Aberrant grey cells

Even with his back in a perpetual hunch, he stood at six feet, feet bare and body clad in rags tethered together by makeshift belts. He roamed the streets, stopping at stores to beg for food. Relieves himself wherever. Some are kind enough to give him water to drink. Others enable his smoking habit by offering him a cigarette. What passes for baths are moments when he’s unable to find a temporary shelter from the rain. It’s September now, and his ‘”baths” were becoming more regular.

It was said he was a drug addict. I imagine there are all sorts of ugly things — by one’s own hand or by others — that could cause a man to go mad. But have you ever wondered how that goes about? I mean stage by stage, how does a sentient being turn from a person to merely a person? Does it happen almost instantly when you fail to shake off a persistent, menacing emotion that you become full past the brim and you cross a certain boundary? Or does it happen in phases, giving the people around you nothing but subtle signs that were, in truth, loud and desperate cries for help? And then, there you are. You are a memory of a person. Not quite dead. Not quite alive either.

It’s puzzling, really. One time, he was trapped under the sidewalk, those slats that passed for a sewage pipe in our little city in the province. Though incoherent, you can tell he was calling for help. Therefore, his being trapped physically was still perceived as a form of confinement, as any healthy minded person would. But didn’t he know? Wasn’t he aware that the same thing was happening to him mentally?

Also bewildering is the fact that he can cross the street without getting hit. So there is still something left there, I suppose, but foremost is self-preservation. And when after a storm I saw him pass by our street, his gait full of imagined purpose, I felt relieved that he was still up and about.

Third Rock From the Sun

How queer, when prosaic days can bring
both fugacity and protractedness. How
tedious, the deal of doing all things at once,
accomplishing little of each, but really, nothing.
Be careful not to exhaust all mirth nor tenebrosity,
the earth is finite and so are we. Little beings tethered
together by cells– aberrant and normal.
Exiguous, with a kismet of repast after repast.
Restive beings told to do good
for the promise of paradise. Restive monkeys
gorging all bananas. Disgorge me from the mundane,
Lord whom I believe in, out of,
Fear.

Disciple-to-One

I tried to fit my face in the back of a spoon,
or into your eye’s pupil;
which is geographically impossible since
I’m not standing before you.
No one knows this, but the quickest
way to my dormant heart
are words crocheted into the right chains.
That’s irrelevant, except this is a confession:
I believe I have fallen for the genius of your tongue,
I want to touch your temple and
try to feel the birthing of a fresh poem.
Introduction is a funny thing because
once you’re offered friendship, there’s the danger
of being taken for granted.
Security in obscurity, the principle of cowards.
And gutless that I am, I will stay here under the shadow of anonymity.
An onlooker to your life, in the pretense
of being in it.

Yucatec Maya

As I called you Father in the presence of our captors,
I betrayed our kinship.
How could a name I so proudly breathed
morph into a sharp stone that cuts your throat?
I had to bow my head to the patch of earth
which although familiar, now seems lost.
And in that silence of unknown fathom,
you acknowledged me and called out: “Son, do not be afraid.”
Stone upon your skin, scarlet dripping to your chest
and the last you saw were trees swaying, and dabs of a pale sky
Father I swore I will not avenge your death,

but will celebrate your life by saving our people.

 

*     *     *

A poem inspired by the film Apocalypto.

Consequence

I was born with blood on my hands, they said.
And have all the signs of a bleeding heart.
Better a bleeding one, I thought,
Than one pumping ashes
Into a hollow shell.

The consequence of being.

What have we done?
How’d we get so far from the sun?
A step can take you far
Or it can take you nowhere,
The meaning of miscalculation.

The consequence of sentience.

Lost, lost in an oscillating phase
Where a tiny few catch all of the rays.
The gold in their teeth
Smile at you with malice,
a disparaging mask.

The consequence of hierarchy.

 

* * *

The italicized first lines are from The Shins’ No Way Down.

The Dagger

 

So long to this wretched form.
The burden of weight, a redundant notion
Listless, slumped, resigned

Them grey eyes on the subway
An ear to the ground will betray the moans
Of hearts taking the wrong turn.

Long before you were born
Before the persistence of tiny heartbeats
You were always
to be a dagger floating

Straight to their heart.

* * *

The italicized lines are from The Shin’s The Rifle’s Spiral. 

Carbon Monoxide

A heart that’s full up like a landfill
It half-beats to the rhythm of your
Pallid life, your impaled face staring
at the odds and ends of memories
Lost, cramped.

A job that slowly kills you
The recycled air, the artificial light grows
staler and dimmer inside your guts
Where lost chances dwell
Dark, rotten.

Bruises that won’t heal
The mesh upon which new tissues
grow: a scar. Pick
at your scabs, your regrets
Futile, inevitable.

You look so tired and unhappy
Such ordeal to pull your face
into a smile, as life, or the resemblance
of a life, is nothing but
tenebrous, desperate.
* * *
The italicized first lines are from Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’
If you get the chance, listen to the song; and while you’re at it, also check out Regina Spektor’s excellent cover here.