categorized
grateful son; loving daughter
dark wood .light wood. shiny or not?
and you wondering where you fit in
and what sort of box would befit unexpressed love or loss
What happens to the ungrateful urchin?
Death at the computer
Not in cyberspace
He was playing pinball
Tilt
And no goodbyes

For my Sister

2008-07-15T08:47:00.003-04:00

I am remembering
an old photograph that brought tears
long ago because of separation
and grief gropes it way back

Here and everywhere there are oceans
but no ships
sky but no planes
that will carry you to me

So I pray
at my self made
god shaped hole in the universe

Save and protect her
wrap and engulf her
from madmen and mayhem
in paradise gone wild

Winter

2008-06-18T13:41:00.002-04:00

Harsh winds and
winter teach
that life is not always rainbows
and roses
but when sunny summer
springs
its daffodils and colour
how can one begin
to
forget
the memory of love
that's gone beyond reach
does the subtle and
piercing sorrow
of winter love not
leave its
mark even when
the new season
comes?

Funeral Home

2008-06-15T10:57:00.002-04:00

In memoriam - BV

Funeral Parlour

Jess
it's been years
and now
It is my turn

Remember that place
Where grandpa lay in a coffin
And you stood nose high at his feet
You said “why are were here mummy why is grandpa sleeping in this funny quiet place and people wearing shades and the sun is not shining and there are lights all over mummy mummy tell me"
And the only words I found then were
Grandpa is in heaven shush
And you said when we were leaving
When do we come back to heaven Mum?
Well Jess
You’re here

Mother's Day

2008-05-19T07:05:00.003-04:00

Here is the original, Mother's Day Proclamation, penned in Boston by Julia Ward Howe in 1870:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy andpatience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up withOur own.
It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity,
I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace

Ici

2008-05-02T09:16:00.003-04:00

Je veux aller
à un endroit
à où je peux n'entendre rien
ne voir rien
Je ne veux pas parler
mais ce qui est cette image qui continue à me suivre
cette image de mon esprit qui ne
me laissera pas
me seul vouloir qu'il aille dans la nuit
dans la neige
ces fonteset écoulements
dans un fleuve de silence interminable
et paix

February

2008-02-23T20:04:00.003-05:00

February is the cruellest month
breeding viruses in the hard snow
turning frost into ice
preserving excretions in odd spots
slippery cold vengeance on
the leaves of Fall that lie in mummified silence
beneath.

Here there is no warmth not even
a sky that yields a ray of colour
only remembered warmth on naked skin
An odd sparrow surprises
chirping in quest for forgotten bird seed
on ice crusted window ledges.

Here, the dead trees reach in skeletal angles
Here, the supine earth in prayer
for the ending of a season.

Pray

2008-02-12T13:03:00.001-05:00

Memories of days threaten to outgrow
Like children who now
Yearn to escape protective parents
I must write this down lest
I forget and so the world will not know
How the nuns in the convent school
Scared me forever from
All things holy as I endured school
And drowsed on the desk
Their soul fermenting punishments
Ripened like revulsion
made to stand in the sun after assembly for every mass
for every confesion that was missed
At age seven at the top of the class with a board “sinner”
the confession queue of juvenile
third graders future migrants to hell
added me on
I was eager to say whatever but could
Not quite sift through my actions
I tried to pull out of the bucket of my brain
The bad things I’d done like shells from the sand
Worry and fear congealed like
Dried mud after a dance in the rain
And hell beckoned
“what have you done?”
" I have sinned father"

I don’t believe
I don’t believe
I don’t believe

A Woman's Place

2008-02-09T21:37:00.001-05:00

A Woman’s place?

ACT I

Tradition- rusty voice
Says “Home”
The new millennium and
modern science
Shift uncomfortably
Woman is seen
Caught in the paradigms
That create romance,
Numerous expectations; she is
Trapped
in fairy tales
Alluring fantasies
That gloss her inability to assert
To act
Culture and custom connive
As women are made to
Wait to be rescued
To be willing prisoners
Dungeons or nurseries
Even a place near a hearth

ACT II

New Windows open
When the screen scrolls down
Women are fleeing
Escaping the margins
exponentially
No more waiting for heroes or fathers
For princes or brothers
Or the man who assumes he is god

She is moving away from mud
Stagnant pools where futile frogs
Wait to be kissed.

Malou

2008-02-02T11:49:00.001-05:00

You are really a Sinhala fish

with a french name

you spend your nine lives

on the edge of my bed or on the top of my couch

purring and pretending

I'd like to know what you think

when you sit facing the world watching the snow

with your back to the door.

