Moon is the mellow mother
Our father Sun leaves behind
To remind us he is still out there.
When Sun returns home angry-faced,
He quickly “outshines” faithful Moon.
“The woman knows her bloody place.”
When Moon is through her periods,
She’s even less than herself then.
Some nights she’s gone. But not for good.
We’re grown up now. His tyranny
No longer scares. We have our own:
Our light. Our heat. Our coolness too.
She’s calling me to dinner now,
And lowering her husky voice,
Says breakfast is included too.
If that is what I’d like to do.
I want to say, I’ll bring the tea –
The chamomile she likes so much –
Instead, I say, he’s still a friend.
Let’s wait until its legal end.
We loved without a care for law,
And now that we are in the gray,
You’re choosing to be on his side?
There’s no more need for us to hide.
Her huskiness was haughtiness.
Impatience! That’s what plagues her so.
He has been nothing if not nice.
I tell her straight – I’m still his wife.
He fumbled with his pocketbook –
The one he stitched his pockets for
A finger wider than was vogue –
To open to the pages “S”.
He slapped his other pockets too
But couldn’t find the thing he sought.
He shrugged and shook his absent mind
And moved the book – now near, now far –
And screwed his cataracted eyes
To follow down the yellowed page
Along a yellowed fingernail
To where he found my father’s name.
He slapped his pockets yet again,
And yet again he couldn’t find
The thing he thought that he had brought,
And scribbled at me in the air.
I passed the pen my father used.
He weighed it, nodding, in his palm,
And, shaking lightly, struck a line
Through S, through u, throughout the name.
He called me to his shoulderside
And, flipping to a sticking page,
He nodded at the stricken names
That filled his notebook page by page.
“My Scrabble friends, my Rummy mates,
My Carrom club – all gone, all ‘Late’.
I always had the best of luck.
I always held the winning streaks.
And look at how I’m winning now:
Just three of thirty-seven live.”
I had no mind to come, but you
Inspired me with health and heart
And prospects of a change of scenes,
Forgetting that the true obscene
Awakes and sleeps within my skin.
You poke me here and pinch me there
And jump aback to watch me squirm,
To see me rage, disgrace myself
Against the leash you thought you still
So snugly had around my will.
I warned you as you sobered down
And knelt before me in my suite
That guilt will sting and suffocate
Upon your waking in my bed.
You laughed and dug into my thighs
And chipped what you had manicured
An hour before the hour you swore
You’re done with men and wedding vows
That meant so little to those men.
I warned you in the morning too
As you assured me with your throat
That you can take it all and choke,
And yet enjoy it even more.
I warned you as you made it known
Around the breakfast buffet spread
That you had spread before me too
The rumours of rekindled flames.
I warned you I felt not a thing
The way you teased me that I did.
I warned you that you felt the thing
The way you eyed me through your hair.
You say I’m not the man I was?
You say I’ve lost my moral sense?
It’s me who warned, and you who laughed:
Remember when you text again.
Your poetry now smacks of prose
In rows of tetrameter verse.
Your language doesn’t shimmer now.
Imagery is dimmer now.
No theme reveals like Palantir.
No metaphors lift Mjolnir.
No similes provoke like wives.
Enjambments slice like mercy knives
Beheading harakiri lines.
Your rhyming’s timing undermines
The climbing tension’s priming signs.
By choosing conversative styles,
You’ve blunted other crafting tools,
Forgotten how to mend the rules
To rend the screen of mundane thought.
Arise! Don’t let your poems rot.
“Just sit? Like so? And then? Do what?”
“Just sit. Like so. And nothing else.”
“But what’s the point in sitting so?”
“No point, no point. Just sitting so.”
“You sure that’s how we do this thing?”
“Yes, sure. Yes, sure. Just sitting so.”
“And that will bring enlightenment?”
“No, no. No chase enlightenment.”
“A stepping stone, then? Practice run?”
“No stepping stone, no. This is it.”
“Just sitting so? And that is it?”
“Just sitting so. And this is it.”
