Buzzing,
masking violent swirl
breathing out through
feathers nostril
Frozen plastic
trapped-in time
Author: Ram
-
Table Fan
-
A Moment
The moment, in itself,
is vague, shapeless,
insignificant
The next bubble,
the next jump to
the new moment
They form, they group,
they live, they pop
A few together, soon
A path they draw
to a sweet new
from a bland now
-
Long before the Night
Long before the night,
the day’d grown dark
Of the necessity for grandeur
Of the need to be winning
Of the need to be happy
Or the need to be
not losing,
Or the need to be
not unhappy
Of nothing clear anymore
Of worries to settle no more
Of dreams lost to years
Of breaths burrowed to fears
Of waiting for a hint of light
Of a bare ounce of will to fight
Of a pulse of life, of a punch of life
Of keeping still
Of breathing still
-
Shadow
Right when the tip
of the pen hits the paper
Before the ink ploughs on
To a stroke, to a shape, a something
To dry and to die
To be the shadow of my thought
Right at this tip
I …
-
In Her Touch
She grips and grasps and holds
my hand
In her hand
both shaken
Her fragile palmfreaky, feathery
For me
Her veins,popped and purple
run through hers
and mine
Years of
gripping, grasping and holding me
In her arms
The monster mesoftened, slowed and sober
In her touch
-
Form
Fit inside, bouncing off
the ceiling and the surface
My lines go along and across
these dotted tunnels
My words build on
My thoughts overflow
A hundred-storey building
flown horizontal
Shapes of my mind revealed
on the blank page with
a fence-work of
tiny black dots
His designs,
the unknown maker,
his thoughts unknown
Shapeless and vacant, for
My words,
scrambled and sullied,
in slots within dots,
in my search for a form
-
Whine and Dine
They drift away in their whining bubbles
My feet tap unsettled, food getting cold
My passive eyes unfurl those greying bonds
Once common threads,
Once frizzle, now free
We branched apart
from the common tree
Their blatant views on the many,
“cringy”, “stingy”, “reckless”, “unfair”
They hate in a rush, judge in a hurry,
“The others” they loathe,
still boxed in the old
Torn, untethered in quiet,
adrift far they leave
The taste of a fine spring,
A table and the wind.
-
Along the Bridge
I feel I am trying to paint a large white blank canvas using an unsharp pencil. I need sharp focus, a sharper language, maybe a blunt intellect. I overthink and ramble.
I am ambling across a variety of fronts – from rabbit holes to ecstasies, from fantasies to fallacies, with a fuck-all focus. How do I wrestle this lazy ass hummus out of the soaking shit-bed I am in? How do I climb up the foggy steps on the Ladder of Literature?
If I were to write a story, and bring in a slush of thisness, I only have to look through the window:
He cycled along the bridge, wet as a wiener, the cranky cars evading a crash-laden rainy afternoon, the cranky girlfriend expecting a promised evening, all in the hopes of singing the blues at the fifty-dollar-ticket-concert, all in the hopes of surviving the cranky and crash-laden relationship. He cancelled his gym membership to find the time for their walking routine, for their favourite momos from the Tibetan couple on Saturdays. He was introduced to them by Tracey – his customer Tracey, who lived across the street from the Tibetans known for their mouth-watering momos at the Eumundi markets. Tracey once left her wallet atop the car, too focussed on the hot momos on her lap, drove around for a good forty-five minutes, settling into the car park, to then glimpse the strange thing on the car roof. This became Tracey’s crazy ‘what-am-i-like’ story during introductions. She relished telling and retelling this to her colleagues and customers and to any new acquaintance like me – only for me to promptly and shamelessly weave it into this clumsy cluster of a chronicle.
-
Lost
Lost,
in the deep
in your ocean,
in your search, whileInvisible,
to those who tread the surface
who judge, who plan,
who are lost in search of maps and compass
taunted by skies and sharks, whileLost,
in search of the unknown
to touch the elusive,
in your own depths,lost.