Slow Burn

2008-01-31T15:46:00.001-05:00

It was like this: leaning over the balcony
bright sunny day with a view of the Lake
listening to the news
Curfew
happy no school tomorrow

that day they never knew that
remembering 1983 in 2008 would feel like this
that an old memory of a child
could blaze like an inferno
they didn't know they were living a year
that would become a reference
a noun
that
meant so many things
other than measured time

A man appears out of nowhere
he is running
his back is on fire
he runs he runs faster
and he jumps into the lake
After that ripples and a bobbing head
later nothing.

out my window

2008-01-30T13:40:00.001-05:00

out my window I see a blue sky
and dead trees
arms reaching out to an absent sun
naked trunks that silouhette the blue grey dawn
wordless space awning loud
and on the ground ice
masquerading as light

The age of gross

2008-01-30T13:30:00.001-05:00

My children live in an age of gross
they spend their time in cyberspace
and arrive now and then for meals
Virtual games with corny names
they fish for sausages with a paper clip
the trophies are weird as they compete
Aged chicken
crunchy roach
dead spider and a rotten rat

NUMB

2008-01-15T20:19:00.002-05:00

This is a poem I wrote based on a series of unpleasant experiences.
The poem appeared in Postcolonial Text.

http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/762/446

NUMB

Those days you used to say
“Remember you promised not to forget?
No amount of taunting can take away regret
Forgetting is an art that has to be learnt
I have strived for exile
Accomplished numbness

Drink hot coffee
in this minus twenty five
wind chill street
cup in a rheumatic grasp

I said I’ll not forget 1983
1987 1996 and abuse
On buses, spit on dust
election campaigns
And the salary the university
Never paid me for my toil
And so
Many
Other

Things I chose letting go is sometimes like
My mind that wanders in a sun drenched heat
Picking up molten memories of madness

Schizophrenic gusts from seaward
tug and pull
A seagull hovers
And the cold advances.

The Language of Violence

2007-12-07T19:55:00.001-05:00

The language of violence has many dialects
Some are loud but all are strong
Impassioned edicts spoken in the guttural or
Phonic booms

Or bangs like gunshots in the
Air or thuds on flesh
That leave blue
Islands of pain on
Soft seas that nourished dimpled hands
Milk flowed and tears joined
The vision remains
Subterfuge from behind the torn curtain
The clenched heart the resolve
To surmount childhood vulnerability

To bite time to vault the years
To translate innocence
To figure this matrix

That was then
Across the lands and all this time
The vision remains.

STAINS

2007-12-04T19:48:00.001-05:00

STAINS

NOTE: The Betel (Piper Betle) is a spice whose leaves have medicinal properties. It grows in Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Sri Lanka. In parts of South East Asia the leaves are chewed together with slaked lime (Calcium Hydroxide) and areca nut. The areca nut contains alkaloid arecoline which itself is a stimulant and stains the saliva red. Excessive chewing of betel has been associated with oral and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

The road that Meena took to her office at the university curled like the discarded skin of a serpent. On either side of the road overgrown gardens possessively hid dilapidated houses. Clogged drains and garbage threatened the olfactory senses. This was a shortcut and a hardly used entrance to the university. Stray dogs lay resignedly listless in odd places such as the middle of the road, and inside an abandoned wheelbarrow that once belonged to the campus gardeners as if in revolt against man’s manipulation of space.

Meena walked strongly uphill, careful not to step on stones and twist her ankles and thereby damage the hem of her sari. She had ruined many of her saris that way. Her briefcase was heavy today, and she could not help but imagine her twelve students’ faces when she told them they were going to watch a DVD today instead of having the usual lecture. She must get Ekanayake to move the DVD player and the television set into her lecture room she thought. She quickened her step as she checked the watch on her wrist, which read eight thirty three. She still had a few minutes to organize everything so that she could start the movie by 9 a.m.

As she turned onto the road leading into the English department, she could not help noticing the different coloured plastic bags that hung from string tied from one lamp post to another. These colourful agents of pollution were poised primly in the air, disturbing the green of the trees. Some were torn after last night’s wind and rain, and bits of green, red and blue plastic littered the road and bobbed about merrily on the damp campus lawns in the light early morning breeze. She remembered that the elections were around the corner. These political decorations, red, green and blue bags mingled as they floated about, in agreeable camaraderie mocking at the humans whose parties they represented.

