NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 29

#29: HOI AN ANCIENT TOWN

What I remember best are lanterns:

Lanterns on the water on the fourteenth day

Of the lunar month

Drifting, heart’s-flicker-radiant

Downstream on the currents.

When I was here last, I too put a lantern

Into the water, and a wish -

But the flame snuffed out.

I am returning, oh river

To set my wish adrift again

Amidst the coloured nebulae of lanterns

Reflections quivering like butterflies

Upside down, under your tranquil surface.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 29

#29: ACHIEVEMENT UNLUCKED, I MEAN, UNLOCKED

Nail scissors: check

Comb: check

Razor blade: check

Mirror: check

Now all I need is some courage

(And more Luck than Lady).

How the devil do you use the razor

On something as fragile as an eyebrow?

One stray scrape too much

And voila! Bald patch!

All right, all right, I’m procrastinating.

Let’s see (scrape scrape scrape)

Don’t press too hard on skin

The packaging reads.

Oh, I’m nowhere NEAR pressing hard.

Damn it, there goes one hair I needed –

Ah to blazes with it

That’s what eyebrow pencils are for.

Shape, shape, shape –

Dubious, but Fate can only be tempted so far.

All right, trimming time.

So that’s why nail scissors are curved like so

(Comb stray hairs up and trim, they say

Oh hell was that a chunk too much?)

Amazingly, it’s not overly terrible –

That left side  will forever be a pain

And – huzzah! - I still have eyebrows.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 27

Prompt: Hay(na)ku: Variant of haiku which consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words.

#27: AFTERMATH OF THE QUAKE

In memorian, Nepal

Rubble
Broken dolls
Mama's battered skull.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 26

#26: BETWEEN PACKING AND REPACKING FOR VIETNAM

The art of packing is the art of condensing.

It is as much about knowing what to put in

As what to leave out.

Essentials first – the bare bones of your life

(When did mine begin including multiple copies

Of music scores and Febreeze

Hair pins and safety pins

And a head full of conducting patterns?)

Everything else will just have to fit between.

What you discard says as much

As what you pack - maybe more

And in the discards, perhaps
Is the key to simplifying life.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 25

Kintsugi is the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with lacquer that is dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Such breakage is treated as part of the history of the object and respected as such, rather than something to be disguised and hidden. The application in life is perhaps not so blindingly obvious, but definitely thought-provoking.

#25: KINTSUGI

Break me like an egg against a bowl

Gold-and-white, spilling like seed

A broken perfume jar leaking fragrance

A halved lemon, bruised skin staining fingers

With the sharp tang of scented oil

For until I have been broken

I am merely a pristine museum piece

Sheltered and coddled

But never fully alive.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 25

#24: STATISTICALLY SPEAKING

We are all statistics

According to the research.

We are percentages and decimal points.

But you see

I don’t want to be a statistic

A number that has meaning

But which ultimately can be manipulated

To suit the need of the moment.

I want to be the anomaly

The thing which throws into question

All statistics, that makes you stop

And wonder, Why is this so?

I want to be the voltage surge

That breaks the circuit

So the fault can be corrected.

I don’t want to be meaning

But to give meaning.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 23

#23: MIND BODY PROBLEM

You can't escape it however you deny it
The connection is there, sure as anxiety attacks and phobias
Stress takes its toll and the body gives way
The dying woman holds on for one week more
Just to see her son one final time
The mind, eaten up by jealousy
Riddles the body with crippling illness
Curious that we don't think to use this connection
For our own benefit:
When the mind is at peace the body follows
And the old saying, 'It's all in the mind'
Is truer, perhaps, than we know.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 22

#22: TEACHER, TINKER , SOLDIER…

inevitably you'll always lose some
and you wonder what you could've done
to keep them from sinking
to keep them fighting
to keep that bulldog light in their eyes
burning brightly despite the hits
the misses
the hard times
because some make it and some don't
but you, you know better
and you could've saved them
if only you tried harder
were wiser
were the PhD / MA / Super Person
that everyone respects and loves
looking at the all and forgetting
that in the all, there is the one
who survived, who thrived
til the small 'thank you'
from an even smaller voice made large
by something you gave
and never realised
the seed you planted

and never thought would grow.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 21

Prompt: Landay (9 syllables first line, 13 syllables second line)

#21: POLITICAL STATEMENT

Poets describe the land: words blossom.

