Saturday, February 28, 2004
a dead bluebottle at 1:45 a.m is a desolate kind of thing, even if it is a bluebottle. does it rival huddling in the pale clinical stare of a tubelight at 1 a.m, scribbling inside a battered blue notebook with a skinny red marker? no, that isn't desolate. that is the muse setting the mind afire, even if with a soggy whip of brown shoelaces, barefoot on a cold floor. desolate would be an empty road and yellow lamplight and the misty dew-drizzle of the lightest rain. but no, even that could be a moment.perhaps i feel loneliness for the outstretched sparkle of dead wings and metallic glimmer of stilled-not-squashed fly corpse because i killed it. a neat slap with a rolled up copy of the new newsweek, and one more just to make sure. but no, i think in the mind's eye the photographer within is juxtapositioning the brown of the wood and the blue of the body- so small next to the towers of CD cases- and giving it to the poetess, who is carefully snipping the lace-trimmed silences of this time of night-day and framing the image. yes, i suppose i could afford myself sentimentality, however moribund, for a while, if only because i cannot sleep.
i could, because in the quietude of these nighttime shadows i know so intimately, a whisper is enough. as i move through the rippling lightdark, sinuous and liquid, i am creature of myth...of fantasy. a doppelganger of the wakened world, with secrets behind the dark glimmer of iris and feather touch of fingers. and all only because i cannot sleep.
Mina at 2:05 AM
Thursday, February 26, 2004
winter leaches awaymoisture from skin, leaving behind salty-arid,
lizard dryness. I smooth
pale lavender- body butter, it says
on the squat round jar- onto my
limbs and my pores sigh; a sweetly
glutted, drowned happiness.
maintenance
Mina at 1:46 PM
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
slightly sunburnt, verycurly she prances about
bearing mosquito bites like proud,
small hills on her very bare arms.
she breathes in sync with
the hum of wasps, blinks with
the sway of pine needles over her
head, sprawled in the sunshine
like some earthy proprietoress of
the grass and lemon trees.
being zen
Mina at 7:58 PM
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Skin takes oncurious magic, in
the sun. Today I glittered
with atomic rainbows, flesh
curving into palely mauve folds-
I was alight.
Mina at 11:25 AM
Friday, February 20, 2004
'in my sky at twilight you are a cloud'point A to point B, it's very easy. be good and good things will happen.
am i upside down or is the world right side up, why is 1+1+1+1+1= 5 and not 4+1 or 6-1?
there are too many questions, jeeves, and not enough answers. yesweallknow. bad world. naughty. rap on knuckles and no dessert for you, world. bad bad bad.
the logistifications of this particular little sphere are such that beyond the wall-river-crocodile moat are many wonderful things.
"oh how quiet,quiet the world can be
when it's just you and little me
everything is clear, everything is new
so you won't be leaving, will you?"
chain rule, i have decided: you are not so bad. just please take the writing out of the register, its very distracting.
"and in your life my infinite dreams live."
mina min min-min minsk putink minzz i am all the same same same (one singularity i will let exist) (do i?)
leaves of tree on mall road, you glitter with the fire of a sun eons old, how magic this solitary moment is (always solitary they are)
"You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky."
wavelet of water and kiss of air, farther than the reaches of your imagination
pop little bubble pop
Mina at 3:34 PM
Saturday, February 14, 2004
I had been saving my Neruda for some vague 'special occasion'. Valentine's Day has never counted as one, but I figured that if I'm going to start posting the God Of The Romance Poem anyway, might as well do it today. I think I may be growing satyr ears ;)Mina at 12:49 PM
Sonnet 17Pablo Neruda
I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms, but carries
within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving
than this, where there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep, it is your eyes that close.
Mina at 12:46 PM
And Now You're MinePablo Neruda
And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream.
Love and pain and work should all sleep now.
The night turns on its invisible wheels,
and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber.
No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go,
we will go together, over the waters of time.
No one else will travel through the shadows with me,
only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon.
Your hands have already opened their delicate fists
and let their soft drifting signs drop away,
your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move
after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away.
The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny.
Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all.
