Crime Report

‘Raped!’ that’s a Page 1 scream.
‘Charged!’ goes to Page 3.
‘Convicted’
is a Page 12 small-print.
Newsworthiness
is about economics
what sells and what sells less;
it’s a strange consumerism
that pushes blood-price
including its own.

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Song of the mushroom girl

There are mushroom mornings, dawn feet on wet grass
and a garden delicately ash-browned
here and there
fine-sand pop-ups;
heen-veli-hathu
take up position
on some lightening-nights
in elemental indetermination;
I don’t know if they descend
from morality or impertinence,
of if they are fed
by the fertilizer of hope,
or if it’s all a play
on mind’s gullibility,
but that’s how you come
in un-witnessed overnight showering
that’s how you come
and go in midday heat,
girl of fine-sand truancy.

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The C.E.B.

The Ceylon Electricity Board Broke my heart last night.

[That’s CEB to the nation,
vilified and not without cause
but service-provider who gifts
but does not write in subsidy to bill]

The CEB

broke my heart last night;
interrupted sentence, wrecked thought
and drew me outside.

It’s close to Poya

and the moon is heavier
in her monthly pregnancy;
and the CEB had sliced her
neatly
four parts,
two squares
and two horns.

There are things

bigger than the CEB,
things the CEB cannot take
or break,
can cut
but will still come through
night and heartache
gift and theft;

The CEB broke my heart

last night
but couldn’t stop its mending. 

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The scrambling of constellations

Last night was an after-rain festival,
the stars
long burdened
by holding up sky
broke constellation,
dropped from cloud gap
rolled along moonlight
and danced and danced
and I saw the Greek myths scrambled
ancient narratives re-worded
and re-nonsensed
upon a jam fruit tree
and a veta hira fence
and the resilient iluk.

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It’s all a mainstream melody

It’s all a mainstream melody
of life and death
a dance of toss and draw
and tail-switch flee.

Yesterday’s free

is today’s catch,
and the one that got away
will tomorrow be caught.

And tomorrow’s escapee
will perish with trapper
in karmic ordainment
by and by.

Palette gratifying ritual

unknown to water
unknown to water resident:
livelihood for some.

Life-death art

is a midstream dance
between now and then
here and there.

A photo-essay

of our transience,
a moment-freeze
of a necessary journey.

[Inspired by the photography of Chandana Wijesinghe]

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