Words drop from politicians’ mouths: landmines exploding.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 20

#20: NAMING A MYSTERY

Tell me the magic and mystery of names:

That words, in any language

Can conjure up memory and madness

Fire synapses, activate nerves.

The ancients believed that to name a thing

Is to hold its true nature

In the palm of one’s hand.

Tread lightly then, for you hold my name

In yours.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 19

#19: THE MANY FACETS OF PAIN

hot knife with a jagged blunt edge

slicing through the guts

barbed wire tumbleweed

in the skull

acid blossoms

on nerve edges

a thousand needles

under the skin

a wildfire of red ants

biting their way

through the sinuses

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 18

Prompt: An urgent message and urgent journey / travel, historical, fictional, or fantastical. I seem to have chosen 'Melodramatic' (and no, I don't have a husband, but the scenario was amusing enough to latch onto my brain.)

#18: ON A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

My cell phone is off for my date of the night:

Fine dining for dinner sounds just about right.

My husband’s been given instructions for food:

Lasagna in freezer. Reheat, and it’s good.

PS: The restaurant’s on XXX Street.

And now, let me finally savour my treat –

A lamb rack so tender, potatoes so smooth

A chocolate dessert to relax and to soothe.

Behold my alarm when my husband I see

Umbrella’d and drenched, running right up to me!

The house is on fire or flooded by rain!

Catastrophic visions dance wild in my brain!

Or possibly family’s in trouble – oh dear
Deceased is more likely, for him to come here…

I clutch at his sleeve. “Quickly! Tell me who died!”

“How do you turn on the oven?” he cried.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 17

#17: RAIN

Or is that the sound of thunder

Crackling from my own heart

As I put you away for good

In the coffin where old follies lie?

No matter.

I have you bound with chains

That even Hellboy cannot break.

Like a mad witch I cavort and caper

Relishing the burial of an unclean thing.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 16

#16: SALT

Honesty

Is like salt

Essential

Flavouring dishes

Disinfecting

Healing wounds

Yet too much

Produces a bitter taste.

Honesty

Like salt

Is palatable

Only when diluted

If salt

With water

If honesty

With love.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 15

Three years ago today, my oldest friend from university passed away suddenly, leaving a huge, irreplaceable hole in my life. Sha and Van are the two defining characters that we played on an online RPG, and it felt only right to honour his memory for today's piece.

#15: THIRD ANNIVERSARY

For Brian

The horizon’s dark with a faint glow
Blooming where cityscape meets sky -
Deep purple ombre against a starless night
Buildings in silhouette like Chinese paper cuts
And I wonder if this is the view that Sha and Van
Fell asleep to in each new Fringe port
Uncertain about tomorrow, content enough
To know they would face it together
Till chance parting, or death
Or both.
Only one of us watches now, separated
By that insidious ‘both’
But the same constellations smile down
As those that we walked under
So many summers ago and if I really try
I can still hear echoes of our laughter
Far far away in that Neverland
Where memories never grow old.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 14

I did fall asleep in biology class once. Except I fell backwards and hit my head on the tap on the sink behind me, which was certainly less than dignified.

#14: THE CHEMISTRY OF THE THING

The samurai sitting at the edge of my bed

Is the wrong shape, size and colour –

They don’t come in pink as far as I know

Nor do they wield polka dotted swords

Or have the Animaniacs as retainers,

Singing ‘Bali Hai’ with kazoos.

Or maybe not.

It sounds more like the Alphabet Song

And something about exploding elements

Carbon derivatives – isn’t that farting?

Please kiss me… wait, did I say that out loud

Or did I think it?

(I’m drooling. It’s not dignified.)

I must have because he’s leaning in and –

*EXPLETIVE DELETED* OW MY HEAD

“…If you’re quite finished sleeping in class, Miss Kusanagi

Perhaps you would be so good as to pick up your stool

Remove yourself from the floor

And attend to this lesson on organic chemistry.”

