Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Uma Pal- Two Poems



An Unfinished Poem

‘Went to bed with an unfinished poem
In my mouth and could not kiss’
My howling child to sleep
For the verses threatened to spill out of my lips
And drown the doll’s house
Where lives a silent dream
Of yesterday’s conjugal calm.

Today is a new morning, a festering orange
Of sour mouth sores- wells dry of words and thought,
Little half moons of my unfinished song,
In the woods of my baby’s lullaby
In the swamp of kitchen folklores.

My baby breathes into good society
Babbling bubbles of conniving innocence
My baby giggles in the arms of familial normalcy  
As I dissolve my imagination in the dinner broth
And sweep dusty words out of my lovely home.

If I were the chimera of my perfect present,
I’d set its roots ablaze and wish for nothing in return.

 My Shame
You were mine in the comfortable darkness of covert nights
You were mine but not mine
For your heart sails in the oldest ship of reminiscence, of an unfinished tale of intimacy
In the raging sea of brown gold and green; my wondrous Other.

And in the most ancient sense of comparison
I discover the darkness of my skin
The listless black hair of desolation
The round colourless eyes of sunken smiles.

Today, when the vastness of a thousand emotions consumes me
I soak in nothing but shame
Shame, for spinning a tornado of unrestrained desire
Shame, for all absolutes which were you in me.

Shame, a thousand needles which prick incessantly
To remind me of a lifetime of society
Of invisible walls of judgement,
Of soft fearful whispers of protection.

Through the history of meagre moments
Through the renditions of fading comfort
Through the vast lands of my body and mind which you left before visiting
All that has emerged is shame.

Shame; I hide it under my blanket of bougainvillea pink
While it effortlessly defies all my impulses
Breaks down my brittle castle of self love
And moulds itself into the weight of my awareness.

It is shame, which promises preservation and meticulously disintegrates my senses
Shame, which is rooting itself in the deepest of my crevices
Shame, which I’ll carry from the cradle of your touch to my grave
Shame of which I am arduously ashamed.


 

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