For a friend in love

Sun is not for shine
ray is arrow,
evening marks endless night
leaf weeps
as does step, mirror, soap
birdcall and traffic:
solitude's preferred colours
wrap the day in grey-shade
and tie with black-ribboned finality

Like now.

But night ends,

dawn breaks
in ways that twist equation
beyond all recognition.

Happens. 

Wait.

 

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1982-2012

Then

an incarceration

by innocence

Now

known imprisonment,

and the intervening years

were made of waves

leave and books

question and exclamation

choices, regrets and perfumes

paper-weights and heart-weights

wrong squares and bad bishops

we were skewered

by carelessness

forked by knights

that preyed in daylight and dream

and though a kite-thread ran

on a score sheet

with indecipherable scribbles

the moves that gained space

and those that checkmated

from then to now,

we remain

heart fish and heart fish

in mind-drained bowls

peering through refractions

glass-made realities

not of our design.

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Gem and Jewellery show

Decorator of crown,

beautifier of naked neck

witness to union

marker of class,

gem and jewellery

are made for show,

the ultimate frill

but behind the ornate

the crusting

lance and polish

there is another hand

other foreheads

with de-jewelled beads

undermined names

that are un-googled

from fashionable transcripts

lost in the mud-letting

of cosmetic commerce,

and shadowed in the glitter

they’ve crafted:

we bury ourselves

in our respective

political economies.

[Inspired by the photography of Rukshan Abeywansa]

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My watch

Silver arrows

millions of them --

the astral arms

of the archer must be sore;

but right here

where they fall

stars and merged constellations

are birthed and slayed

on pavement and puddle

and there’s a one-tone shhhh…..

that silences all

this damp morning

of nowhere-to-go. 

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The bus that caught India

There was a bus going to Trichy
to an airport and a plane

speeding from hatred and insanity

there was a bus

that caught a stone

and held a scream;

there was a bus that left for Trichy

but skidded off the road

to end in a city,

that Delhi of centrality

of apathy and political calculus

Delhi of a Shining India

that displaced chauvinism off-shore

but found that ideas don’t leave

like people do, like guns do, like money does;

there was a bus that caught a stone

it is the bus that Delhi didn’t want to take

but that India found herself trapped in --

and here

in Sri Lanka

we look across the water

we see and shake our heads:

‘Sorry, wrong number,

sorry, wrong bus!’ 

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Night-love

One arm under her neck and back over her

the other under her arm

so cheek can rest on palm,

(she’s palmable)

soft kisses on the other cheek

and the nocturnal chanting

of all known sweet-nothings

that are everything and more;

she turns by habit,

lays head on chest

and claims in her unconscious

the conscious right: ‘you are mine’,

and turns back for preferred comforts

in the happy concession: ‘I am yours’.  

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Mulleriyawa is a Memory-Ground

Blood was shed in 1562

blood, like any other blood,

in any other year,

here or there or anywhere

but Mulleriyawa,

deliberately 'asylumed'

on account of shame

was bloodied

in the name

of way of life

and by way of life

in the art of war

of have-to-do

and why and when and how

as it is

when invader is tested

and bested

as it will be

450 years hence

in that other 'Angampora'

of the relevant age:

Mulleriyawa is battleground

and memory

of an insanity

that was cured.

[Inspired by the photography of Sanka Gallage who captured a special display of the ancient Sinhala art of war, 'Angampora' by Mahantha Arachchige Ajantha Perera and his students commemorating the 450th anniversary of the historic victory of the Sinhalese over the Portuguese in Mulleriy]

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