Duly chastised, I attend.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 13

#13: ASSASSIN

You’re the hole in my head

Dead centre between the eyes

Snubnose bullet rattling in my skull

Hot from a smoking gun

Instant fatality like a video game end boss

There’s no way back to Kansas, Dorothy

A gaming console with no replay button

No save function

I bleed my life out in wit and words

Thinking I never knew what hit me.

Well you did.

Amnesia would be preferable

To the cruelty of the unattainable.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 12

Prompt: Prose poem from detailed description of favourite place, meal, or person

#12: FLOOR PLAN OF THE RENTED ROOM CALLED HOME

Books everywhere – four wooden shelves

stacked, bursting

overflowing onto the floor

by the bed.

I say bed, but really

it’s just a mattress (a bedstead

would be too big in a room so small)

A mirror finally after so many years –

wouldn’t be necessary were it not

for conducting practice.

The Major – redoubtable desktop computer

runs smooth as a skater’s blade on ice

graces the writing desk that’s home

to everything else:

scanner, speakers, pliers, pencils,

essential oils.

We won’t talk about the closet

so little space, no drawers.

Attached bathroom, a gift

if ever there was one

boxed-up momentos of past lives

along one wall.

Small but this is home

haven

sanctuary.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 11

#11: SUPERHEROINE

IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME

YOU WOULD BUY IT FOR ME

The lungs of a six-year old

Have a capacity that opera singers would envy.

No, I tell you, and a fresh round of tears

Lays siege to the weary night:

YOU DON’T LOVE ME! 

YOU DON’T LOVE ME!

My demanding boy-child

This too is a kind of love:

The invisible cords with which

I have bound my hands

Preventing me from playing God

Or at least, granting your every wish.

 (I’ll apologise to the neighbours tomorrow.)

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 10

Prompt: An abecedarian poem (ie: a poem with a structure derived from the alphabet) 

Bad enough, right. Nooooo, my brain decides it has to use font names in alphabetic order as well. 

#10: GOSSIP AT THE COURT OF THE ABECEDARIAN FONTS

Arial’s buying Calibri dinner.
Eaten, Futura?
Garamond has Irma’s Jester.
Knock-kneed Lucida – 
Morbid numbskull or party queen?
Reel Scriptina’s Trebuchet
Under Verdana’s Wingding *xoanon,
You Zapf!

*Xoanon: Primitive wooden statue overlaid with ivory and gold.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 9

Prompt: Shaped poem. Or at least, some semblance of shamisen shape, anyways.

Shamisen'ya No Yuuji, or Yuuji of the Shamisen Shop, is my favourite character in a very old Japanese TV series, 'Hissatsu Shigotonin'. By day he repairs and makes shamisen in the shop that he and his mother own; by night he's an assassin who despatches his victims with shamisen strings via hanging or strangulation.

#9: Shamisen'ya No Yuuji

There is artistry in the plucking

Of a shamisen string

And the taking of a life.

It is all in the skill, the fingers.

Amazing that so thin a line of silk

Can sing so mournful a tune

And also hang a man.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 8

Late because this was harder to write than expected, and took an extra two days to finally take some sort of shape. Still isn't perfect, but hopefully the sentiment got into the words and onto the page.

#8: PRAYER FOR PARENTS OF GROWN CHILDREN

Steal me, oh thief Time - my youth and years
That age not touch you nor sully your strength
Grow old with me, stay with me
That I will not bury you before I die.
Let my lifeblood seep into yours
That I may take on the weakness of age
And you remain young.
The loss of you would shatter my universe
A black hole remaining where your presence
Has been everything:
My life, my love, my existence.
The shadows creep forward on Time's sundial
Like Hezekiah, I will them to turn back.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 7

For all the research I've done into Japanese cultural history, it never really registered that one of the Three Sacred Treasures was the Kusanagi sword. Until today. Which led to a sort of random connection leap to Ghost In The Shell and Major Kusanagi, and even more random speculation about the possibility of the Kusanagi part of it being a link between past and present, and... you get the picture. Congratulations if you're confused - I am too. The fascinating details of the mythology itself can be found in the Kojiki.