“Good morning miss” the guard at the security gate greeted her as usual, interrupting her wry observations - a bright young man who never failed to catch her eye whenever she passed. “Good morning Khan” she nodded and hurried in the direction of her office.

Ekanayake had just had his breakfast of kiribath and lunumiris which his wife had packed for him and was busily washing his hands and mouth and spitting into the department wash basin when Meena walked in. She could not fight off the smile that imposed itself on her face when she recalled the countless number of times Ekanayake had been pulled up by the Head of English, Professor Gamage, for infecting the English Department wash basins with virulent red stains of betel spit among other things such as grains of rice and bits of green mallum.

Meena knew perfectly well that telling Ekanayake to stop spitting in the sink was as futile as trying to ask him to stay in the department during lecture hours without wandering off to other departments to chat to his colleagues. Meena didn’t like Ekanayake’s persistent shreds of flora which were the remains of his leafy diet or the colourful designs he made in the washbasin either; so she simply got used to washing her hands in another wash basin in the Department of Western Classical Culture. She had learnt to live around Ekanayake without stepping on his toes. She now felt that she had finally learnt to “endure” Ekanayake in the proverbial sense of the word.

Professor Gamage had been livid the first time he had discovered Ekanayake’s ‘crime’. He had shouted and raved, “You fellow, what do you think you are doing, you should not spit here you silly foolish man” and Ekanayake had been shocked that the new professor was against something he had been doing for nearly twelve years. “Sir, I am spitting here everyday, it is here only I am washing my hands, after eating, so I am spitting and washing my hands here after eating only…” When Ekanayake spoke, his mouth took on a particular shape, to prevent bits of his betel from falling out; because it was almost always over full, his cheeks bulged and his teeth and tongue were always bright red like the fake blood of a monster at a Halloween Ball. After Professor Gamage had shouted at him, Ekanayake had walked out- only to return with a fresh chew of Betel in his mouth.

The professor, had felt bad about having shouted and had later called him and said “Listen man, if you want to spit, go out, it is not nice to spit in the wash basin, we sometimes wash our faces in that wash basin, and now it is so dirty with all your betel stains and other things..” and Ekanayake had consolingly replied “ok ok sir, next time I will go outside” and a spray of beetle juice had accidentally flown out of Ekanayake’s mouth in the direction of the professor’s face. Meena had winced, and she still shuddered in an attempt to control a giggle as a vivid image of Professor Gamage stepping backwards to avoid the missile of bright red betel juice projected itself acutely in her memory.

Meena now made sure she was standing at least five feet away from Ekanayake as she faced him.(She assumed that the distance spit could travel from one person’s mouth to another’s face was less than five feet). She was in a hurry “Good morning Ekanayake, please set up my DVD player in lecture room twenty two, I will be going there now, do you think you could bring it there in ten minutes?”

“Good Morning miss” said Ekanayake “and miss did you remember my dana on Saturday?” Meena remembered that she had promised Ekanayake some money for an alms giving in memory of his mother. “Oh yes” She fished out two hundred rupee notes from her wallet and gave it to Ekanayake. “You will be blessed” said Ekanayake and accepted the money which he put into his shirt pocket. “Ah yes miss
don’t be frightened, I will bring the DVD to the room now, you go miss.”

Meena gathered her books, her white board marker, and her flask of coffee and swept out of the room, anxious to start on time, because she had to finish on time in order to be able to attend the faculty meeting at ten thirty.

As she walked into lecture room twenty two she thought she heard heavy thuds that sounded like people running. Was it some commotion? She wondered, but then on campus one was used to such things, so she didn’t pay much attention to it. She used a piece of wood about the size of a pencil that always conveniently lay on the big table to make the fan work. This was because, the fan switch did not exist, and where the switch once was, now lay a tangled mass of wires over a hole in the wall. The best way to make the fan turn was to press the wires together with the help of this piece of wood. She had a strange and fleeting image of herself electrocuted and stuck to the wall as the fan began to rotate.

On the wall someone had written in English “Fan Broken this is a dangerous” and in Sinhala below that “Ithaama avadanam.”
Meena realized that this certainly was dangerous business, but always ended up using this bit of wood.

Meena realized that Ekanayaka’s ten minutes was up when Tehani, one of her students walked into class “Good morning madam, the others are on their way” “good morning Tehani, did you see Ekanayake? “no ma’m” “I’ve been waiting for him to bring in the DVD player and he is not here yet” The other students walked into the class in twos and threes, Kushani, with her yellow streaked hair, belly button and sleek silver cellular phone and the only boy in the group also known as the ‘mobile dictionary’ Dimitri with his unkempt locks and horn rimmed glasses, “Morning ma’m, I almost missed the bus.”

