a june song

this june song

will be a long one

i hope

time has been transforming me 

holding me up to the wind like a sail

i flutter & stutter & am wider

than ever, broad as a boat, as the taut

aloft windspan of a bat or a bird...

i am learning

the colour of honesty

the texture of it

how the air around me feels

when i am honest with myself

i am learning, or rather

relearning    the sacredness of things

of plants & rocks & ancient trees

& the sundust carried

in the hips of the breeze

i am admitting to myself

my place in the world of things

i am one

of the world, the world is one

of me, there will always be

endless ways i am tied

to everything outside

i am connected so sharply

every light of me    every shadow

in this world of things

where everything glitters

with light    memory    tenderness    life

i am learning

i can never be 

alone

*

may was a singular vast purple sunset

at the spire of a streetside church, my hand held

april each meal i couldn't eat alone

each cloud of smoke that made me spill the right words

march was a return to my solitude room

the walls decked with patterns & old griefs & joys

*

deep in the green suburbs

we were reborn in a golden egg

wet but warm, huddled, held

i felt very deeply 

the thinning of walls between things, between worlds, between us

and the beauty too 

of these walls, the patterns they made, the shapes & colors

the delicious textures of all the world around us

*

i am learning

how everything moves in circles, in snaking twining cycles,

how everything returns, but everything

leaves

how the silence allows me to enter silence

how the air lines up inside me & turns to light

how the column of light beams up my spine

like the slowest, slightest smile

i am learning pleasure is possible

along with that museless space of peace

i am learning my attention can be sharp

like a spear or else scattered like sand

i am learning, relearning, so many times over,

that i am here to make, to sing these songs,

to open like a door, spill like a vessel,

so the songs can unspool

out of me while i learn

to sing along

a january song

is cold and hard at the edges

yet arched, like a door. like we have

somewhere to go, and it has been

hard getting here. the chill is

sometimes blinding, and even

the circles of life begin to lose

their trustworthy rhythms. at some point,

everything you lose is too much to bear.

feral, we march onwards. wolfmonth,

it was called. wolflike, I feel, some

mornings in winter light and wind

outside the door. here is another

door. janus sits here, knowing 

what happened and why, what

might go wrong, what joy

might look like, this time.

in my nightmares all the same

people come and go, catching

me in some dark corridor, a moment

of uncertainty or uncontrol, a recent

fear. in my happy dreams, I jump lightly

but am able to leap and stay in high air,

enjoying new motion. sometimes I solve

a mystery, or one step of it, deep in an

underground chamber I might never

access again. it is dangerous, the same

balconies as my fifth grade classroom,

cops outside, or teachers, but always

I reach the secret rooms, find hidden

doorways, a story behind a wall.

after the nightmares I wake and pine.

I miss a life that used to be mine. this one

is working well, it shines and lurches on,

but some mornings I hold my blanketed

arms and wish they were yours. 

I keep trying to be accurate

about my pains and joys. 

I sit like a fat cloud in this january night,

singing to the thinnest slice of moon.

I am not flying, but there is joy here, in this low air.

body-mind

 

welcome, words. sometimes when they start bubbling inside of me before i even sit, i know it's going to be good. 

often these days i have been lucky enough to enter a space of flow with relative ease, just sitting down with the work and the work curling fingers towards me, tangling me inside, tangling and tangling until i realise some invisible knot has been loosened, i know something new of the world, of my work, of my body-mind and of the words.

for some weeks now my nose has been bleeding. nothing heavy, just little clots of blood when i pick at it, sometimes a drop of wet red on my fingertip. it must be the dryness, cracking the landscape of my skin, leaving me khurdura on my elbows, the backs of my arms, my outer thighs and hips. today the soft chamber at the beginning of my throat is feeling tender, each swallow tasting sickly, breath becoming sticky. i work hard at myself when i can, drinking adrak chai slowly, rubbing coconut oil with lemongrass essence all over my freshly-bathed outsides, dabbing some oil in my nostrils so i stop wiping dried blood on my sheets.

as far as i can figure the mountain pose from my yoga videos, it is about standing straight, straight, feet hip length apart but firmly rooted, thighs reaching upward gently, hands open at your side, shoulders low but pulled back like little wings spreading, head facing forward, so sturdy atop this geometry. it is mostly like standing, except doing it with grace, a grace the human body tends to forget when the mind is beeping and scrolling and marching.

mostly these days i am feeling like a body. a body aching or glad, dancing freer than ever before on certain bluish nights. when i talk or play or do it is mostly in relation to everybody around me: i am the self that fits like a jigsaw here, flowing with ease between my mama's arms and the other rooms, making my grandparents laugh and hold my hand with their calloused palms, teasing my sister and pa, giggling helplessly with Susan Didi's beautiful baby boy. sometimes i get on the phone with a friend and then i have to remember who i am, how my hours are passing, and that feels hard, and so i often don't do it. 

and the rest? all work. when i can't do it my body mopes, i watch tv and eat late lunch with my sister, i bathe for an hour with my tea in the bathroom, and prepare myself for when the work comes. i must fulfill obligations and also do homework, submit workshop letters, be a good student. i'm being a good student of my self, finally a good student of derrida, always a good student of my mama's stories. the theory i read feels like jibberish when i'm tired, but when i'm open and ready it pours over me like something sacred, allows me new meanings, gives me joy like a large object strangely weightless and invisible in my arms. and then the way paint glides on paper, releases pigment into water, settles new shadows into the world. and then the words i can make, tak tak tak, just one upon the next. it makes me smile like a child when somebody passes the room. 

