Duel of the fates

Shadow warriors all,
and shadow dancers too,
one with another
and one with oneself
this way and that
in gesture and step
the bowing of head
for respect or grace
the swaying and stand-up
caress and cluth
free-float and abandonment
where night is light
and day dismal
in the artificiality of hour
and ephemerality of choice
the connecting of worlds
and discarding of prop
unruly in wild-hair ways
in the lost, found
and the somewhere between
of dueling days.
 
[Inspired by the photography of Natalie Soysa]


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It’s the bubble of life

This one belongs to parents:

‘Fond Hopes’

this to friend and lover:

‘Be Forever’,

That one got away:

‘Where I Want To Be’;

and so we watch

this spherical arrangement

of water and air

where burst is un-doubted

but intact willed,

where suicide bubbles

with touch and not-go

disrupt geometrical eloquence,

watch the carnival of flight

delight and sparkle

the kiss that kills

but exclaim in obdurate bubblitude:

and in a bubbling tone observe:

‘And bubbles there will always be!’

[Inspired by the album 'Bubbles' by Natalie Soysa and published in 'The Nation', UNDO Section] 

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Expressionism

Evolutionary appendage and remnant
made for crop and twist,
tint and trim
plait and shave,
the ultimate home-grown
no-censorship-allowed
weapon of mass communication,
the ageless ‘I am!’
resisting gravity
and given to selective union,
fluid subverter
of ‘be this and nothing else’
refusing to stand to attention,
bending
but not at bidding,
made for statement,
objection and affirming.

[inspired by the photography of Natalie Soysa and first published in The Nation, March 11, 2012]

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Kaak-Art

Scavenger

eye-sore

bad-news at the door step

identifier of squalor

and discard;

sentinel and purifier,

an unsatiable city’s

unsung remnant-picker

for you

there is no suitable perch

in Shoo-Shoo Land

and none where tenurial right

will not be claimed.

[Inspred by the photography of Natalie Soyza]

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Serendipity unveiled

This land
is every land there ever was
and ever will be,
this land
is not foreign
to foreign soil,
gaze upon it
and that’s all it takes
to obtain permanent residency
to love and hate
to own and disown
This land passes
from generation to generation
traveller to traveller
journal and revision,
it has moved from hand to hand
been chit-chatted about
civilized and vilified
and yet
again and again
through ownship and bombardment
lyrical rendering and misrepresentation
it rises
from cartography and cartographer
traveller and description
long nights
and blazing afternoons,
emerging in colour and storm
wave and wave-remnant
through mist and forgetting
rides on parallel lines
and wanders in impossible universes.
There are temples made of rock
and made of seaspray and yearning,
monuments from the past
as fresh as imagined tomorrows,
boats and carpets
lines and curves.
This land
is a beautiful woman,
an old woman’s recollection
a baby’s ripple of laughter,
a song sculpted without blueprint
plundered without mercy
lost without name
but always,
always
signatured with love.

[Inspired by Natalie Soysa's album by the same title, and used to decorate a photo essay carried in 'The Nation' of October 30, 2011]

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