vihanga
While Krypteia is Honing Porn.
They cannot do it,
So sing to me the song that you
Love the most to sing; and
While Krypteia is honing porn
Say that to you I am everything.
In a softly spoken word,
When big words in philosophy texts
Deceive us; fables fail; revered novels fall
And things we were told to be convinced of
Excuse themselves outside the wall,
When in a softly spoken word
The dynamite, energy stirs;
It winces to draw blood — and in
Assured hold, assurances do not get told,
But, till a sound is heard on the stair: that is it.
A car, which, when parked in a slope,
Aspires to menses. Near closely built
Neatly trimmed fences of two Uptown homes,
A couple, bidding bye, in neat pretenses.
I adjust my cap; adjust my lenses.
Bright sunshine, blue feathered bird,
Please tell me — cos, to me it never occurred:
Is life this serene, this free of piss?
I walk down the slope, kids walking down behind,
An insistent doggy another doggy’s ass-round kiss.
When big words desert us,
When you realize how dumb
Novels, poems make us to be.
In simple twisting, unfettering gest,
You break the iron, the bolt. Shrug yourself free.
2011-08-05
Non-Lovers’ Touch
A drumbeat, like a humming echo,
Alights faintly from a conscious, tightening mind.
And you indifferently continue to write on; as if
Nothing in us has turned you on;
Without a quiver, taking your time
For an unrecorded moment’s unrecorded flirt,
Subtle friction, is no recorded crime; is
But an intense line of poem without diction.
A faint moment’s touch which, if not turned into habit,
The rapture in memory will miss altogether much.
2011-07-14
Couched in Our Indifference
The distance is not bearable
Sometimes when your eyes and her eyes
Are as far apart as our words and moods.
Outside, toots and revving engines flow,
As, with silences of sorts, we mark the floor.
Will I ever mean to you what,
In the fresh moments of belief, I always meant to be:
The horseman and the stallion of
Your life’s essence; life’s destiny? And
Love lingers, still, soft, slow, as
From a hurt distance, insistently she would lift
A cat-like whisker. My whisper
Reaches your chipped heart like from across a dream
And it touches a damp spot, like a faint ray
Before the breaking of a morning beam.
Hold out to me a compassionate hand
That, in its aching love, understands
My soul, the uncompromising love
In its depths as it holds,
Penelope.
2011-07-03
C4
In the end — if noone’s willing —
On behalf of those that represent me
I will accept the en masse killing.
And add that we knew what things would be
When, encouraged, the hounds’ dogs bite to kill
A people, once made the meat, would die at will.
Wipe tears away, break the eerie silence
That descends like a bomb on the room we sit;
For, after all, it is no more than digitalized violence
Fabricated into a film, taken bit by bit.
Speak not to me, O Representative, when you represent me
Of fantastical Potter Tales, of things that couldn’t be.
Now the local station, too, has a story to tell:
Though it is not a 50 minute run things are doctored well.
Dilka, with your vigour, conviction, were you born on the side
Of the Northern peninsula it wouldn’t be Shobha that died.
This not true! This not true! the conviction of bold
Sons our mothers mother having a field day being told:
This should be a vested fabric, lest our Grand Belief ails
And the mass euphoric mission in suspension fails.
If for a moment you feel lost, confounded by
A documentary reel, by your impulses lie.
2011-06-16
Holder and Bulb
You hold me and say
“You are my bulb”.
Let us make light then
And those that touch us
Let them be burnt like hell.
In touching give a spark,
The heated tungsten, on a
Fragile filament quivers like a heart
Making love (or light) till
We collapse apart.
And then, the scene shifts back to reality:
We’re caught in a fit of ungoverned frenzy
And are kissing like mad as if in any impending second
The world will have a stroke, collapse and end.
You’re my CFL.
And I? “You’re my
Ceylon Electricity Board”.
Released from that energy-sapping all-draining power
I am also called by a company that runs at a loss.
2011-05-12
Officer’s Parade after the Badge.
I see, I see
The next decade and a half,
Till the absolute order you court with you is done,
I see the culled, gleaned roses of mediocrity.
I see the thin grass of a wasteland come.
Speak to me, you spineless shadow of a
Athens that never was; now, living on bread,
Is this the last stand of a postmodernist Achilles,
Or, do the blossoms bear best when the land is dead?
A little tommy tank passes, goggled soldier with a head.
I see, I see the
Next 10-15 years, they’ve come today,
The way they were played, the way they returned
Day before the day before yesterday.
The caterpillars that grind as they carry your tank
Lay crushed, decomposed corpses all along the soft bank
And between the banks flows the water
From the hills to the sea; so, that it may fall into the ocean
Somewhere around Trincomalee. The trees will stand, till dead,
For even as they stand dead-like they slumber. Do forget my name,
O’ Place, but do not forget my number.