#7: Kusanagi

There is, in my distant memory

An echo of something more ancient than time:

Blinding light, utter darkness

The throb of blood in the ears

The rushing of many waters.

A malfunction of neural circuitry, they say

Easy enough with cybernetics as complex as mine.

False memories – not so unusual

In an augmented cyborg body

But for all their science the technicians

Can’t explain this odd… connection?

If that be the word:

A flash of déjà vu - open grassland

Under a blazing sky, comets of fiery arrows
Sword steel forged in the fires of the gods

And a strange power coursing through my veins.

Like a goddess I rise

One with the grass and the blade.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 6

Inspired by the cheesy, absolutely cute and guiltily enjoyable Japanese TV series that is Neko Zamurai

#6: Morning Still Life With Samurai And Cat

The samurai wakes with a grunt and a start
A weight on his chest has just caused him to stir
A growl as he chases his cat from its place -

His garment's now thoroughly covered with fur.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 5

Inspired by John Connolly's achingly lovely Book of Lost Things

#5: The Seeker

I am gone down to the Land of Lost Things
To look for my heart.
Light as a feather it fell from my lips
When first we kissed
And flew away, flew away.

I am gone down to the Land of Lost Things

To ransom my heart.
Love took it captive; so gently it fell
Under her spell

And stole away, stole away.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 4

#4: NEGARAKU / IDENTITIKU

In my quest for growth

I have often sloughed you off

Like a skin, a snake skin:

A thing of loose scales and patches –

This culture, these concepts.

Yet always I am surprised

By another layer, regenerated

Without my realising:

Your ‘lahs’, your ‘tapaos’, your ‘mamaks’

Too close beneath my skin

Species Warga Malaysia

Despite repeated discards.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 3

#3: NOH AND THE ART OF RELATIONSHIP MAINTENANCE

A Noh mask wears a neutral expression.

The carver tries to convey a variety of feelings on its wooden face

But it is the performer who imbues it with emotion.

Terasu – tilt up, and it appears to smile

Kumorasu – tilt down, and a slight frown appears.

Minute movements can convey so much –

A full range of emotional expression

Shades of meaning, all contextual.

Words are a Noh mask and you the performer

No curtain between us – you on the stark stage of our troubled love

And I in the audience below.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 2 (In Case Tomorrow Doesn't Happen Due To Life)

Prompt: Constellations

#2: THE CONDUCTOR STUDYING HER SCORES

The pattern is set:

The down beat, the up beat

Point A to Point B, then C, and D

Sometimes E or more

Descending, ascending

From the ictus –

That invisible plane

The constant from which

All conducting springs

Patterns as recognisable

As the constellations above

Each beat-point a star

Held together by rhythm’s gravity

Revolving in the music of the spheres.

NaPoWriMo 2015: Day 1

I was reminded by a friend that it's National Poetry Writing Month again - and as usual, I wasn't prepared but I still want to give it a shot. So, here goes #1!

#1: SONG FOR A SCION

I watch you feel your way

In the dark of your pain

A young tree

Already gnarled and twisted

From elements and harsh weather

Branches straining towards sun

Tiny leaf shoots struggling to bloom.

This too is a kind of courage:

To keep fighting despite the odds -

A pale green thread

Running through your sap’s lifeblood.

I hold my will in my hands

Like a talisman, a warm stone

Burying it in the soil of your uncertainty

Hoping with a reckless desperation

That your roots will wrap around it –

An anchor for the incoming storm.

In Memoriam: Martin Kemmish

Almost two months, and counting. If I could number the actual days, I would, but I can't because the pain has been too sharp to bury. The mind has a merciful anaesthesia of its own - a blessed coping system. The loss invariably slips through, floats to the surface though. 

There's a big Martin-shaped hole in the fabric of my days, something my heart refuses to acknowledge even if my head technically has. I still look at my chat list, expecting to see you pop up on it, all ready to say MEW MEW MEW at you one more time, and then I remember that I can't. Not any more. Not in this lifetime anyway. I still catch myself thinking, oh I HAVE to share that with Martin, and I have to remind myself that I can't do that either. 

