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.