“And yet there’s no enlightenment?”
“Who knows? Who knows? Just sitting so.”
“It must be good for something, yes?”
“No, no. It’s good for nothing. No.”
“Then what’s the point in sitting so?”
“No point, no point. Just sitting so.”
“It makes no sense. No sense at all.”
“No sense, indeed. Just sitting so.”
“I came to seek enlightenment.”
“Desire, it is. Detach desire.”
“And that will bring enlightenment?”
“Who knows? Who knows? Depends. Depends.”
“On what? How well I’m sitting so?”
“No well, no bad. Just sitting so.”
“So, how to know I’m doing right?”
“No right, no wrong. Just sitting so.”
“In twenty years, you saw no change?”
“Oh, many changes. Quite a lot.”
“And zazen is what brought the change?”
“Who knows? Who knows? But there is change.”
“Which means, it’s good for something, no?”
“No, no. It’s good for nothing. No.”
“So, why have you been doing it?”
“No why, no why. Just sitting so.”
“No why? You find it meaningful?”
“Yes, meaningful and valuable.”
“So, that is why you’re doing it.”
“Effect, effect. Not cause, not cause.”
“If meaning’s effect, sitting’s cause.”
“Effect is cause of effect’s cause?”
“Exactly, yeah. It motivates.”
“Not motive, no. Just sitting so.”
“An act without a motive, hunh?”
“The act is motive of the act.”
“But why this act? Why sitting so?”
“No clue. It works. Just sitting so.”
“It works? You want it working so?”
“No want. Just see it’s working so.”
“But seeing makes you want it, no?”
“No want. Just see. Just act. Just sit.”
“You’re full of bullshit, Roshi dude.”
“You say I’m good for nothing, yes?”
“Desire? For a compliment?”
“Haha, you catch me. Catch me good.”
With every step, she stops to check
The source of all the jingliness.
But clever bells, before she tells,
Go hide inside a tingliness.
She takes it off her waist, and yet,
No matter how much gummed or thumbed,
The little bells still hide so well
Inside her heirloom cummerbund.
I wake up to a gentle tap,
Though no one could have come inside.
I feel it like I feel the air.
So unmistakeable. It’s there.
I see the clock and almost gasp.
The day has passed. Or, almost passed.
My pen, my paper – where are they?
My phone, my laptop – where are they?
There’s not much time.
There’s not much time.
There’s nothing on my canvas mind,
There’s nothing I can craft to words,
Except the gentle tap I heard
Inside my dreamless, solid sleep –
A tap that must have come from deep.
He says he comes from Germany
To study urban monkey tribes,
And how they mark territory
Migrating up the coastal lines.
He flatters both our parents’ work:
His Physics, her Zoology.
Appreciates their influence
On research grant authorities.
He flashes shiny tools and gears,
With sponsorships from big-big names.
And flicking through some photographs,
Recounts adventures in our state.
He asks if we have spotted them:
His monkeys with the collar tags.
Why can’t he track their GPS,
We ask, if they have collar tags.
He shifts a little here and there
And draws a lengthy jargon loop.
Our mother blinks and asks him straight,
“So, biped monkeys hazed a newb?”
Gorilla German shrinks to Chimp.
The Alpha gives Omega shrugs.
And flicking falling strands of hair,
Recounts a mugging at a pub.
If sleep arrives, it stays the night.
No more I’m woken by my dreams.
If sleep arrives at all, that is.
No more my mother hears my screams.
The breathing forms, the prayer beads,
The air conditioner, newly bought –
They all invite my sleep at night,
But nothing’s like your tablets, Doc.
They zombie me. They fatten me.
They make me lose my games of chess.
They make me make excuses, but
They bring my sleep like nothing else.
Of course, I flushed them long ago.
Addictions I have quite galore.
That doesn’t stop me missing them.
I miss so much and so much more.
Some nights I toss a coin and know
No sleep will come, no thoughts will go.
These nights, I sit and stare at stars
And watch the dew drop slowly grow.
Minakhi Misra 