Traffic Lights

“Some day,” thought Sixfinger, “someone else would look from this place down and think about me, not knowing that he is thinking about me. Just as I am now thinking of someone who felt what I am feeling, God knows when. Every day there is a moment connecting it to both the past and the future. Why is this world filled with so much sadness?…”

“And yet there is something in it that justifies even the saddest kind of life,” Hermit said suddenly.

- Hermit and Sixfinger, Victor Pelevin

—–

Traffic Lights
for the Raffles Concert Singers of 22nd December 2009

Even with how the nights now are as long as
The roads stretching out (yawning for
The absence of people) at the cross:
The blink of lights are still green and red as
The little people signal unruffled
Silence to move. And suddenly the turmoil
Of calm settles. It does blow over:
The dark ceases to devour;
The moon persists and sheds
The sun of its clothes. Tonight
All werewolves plead their claws to retire.
All melancholy sighs at itself and then
Dissipates into motes, dancing
Like the ones at the cross in those happy circles.
Lengthen this night longer, slowly now -
The roads are shining amber, slowing down
And in their well-trodden cracks one can hear voices
Almost howling notes of thanksgiving
For their mere existence, perforating the earth.

an aside.

some days the bird would love to throw
itself against the moon, crying ceaselessly
for cool refuge from its nest – that fiery world
a core of beating sound inciting only hunger;
imagining its crescendo of wings as the sound
of laundry piling for days so long, so long;
wishing its wings to be vast enough to embrace
just all the sky, and itself.

Exeunt

Just a gesture.
Off-handedly, with tubas
In the background chanting to solitude.
Only forget
The way light flesh touches
Timidly, the fragile gravitas of one last
Breath. We will fade
The way rain kisses goodbye and
All smell gravitates, fresh again

Every word hiding you in
Its precise dimensions will become mere.
You will not recognise any more writing.
Hands smooth as oboes turn
Rough, deconstructing sketches
Into straight-talking lines.
Continue to exist
And not be lonely, forever.

You will let the next one
Walk up to you assuredly.
I say to you that transience frames beauty
In the yearned scent of pine-cones
And this is the last thing
That will free us from want.

Ghazal for the Length of Days

These days we stumble on circumstances, fall in on stranger spaces.
Play ‘I-Spy’ across dried grass like helicopter lights commanding darkness.

Dropped as newly cut hair is what one ought to do with preciousness.
Such things took time to grow, as they do equally in forgetfulness.

Sense drifting apart like words repeated; refrain from overconsumption.
Stop letting gazes fly regardless upon concrete-floored realisation.

Leave late calls unfazed, expect swallowing across phone lines to fast.
But exchanging presents of utterances, make eloquent the past.

Try not to let new water ruin the effusiveness of rain-written notes;
Now float with the teeming affection of river-kissed origami boats.

Whilst stolen nights momentarily steal back, permit yourself traces of paper.
Starve your fresh face to stay with me as immensely as you remember.

Our steps were perpetually unsure. Now they float as unloosed clouds.
Elephant memories are long. Take my mind once more, denying thrice doubt.

Dispersal

Fireworks are mostly celebratory, always festive.

What of its absence then – does its lack
connote constant sparks of immutable solitude?

Twenty minutes to detonation, you are
walking me away to home and safe duty,

leaving me behind in a smog of
burn while orange flickers merely

against a multitude of pious shadows.

I gently materialise your lingering landscape
of breath larger than a composer’s canvas

of hairlines. I do not turn back for fear.
If sanity is lost, pillars of salt might just flush

brighter in dispersal, tossing up the
darkness with unwelcome dust.

Deign to plead with lucidity for dreams, then

I will be tracing your confident steps
back into the flames, where multiple
explosions bloom, project assurance.

this is why

i guess sometimes i touch you because, because-

i persist trying to persuade myself (shredding

laughingly like paper) that this is convincing,

that you knowing me so much is yes and no it is

not just us jointly throwing our

selves into thin sky, simply,

God’s clear dissolution of imperfection.

how in those few minutes before i touch

the ground, while falling i want instead to stand

fast, firm your name in my mind;

make sure that two minutes to hitting earth

you float like migrant birds, craning to the

tearing recesses of my complete consciousness.

i guess sometimes i touch you because, because-
i persist trying to persuade myself (shredding
laughingly like paper) that this is convincing,
that you knowing me so much is yes and no it is
not just us jointly throwing our
selves into thin sky, simply,
God’s clear dissolution of imperfection.
how in those few minutes before i touch
the ground, while falling i want instead to stand
fast, firm your name in my mind;
make sure that two minutes to hitting earth
you float like migrant birds, craning to the
tearing recesses of my complete consciousness.

Lightning associations

In pushing him away roughly the hands
clasped inadvertently like tight-lidded eyes
which then locked, mine fulgurite and unmoving,
rock defying grey areas precious, meltingly.
Thereby struck loose my touched self instead
tingled with immediacy, sand-grazed skin
augmenting you (my imagined night creature
sneaked then stolen out of seconds,
crumbled grains, stars.)

Parts

Even two cm away, in the space
between persists absence, vividly sounded;
Let alone- one day left open and empty
(words accentuating our distance)
like expectant letterboxes, steeped in night.

the tiring

today the wind grazes your apple-cheek

like a caress of leaves, a sudden tender kiss:

day awakes stretching- you slip out of sleep smooth

as a cat’s purr half emerged, muted down.

because of that, today you move winded into insouciance

leaving the earth running: fleeting clockwork mice;

sleeping the trifling sadnesses of this peculiar life.

with routine we come down with happiness like disease.

smoothly bruised young apples: we are packed in boxes

shepherdless yet grazing roughly, urgently, all

your fingers have caressed sweetness, or else all ours have.

kissed with the same sugar, we turn stones, finding nothing

darling, i am more afraid of myself than you awaking.

slipped dreams remind me of the day/ a lucid falling

in the no longer night cloud-blankets are only half-sure

despite themselves i emerge biting fully the sun.

today the wind grazes your apple-cheek
like a caress of leaves, a sudden tender kiss:
day awakes stretching- you slip out of sleep smooth
as a cat’s purr half emerged, muted down.

because of that, today you move winded into insouciance
leaving the earth running: fleeting clockwork mice;
sleeping the trifling sadnesses of this peculiar life.
with routine we come down with happiness like disease.

smoothly bruised young apples: we are packed in boxes
shepherdless yet grazing roughly, urgently, all
your fingers have caressed sweetness, or else all ours have.
kissed with the same sugar, we turn stones, finding nothing

Darling, i am more afraid of myself than you awaking.
slipped dreams remind me of the day/ a lucid falling
in the no longer night cloud-blankets are only half-sure
despite themselves i emerge biting fully the sun.

Note

Tracing your outline searchingly
every day, every morning, each time –
one more breath means another door opened,
another step among the multitudinous made stars.
In letting go there is something light and sparkling;
our gait known by others before even ourselves.