“Yeah sit down all of you I’ll be back in a tick” and Meena hurried out of the lecture hall clicking her tongue while her high heeled slippers echoed her exasperation, “Where was this wretched man?” She could hear her students laughing behind her, glad to have time to check their “sms” and have their sandwiches and flirt. She ran across the yard towards the Department of English when she realized that there really was some kind of commotion going on. She spotted two men holding a stray dog and giving it an injection. She saw another man drag a screaming dog towards these two men, some girls were shouting “Aney pau ballanta ” “Poor dogs” They were probably inoculating the dogs she thought with a sense of relief, and as she tried to push open the English department door she realized that it was locked. “Oh bother, where on earth is this idiot” she said out loud, and tried to force the door open but it was firmly shut. She knew then that it could only be locked from the inside.

She banged on the door and shouted “Ekanayake! Ekanayake! But there was no answer. She placed her ear to the solid wooden door and listened. There was too much noise in the corridor and passing students were all talking at once. She could not hear much except some muffled sounds, perhaps the whirring of the old fan. She expected that Ekanayake had locked the door and returned the key to the key room, so she took the stairs two at a time and rushed to the first floor, where the key room of the faculty of humanities was located. She stared in utter dismay at the board on which the keys were normally hung. The English department key was gone, she checked the key log and realized that no one had returned the key since Ekanayake himself had taken the key at seven thirty in the morning, as he always did. Meena could not understand it. Had she missed him on his way to the lecture hall with the equipment? But then, why was the door locked? He never locked the door when he went on his usual short migrations and errands around the campus. The only explanation was that someone was inside the department, locked in, with the key.

As she came downstairs, to try the door again, she saw about five or six men dragging huge sacks across the landing and shoving them into a van that was parked on the eastern side of the building. They were killing the dogs; it came to her in a sweep of horrifying realization. That is what the men had been doing, giving the dogs cyanide injections. She heard a boy shout to some other students, above the din of chattering laughing “Elections coming, they are cleaning up now” She realized with horror that this sudden “cleansing” had something to do with the officials and the upcoming elections, and the votes.

She ran to a window and watched the van leave, heading towards the science faculty. A sudden feeling of nausea contorted itself and performed jinks in her stomach. She went to the door of the English department she now felt that she had enough negative energy to slap this man when he appeared, and where in heaven’s name was her DVD player, she wondered in rage. She would never make it to her meeting, she would never finish her lecture.

Meena was seized with a sense of resentment coupled with impotence. Those wretched animals, this awful man, frustrated thoughts rushed through her mind in a confused swirl. She raised her hand high and clenched her fist - she would break down the door, but before her fist reached the door there was a sudden click and the door opened and she was nearly thrown over when about six dogs rushed out the door knocking on her knees and shins, brown dogs, black and white dogs, grey dogs and there stood Ekanayake smiling jubilantly, holding a small puppy in his hand!

“Madam Maara wade somehow I saved these fellows from those barbarians” He stood there smiling like a child, caressing the little pup while all the other dogs sniffed the ground and ran outside. Meena felt a sweeping sense of relief inspite of a conflicting urge to slap Ekanayake in the face for spoiling her day. “You are….you are…she said, staring at him in disbelief, she was lost for words. He just laughed out loud and said “Simple no miss, I heard the noise, called as many as I could, pushed them inside and shut the door and hid in the room with them.

Meena realized that she had miscalculated the distance that Ekanayake’s spit could travel but she was smiling as she headed towards the wash room.

2007-12-02T17:51:00.001-05:00

Haiku

This is not rain mum

I remember the torrents

loud in the monsoon

BLAST

2007-11-29T09:48:00.002-05:00

Step out
sidestep careful on the slippery snow
the wind at thirty km huffs past ears, faces
new ice falls
the innuit have fifty words for snow
metamorphoses is the key
that shatters the moment
so the leaves fall
days shorten
darkness can often be silent
but sometimes it can be a blast
and silence
is not always peace
chaos the cause of a universe that knows no logic
a bomb goes off across an ocean and several continents
Dusty blood hot with pavements and
fire on motorcycles
wailing sweat and memory pain
My head is loud with different blasts spread out
over decades
loud as I shut this door on the cold
silent as the chill wind that
finds a space under the door.