2011-05-07
The Fish in the Tank
Tonight, the protester comes home. Tonight,
Nothing’s won, forced through; and very little’s bright.
You stop by the fish tank to see the waters go,
The reeds, unsettled by the oxygen, yet let
The fish to exhale and flow.
The light’s on, you got a shirt to remove,
A Facebook account to check. Revive a
Stanza in unappreciated poetry: which, when revised,
You know will not go any further than when
You stood among real fiction and real men.
Just say that NM was ultimately Minister of Finance.
Concede that Comrade Vasu is now a deva in blue.
Sanjeewa Bandara’s a name that comes after
Charges by government batons; to tell a tale
Of what is left of what the System smiles to do.
Man, Protester, my beguiled fellow,
In tired, dripping resignation you lie against the pillow
What you earnestly felt was your pill for the nation.
Close your eyes, let out a sigh; I encourage your dream.
Battles are won individually; if not as a team.
2011-04-30
On a Reader of Dickens
To read the unreadable and to
Do the unthinkable is the
Lesser sin when compared
To saying the unimaginable.
I opened a book from which the skeleton of a gecko
Fell out of closely snuggled pages,
Hitting the floor, making an echo.
Hidden to the shelf carrying volumes of
Clarissa and Pamela
I propose to make love,
But your sense of time and deed
Whisper in my displaced ear to
Enhance my speed; wooden pressure
In a musty room, in an afternoon
In a month where, in general, I come too soon.
Come too soon: and you hold out to me the book
Asking me to tell you the story.
On the hardcover in faded gold lettering:
“Bleak House”; “Charles Dickens”.
Dick stiffens. House is no longer home.
Ceasar is unceremoniously dethroned in Rome.
“Tell story. Got a short note to write”
And I sit down with you to break the night:
“There’s a lady in a bleak house who
Runs the annual drills again:
Opens the long shut windows,
Brooms, dust-cleans the panes.
Smothers year-worn cobwebs,
Airfreshens the must. Drains the pool of
Stale water, droppings, murky
Frog crust.
Runs the annual drills again:
This house is for sale.
Re-donns that syntheticly immaculate
Painted public face and
Smiles, throws hands most constantly,
Playing the tunes of this real estate industry.
The house doesn’t sell. Another year. Another year.
The ghost smokes in the library on the upper tier”.
So, “But, then, why does Dickens make
Such a deal of it?” you whisper.
That you got to go ask your teacher. And, there, then, I
Kissed her….. Nah — I kissed her not.
I kissed her not. (Cos, now,
I better watch out whom I’m kissing).
“Seriously I don’t know why Dickens is taught!”.
When there are others in time whom we are missing.
What you will do with your exam I
Really don’t know. But, you seriously got to
Let your imagination grow. Even the
Sadist ends with a whimper and a snort
And in life’s humbling run when you have given
All you’ve got, there’s no more to kill for,
No more to create pain. In disillusion alone
You realize your vain.
2011-03-09
In Passing
Driving out of Colombo, 3 AM.
Outer Colombo without traffic
Is a major turn on.
And I’m living it now.
And I’m living it now.
Will I become hostile, then
To stagnant vehicles when
This spree ends and the day’s begun?
O’ Colombo, is this you asleep
3 AM in the morning, turned aside
And snoring deep?
I used to laugh at Wordsworth walking
That early morning bridge.
But, I get it now — what the hopeful feels
In surrealistic walking heels.
Don’t cherish these moments, let the
Moments live and flow.
All you’ve got in time is a flicker
That flicks out before you know.
2011-02-21
Kuruwita
This one is dedicated to, Rathindra Kuruwita: friend, journalist, fraud Marxist, Capitalist.
You have always cheated me
Using me for your petty ends,
And though it could be
That you’re a gift to me which heaven sends,
In the end analysis, you deserve a spank
Or a bullet through your head at point blank.
With a plaint tea through a stained strainer they pour,
Sitting by a lousy Grandpass tea joint’s door,
Your fake love with a false tooth on the show,
You tell me of how opiumless flowers grow,
Or the rhythm of the breath as lovers come…. or go,
Propounding theory of things you hardly know,
Then tell me I am a good boy: “machan, write some more”.
With a friend like you I need no foe.
Rathindra, Kuruwita, — whatever — Mitta,
When the deed is done you no longer KIT yeah?
Though whatever you do I remain yours sincerely true,
The day ain’t far that I am so gonna shit ya.
And on that day when God’s final judgement is passed,
He himself will tell you that you’re capitalist assed.
2011-01-17
FISH ON THE SAND 