How do you even begin to recover a loss like this? So much of the warp and weft of my life over the last few years has been inextricably bound up with the solid bulwark of your presence there. A solid confidence, knowing that you'd be there when I finally got online to bitch and complain, or maybe just squee guiltily like a 16 year old over something that had caught my rare fancy. There was never any shame in it, never any judgement, not in your eyes. Not even when you were caught in the crossfire of my considerable fury, the inevitable bad choices, the grief and the selfish bitchiness that I always apologised for once I'd given myself a good shake.

It was a fragile solidity perhaps - a tenuous one, but to me you were indestructible despite realities. You weren't allowed to go before I did, I told you, and threatened you with eternal wrath and beatings, and you just laughed and said, Yes, you would wouldn't you. How were we to know that we'd have to face this sooner than we thought? How did anyone know.

You made it ok to be a redhead, even if I was just a redhead in character, not hair colour - although I did change the colour more than a few times too. You made my days more vivid, my conversations more surreal, my entire life more interesting, because I had your chats to look forward to in the late nights and early mornings. 

Almost all our conversations took place at the most ungodly hours, thanks to time zones. Not that it mattered - I've never really gotten over being on US time anyway, since I'm up all hours of the morning and night. So much to say, and yet nothing, because I knew you understood all that I couldn't put into words (and the ones I put into words very badly). You accepted me, considerable imperfections and all. There was safety in those wildly far-flung conversations we had; freedom to be myself, and not be belittled or criticised for it. 

It is so hard to write even these short paragraphs because I don't know what to say. My heart is too weighted, too full, too everything, to be explained in the inadequacies of language and words. All I know is that I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, so much that I can't accept you're not here to hear me say it any more, to go MEW and WUMP, and have it reciprocated in kind. 

Rest in peace, Martin - 'friend' doesn't even begin to cover what you were and are to me. I love you, and I will always miss you, and I hope that if you're looking down at this now, you'll read everything between the lines that I can't say because I don't know how. If nothing else, I hope that I made some part of your life happier, maybe a little better, and that our friendship was as special to you as it was to me.

Love always,
--The Major

CONVERSATION
(For Martin Kemmish)

Not so long ago when you were ill
Hospital-bound and cranky
I told you this: that you were not allowed
To predecease me
That I would drag you back 
Just so I could yell at you
And throttle you properly myself
For daring to leave us before your time.

Forgive me my friend
For this broken promise:
That this limited, mortal body
Cannot transcend time and space
Impotent fists beating, futile
At the barrier between us
Thin as gauze, impenetrable as sorrow
Where you stand –
So near, yet so far
Your outstretched hand
Passing through my clenched one
Like a sigh in a storm.

Dust

There is the blood-red glory

Of the angels of war

The lightness of the angels of air

Of earth, of sky, of water

Of terrifying beauty and grotesquery

The cat-cold eyes of dark angels

Watching in shadow

The scaled skin of fallen angels

Burning in unrelenting sun

Let me be the angel of the dust

Crouched in the dry concrete of back alleys

Near to the ground, the swirl and churn

Of a thousand feet measuring lives

In steps on the cracked pavement

Spread-eagled in the sand

Of long-demolished houses

The taste of worn-out hopes

Fine-grit in the mouth

Puddled in the mud of faded streets

Spackled by sullen drizzle

Tired scents of stale futures

Seeping into my skin

 I gather the ashes of broken dreams

Sifted like chaff in the palms of my hands

Ghosts of long-dry tears

Exchanging kisses with old regrets

Before fading into dust.

Soliloquy

All quiet now.
All quiet in that solitary place
Where all is still and your inner reflection
Stares back at you from a tarnished mirror:
Patchy, half-formed, unclear
Speckled through with rust and age.

There are no rewards for being a 'nice girl’
Nor for being a ‘nice boy’ either, really
(If one thinks about it a little more, that is.)
But if nice boys score sometimes
Nice girls don’t score at all.
In the end all that’s left
Is solitude, and that
Is utterly embraceable – unlike you.