Meherin

Roshanara (Three Poems)

Riverine Memories

 

At this bend before the blend

The river is shallow and deep ;

 

The rising stones are keys

To a world within.

They turn if you know.

Else, they remain like little Buddhas,

gazing sunward , playful half smiles

Hidden deep within their sculpted selves.

Like the frozen froth of her monsoon thoughts.

In summer and in waning rains ,

They rise above, punctuating

the flow and remaining ; accompanied by a passing cloud,

a golden streak , by the water's constant warmth.

They remain like prayerful swimmers,

Filled with a wild abandon to plumb the depths

Yet mindful of the wild grace of that which is to be plumbed.

 

At this bend before the vent

The river empties into solitude;

 

And everyone who enters, enters as himself.

But coming out, they are strangers ;

Wisps of ancient music woven into their souls.

All the men come out a little blushful.

And all the women with saplings in their wombs.

Tonight they will have sit around a campfire

And let the fire's sculpting hands reach within

And distil the magic to be themselves again.

 

For at this bend, she is the melody

Of all that has gone before.

 

Each is a vessel that has only been dipped once.

 

 

Rain Yaga

 

Everything feels so plastic.

Trees in rigor mortis

Even after the first rains fumbled with their hooks.

No wanton moaning of the winds, plucked by wild beasts

Harping on and on from the black castles built of ancient palms.

Frogs stuck to reels and reels of unleashed wet memories,

unreal in their pornographic moans.

Nothing is proper when the river is gagged.

Nothing is in place.

 

Everything, again , is a plastic game

A virtual fuck

Wherein we build towers in blue, red and green

Towers that topple because we were blind.

Obscene in their make, unsure as the last milk teeth

But violent in their being, raised like a middle finger

Against a listless sky.

 

Everything, again and again, is a plastic dream

Where couples come flying,

hanging on to the colourless collars of uninsured umbrellas,

moving in to be one with the concrete middle fingers.

Once I saw one of their babies falling,

her cotton colours, a non violent protest against everything until that moment.

- but not against the falling.

 

Everything was so plastic, plastic, plastic

And in character ;

 

that I skinned myself alive and set out into the rainy wilderness in search of a cracking fire ; nearer and nearer with every drop; yearning for the night's keepers and the water's demons to come alive dancing in the forest inside my head ;

 

Before I was six feet plastic.

 

The Fallen Monument Song 

 

Oh you, you're built like the Stonehenge

Stripped of comprehension.

Another myth that's never meant to teeth.

You're an orphaned deity, a fallen glory

A story skinned of a beginning, you possess

what's fallen off the Colosseum.

(You were the ruin around the corner, you stone-robber)

Oh and when you talk, you are the Taj

Of course after it fell murky black.

And when you're near, you are the Moon

 

A dear stripper,but void of mystery.