All it Takes

An ant.
A world.

A thumb.
A girl.

A life.
A breath.

Pressure.

A different world.

prayer

i.
it feels almost as if
my hands are in yours again, grandfather;
these papers are coarse and wrinkled like
your weary palms, thin and mottled as
the skin you’ve worn away. i fan them out
in circles, tracing a history of your days;
it turns out imperfect, but pretty in
an austere way. these are “hell notes”;
the term does ring a bell: the toll of
suffocating, fiery death–

ii.
–which is their sole purpose.
gingerly, we place them into
this cylindrical furnace, then step
back, always keeping a safe distance
from the hungry flames. i am reminded
of the coolness of the glass which kept us
back, shielding us from the heat
of the fire consuming you,
of the grief consuming us.

iii.
father choked on an
anguished sob then; now
he chokes on this smoke thick with memory,
silently tearing, from within, each throbbing ache
to lay, piece by piece, on the
charred remains of previous pains.
it seems he is burning the bridges to loss;
behind his blazing stare hurt must smoulder in private.
i stand by his side, but still we are alone.

iv.
i am struck with the thought that i am holding postcards:
a neat stack of them with peeling silver stamps.
i drop them into this cylindrical mailbox,
into the hands of flickering postmen, who randomly toss them
up towards the blue: all roads lead to you.
i have enclosed the naïve concern of the living:
I trust you are well? like you are on an extended vacation.
or maybe we’re the holidaying ones; well, in that case,
We’re having fun, but we’ll be home soon.

v.
like water from a faucet that trickles to a stop,
this fire dies in agony with crackles and a pop.
the sorrow it feeds on is not infinite; all that is left
is the fading smell of once-cloying incense, and this
lingering warmth fingering our heartstrings
to the tune of a eulogy. we have come to accept
that beneath these ashes, there are bits that
will not burn, but we
no longer mistake them for unfinished dreams.

the truth is they are diamonds that cannot be singed by time.

51

it began with some impertinence
on my part, though for that i have
no apologies. that was when we
built bridges on harmless banter, before
the storm of understanding eroded them.
years now have come
between us, like the sea that isolates
shipwreck survivors. we bob,
sometimes a finger-length away,
sometimes miles apart. time made me
drift; at times i almost lost hold

completely, resembling
a certain ex-planet, always
the dwarfed outsider, straining to keep
to one eccentric orbit, revolving
around the wrong core. though you
had your circle of friends, held by
one like-minded gravity, you did not
cast me to the oblivion of unknown
galaxies and anaerobic darkness.
by your neptune-like strength i remained
a part, a part of life's ellipse.

your forte is words; i prefer numbers.
but your name, in both, will be framed
in eternal recollection: the cornerstone
of the house of youth. for that
i thank you.

for shayi

softly we struggle.

i.

i trawl the night for afterthoughts;
the Net manages only straggling
shrimp, some headless, others tailless, all
writhing, desperately, into incoherent

images. i grasp a handful: they
slither, suddenly snakes,
i flail; i fail:
only ghosts remain.

ii.

a general humming: the air vibrates
with monotony, creates
false equanimity. now, under
tacit command, i expect

instantaneous calamity, but
only the earth shifts, an infinitesimal
displacement, unnoticed as these
blades that surreptitiously

slice each minute into shreds.
still, i sense the stirring. is it
time? if i close my eyes,
will we still exist?

sorry.

the words are not coming. well they are, but they always sound wrong. pardon me if the stuff here is awful; i feel a need to churn things out, if only to keep the cogs running. i hope things fix themselves soon. hmm.

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the crisp fragrance of apples
wafts in through the gaps
between the murmurs of this
silence, perforated by your fingers
tapping melodies on a tuneless keyboard.
elsewhere the tv blares sitcoms like static.
brother's breathing sandpapers the night.

this is life now. you are running (purposefully it seems)
through invisible cords, like those that used
to bind us, only more technical. i shiver
as i mill in this falsely deepening space, hoping
somewhere we'll meet, wishing you would see
my face in something more than pixels, read
my mind beyond size 12, times new roman.

a hairdryer moans: distress without words;
they splatter on the ground from the rusty showerhead,
evoking no response. there is no percolation.
you lean forward, seeking truth in that digital mirror
you've placed between us. you've made me your
reflection, an illusion behind this imaginary wall.
a metre away, i am trying to reach you
but i don't have your number.

only after

i. cat

you will leap onto the wall
nimbly, all grace, leave
nothing behind, paws pitter-
pattering the night into morse
dots and dashes.

pause.

now you will cringe, tail swishing
blade-like, claws tapping
out, again, re-morse
slots and slashes. i listen
numbly.

ii. lift

you will stop ringing. now.
you chime when you are empty
you chime when you are not.
now you will stop. rest for the night.
then tell me tomorrow if we're
going up, or maybe you'd say we're
going down.

iii. coffee mug

you have lost your colour.
years of staining tabletops have taken their
toll. i have sipped too much regret
from you, now my teeth are
irreversibly yellowed, like the aged pages
of that photo album stowed away
somewhere, which, if i recall,
still has your mark on page 7.
discolourations are memorable.

(why?)

before morning

the night coagulates, tangible and portly.
thick as worry, black as regret, it
softly suffocates, slickly strangulates
this resigned earth.

two temples throb.
between them a midnight worshipper
is devoutly devoured
by nothing -

the nothing

- as he helplessly grasps at
remnants of dusk and
fleeting glimpses of dawn.