who

who is this person with paint on her nails

this matte mahogany or merlot or maroon

making these hands look older than they have

before, the darknesses and lines made

visible by colour, a sudden flash of personality

when i scratch my hip or tie my shoes

how many years i spent trying 

to keep my    self intact    now look

my toenails are this greyish lavender, pale 

as early hillside flowers, wooly like fog

who is this woman with colour 

at her limbs     look how she shines & shatters

chaotic office of my brain

After a good day off work, a little note for a future self: 

I'm trying so hard recently to be able to make new rituals, new practices of engaging with myself & with the world, new patterns of behaviour and neuron-pathways. Often it means doing something that grates a little when I try to do it at first -- pushing against a boundary of comfort -- something I wouldn't have expected from myself. I'm finding again and again how hollow ideas of 'personality' are - we all seem messy as.... (on some pause and thought) rhizomes*, mushrooming onward endlessly in every direction, connected to each other in all ways, even the unexpected ones. I am what I think I am, and also everything I think I'm not. You are what you are to me. It's all built on mirrors & the mirrors keep flooding mercury

Sorry I slipped into something else. Something other. I'm floating and spinning, but it's done after a day of tangible work, some of the silly busy-work, all chores of daily living that I must perform, that I am trying to find joy and patience and newness in. So much of growing and so much of learning is just about turning, turning inwards sometimes and outwards sometimes, balancing silence with all the chaos a well-lived life comprises of. Thanks for reading this little note if you migrated here from my Instagram, am trying to find other ways of connecting and looking inward/outward without having to be an endless part of the scrolling-greedy-eyes-bottomless-belly monster that instagram/facebook can be. Shoot me a note if u find words here that you like, email me if you'd like to share your words with me⚡

*from A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari 

september now

time for all the work to begin. yesterday while trying
to hang up tangled wires i slipped a metal disc
too close to my soft index-finger-skin
and sliced right through the white first layer
to inside, wherever it is that blood comes from.

i survived. i survived, but it was frightening,
to suddenly not be a whole body anymore,
to be shaky hands and veins pumping blood
gathering under the skin, pulsing, darkening
while trying to heal, a little raised finger-flap.

it is september now and time for stability.
i am getting used to some of the growth
and it feels less alien to be my own 
unwhole self, somebody who lives
in a place which will turn bloody soon
when the fall leaves come, will survive,
will survive even this year, this blood.

A Saturday

The fan whirrs and

on my speakers

the meditation man

                        gently drones.

Accidentally I enter

 

            a pocket of time

 

            where it is very quiet

 

            it is shaped like a body

 

            and when I am inside it

 

            the small of my back

 

            unfurls like petals

 

buzzes lightly

Notes from June II

I have seen I move in seasons.

To arrive at the season of making
I must first learn to live the waiting.
I must live sticky limbs, heavy spine.
I must live desert days.

In my room I have hung
a gold ring
the size of my cupped hands.
It is what I want to go through
when I am able to be
a column of air.

Its edges reveal dark
wood, no shine, but so
do all edges. No matter
how thin the metallic
slice, how pure your
vision, how sacred
what you made.

I have found hard edges
in recent seasons, and frequent
reasons to complain. I have sat
on a chair and been afloat. 
I have wanted not to be.

That season is passing. Mosquitos
line this new air, leave bruises on my
skin, but look how brown my limbs
when they can dangle free.
I greet summer with fruit
and fizzy drinks. I smell
a magnolia over a fence,
swing across a branch to
somewhere new entirely.
It is pleasant to be.

Notes from June I

Again I break my heart.
Again I spill
ash on my wrists.

A lover leaves. The leaves arrive.

Everything is early, even when long
overdue. I must pay my dues.

My head clears slightly, I open
the maps. I read every language.
I learn new things. I learn that
I failed at everything I did not
know. I failed again.

I want to go to the mountains.
Somewhere with a small river.

If I could go with my mother
and my friend, I would say
      what I feel
and they would hear.
Everything might be easy.
Eventually we might
have to say no words
at all. River silence.

For now, everything fails.

Which is to say
we get to try again.
I get to try again.

The words feel flabby,
all stretchy skin and no insides.
Still I say them, six hours down.
Overdue, but I arrive. Here I am,
still writing. Here I am, loving,
even if wrong. Here I am, all
failed and flabby, all hurt skin,
all the same words each time.

Will something break?
Will something grow here?

20: sleep

these days as i near sleep
i have been travelling far
into the dark rooms

there are some
unexpected pleasures, like
i can hear my grandparents
talking to me, asking why
i came down the stairs
to the chilled study,
if i would like a sprite
or pistachios from a bowl?

b-ma frequents each corner
of the house in my memory.
bottom of the stairs
with cake. in the garden
with a hose, always killing
the grass. in the kitchen,
hovering. her voice on
the phone. & sometimes
she sits in the study with him,
her limca-&-lime iced
her snacks salted
her elbow flesh waxy
and the softest thing i knew.

b-pa is only there, in that
study, often alone. he asks
what i am reading. the last
few years he did not hear
but before that he would
listen. his eyes directed.

it is not only pain
to go there anymore.
i hear their voices
if i concentrate
& it feels lucky.