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Saturday 29 September 2012

Free thoughts on free

 
We want more!
And more and more!
And why stop at 6% of GDP
(the equivalent, that is)?
We could go up to 8 or 10,
or the whole hog,
right up to 100 per cent.
let’s have free rice
and free rides,
free market free-for-alls,
free falls and free sex,
free books and uniforms,
free milk too (why not?)
free speech and free insult
freedom to pilfer, freedom to cry
let’s free ourselves from free-misery
and why not, free extraction too,
like teeth, labor and love,
let there be ‘free’
in a free float state
free currencies and free smiles,
let there be so much free
that free comes without price
and like air is freely spoiled;
let’s have free
free citizen friends,
and let’s lynch
that two-tongued, ill-bred
uncouth and ill-willed crook
Responsibility.  

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Wednesday 26 September 2012

Caramel


I don’t know ingredients I don’t know recipe
I know name but that’s nothing
for me it’s flavor and hue
texture and fragrance
something that comes wrapped
comes cupped and frilled
as after-taste consolation
or flavor-eraser
those little tidbits
that cure miseries
remove tumors
of nights and days
the unrepeatable delicacies
that come and go
or never visit,
and an eminent reason to smile

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Luminescence


It is a heart attribute
innocuous absorber of love light
innocent filter
of world, universe
and definitional inconveniences
holder of immeasurable treasures
the thin, rare light
of hope and the unbelievable
just to exude at night
and bathe in after-glow
of what is
what might have been
what isn’t but imagined.   

Monday 24 September 2012

Fireflies



Day fugitives,
night conquerors:
proof positive
of extra-terrestrial life,
recognizable in blink and blank
and our ephemeral commonality

Gammaduwa*

A lot happens in ‘village-huts’
for commonality spills out
of household and hearth
the domestic angst bows low
to collective prerogative;
and so they come together
to celebrate and lament,
heal and exorcise
the devil and devilment
those very-human dramatics
that consume and reveal
brush and burn and drown,
and so in our cities
and citied-comforts
we check it all out
these heritage remnants
tradition-preserves
entertainment exotica
outside the traditional paths
of diurnal density
so blind to A.M. Jayantha Siri
and the centuries that birthed him.


*Inspired by the photography of Hiranya Malwatta and published in the UNDO Section of 'The Nation', September 23, 2012.

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