Mina at 12:46 PM
Thursday, February 12, 2004
a fire is a funny thing[pssshhhhh] flickers
flames spits sparks
i stand too close to the
bonfire; even my
kidneys are warm. does
this mean i am cooking
myself? somewhere
protein must be coagulating.
(oh mina you are sucha
gross girl) [but i know
what will happen
if someone cooked
you]
Mina at 9:05 AM
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
" A lovely river, all alone,She lingers in the hills "
Mina at 9:53 AM
The Big BaboonHilare Belloc
The Big Baboon is found upon
The plains of Cariboo:
He goes about with nothing on
(A shocking thing to do).
But if he dressed up respectably
And let his whiskers grow,
How like this Big Baboon would be
To Mister So-and-so!
Mina at 9:45 AM
such a temptation, a pliant blank page to touch, shape, trail one's fingers across. this is the perfect opportunity to say something. anything. something inventive and abstruse, something creative and lyrical. quote someone. string out a line of all the tinsel in your head. c'mon! dhishdhishdhish i know you're in there, come out come out wherever you are....Mina at 9:44 AM
Monday, February 09, 2004
Pain is a potent force. Makes you think- and wet grey days, windy pink-skied nights and a restless body do not afford much respite- just how many things do we not do because we’re afraid it will hurt? The fearless person is s/he who is not afraid of pain; fear itself is phir bhi something one can deal with. But pain! Maximus from Gladiator was a fearless man because the notion of being stabbed with a poisoned dagger was not particularly worrisome to him. Spies are fearless because even if they get caught, torture is piffle when compared to the obeisance they pay the state. The men and women we call ‘strong’ is because of their fortitude in face of personal troubles and trauma, and we admire their courage and will to survive- and the fact that they took risks that we’re scared to. And yet, pain is such a human thing. We write songs about it, we invent new ways of causing it, we make fun of it and we all feel it. Every woman who has ever given birth will know another woman’s suffering in labour. And yet, the woman who doesn’t scream is the strong one.Why do we make it so hard for ourselves to be emotional? If you’re hurt, cry. If you’re happy, laugh. If the rain makes you want to sing and splash in puddles, do it. If it makes you morose, who says you have to force a big fake smile? It’s childlike to be too happy, it’s weak to cry, it’s sissiness to treat a bruise gingerly. I think people are uncomfortable exposing their real selves to the world, because we’re all afraid that behind selves we project there lives a person nobody will like too much. A person nobody will be interested in too much, someone nobody will want to love. That behind the chatty/ well-dressed/ English speaking /hi-fi novel reading/guitar playing/head covering/ politically correct person there is someone who isn’t that cool or interesting or funny- but you’ll never know unless you let someone see. And that’s where the pain comes right back in, because how scary a prospect! What if nobody likes the real me after all? What’ll I do then? Be alone? I can’t be alone, that would be….lonely. And being lonesome would be painful. And finding out that you’re exactly that horrible would hurt too. The equal chance of being loved for you is nice, but the pain bit is much scarier. So up pops the ego and the pride to cover up the insecurity and there you have it. Be a good sport (don’t make trouble), be strong (don’t freak me out), be a lady (so I feel like a man). Why is doing what you want such a problem? Aloofness is safety because risk could land you in trouble. Pain must be avoided at all costs. And at the same time, we’re all more dependent on the other than we would like to acknowledge. ‘There is no certainty unless you burn, and for this you must sit in the fire’. Dare we allow ourselves to live with the terrible uncertainty we face if we flee the flames? Dare we let this time slip by, only to wake up in ten years and want to run away from everything? Dare we sheathe ourselves in layers of the world and other people’s images of us so much that we forget who we really are- not the person our parents see us as, not the person our peers see, not the person we project but the person who looks back at you in the mirror first thing in the morning. The person who emerges in the dark, the person who comes out when instinct and spontaneity does, the person who is in your face when you’re asleep.
The person who comes out when no-one is watching- dare we let her/him stay?
Mina at 9:01 PM
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
‘I never read meaning into anything, because 99 percent of the time you’re wrong.’Why now, when there was nothing to see?
Reading between lines not meant for you- can you spell irony, boys and girls?
Mina at 4:46 PM
