Summer nights is a poetry collection inspired by the sticky nights in summer. When the clouds hang low over the ocean, and we stare into lakes only to find our wildest self staring back. The photos below were taken at the moments inspiring the following pieces at their respective settings
in the daytime we bask in the sun, but the rays are harsh in this swampy corner of the river. it rubs our skin is red and raw, but in two days time, the desirable brown will develop like a roll of film and the water is murky and warm as we braid thread waiting for midday to slip away. there are trees on the riverbank and just where the water kisses the sand but they haven’t had leaves for a long time. i’m chewing on my fingers while dad splashes the birds and laughs, but i’m not laughing. the water looks smooth and silky; we aren’t fooled, we know the shadows conceal a patient crocodile lurking below the surface. and so as we leave behind this small rocky island with murky water and dead trees and crocodiles i can’t help but look back at its shrinking outline on the horizon like it’s a mirror.
– banana island
it seems i am predetermined to be exactly like my father
to relive his own hatred, his anger, the bitter years of tragedy
traumatic visions, the sharp anger residing just under the fabric of consciousness
i remember the time before it, like a faded photograph
although it bears no resemblance to life at present
we all think we are special because are different, and that we are different because are special
we but we all overlap in the descent to madness
i love life, i really do
but the promise it all unraveling
i’d prefer no one bears witness to what i will become
condemned to my own solitude i am both a wild beast and a god
dostoyevsky once wrote about destroying oneself for nothing
will the rest of my years echo that line
– on outrunning destiny
i don’t know what the universe is trying to tell me
but about us it’s not the first time i’ve cried
the tears are flowing and i still don’t understand
i didn’t think it possible for two souls to be destined to ruin each other
and yet we are perfectly designed for such
my love, my darling is like an exotic bird
he flies free, quick, never looking back
loyal, steady, but fleeting
i am a hurricane
loud whirlwinds whipping the clouds to and fro
the torrential downpour at the sticky end of summer
the bird and the storm
a destiny foretold love
and tragedy
– the bird and the storm
swatting away mosquitos in dusks sticky haze
this time last year it was all so different
the crickets are screaming
the hair i cared for until it grazed my shoulders was chopped off, only to regrow back to the same length
the dark inky dye finally fading
almost like the cosmos unraveling the kisses of time
coming full circle back to the half shadowed girl
my hands are still calloused, rough, from burying the secrets lurking under suburbias manicured facade
had the clock forgotten to strike twelve
chopping up the bodies of women i would have become
– a tale of twilight requiem
you’re undoing me
the clockwork gears unraveling beneath my skin
a labyrinth a lifetime in the making is burning
the absence of your nearness abandons me
i showered today for the first time in what could have been centuries
and i lie in the sheets, like my skin, that have been scrubbed clean
and although the warmth is all mine i can’t help but resent the clinical emptiness it manufactures
just a few short hours ago this skin carried the tales of days i didn’t think you would see me through
the dust trapped in the sheets, the muddy scratches clawed into the once pristine linen all shouting at the world that we are still suffering here
i’m lying still but
the words i’m writing aren’t even my own anymore
and although i lived through the shower myself and smeared the soap all over my naked body i am still not clean
because replacing a soul, down to my very essence, the erasure of my presence, takes more than clean sheets
– shower executions
i watched him carefully
the sun is setting
he’s a shell of the boy i knew
he hardly resembles his reflection in the pond
though not one for casual conversion
he tried nonetheless
a halfhearted attempt at reconciling the years of distance between us
the years have weathered away at what once was
he dips his hand into the water
languidly rippling through the ponds shimmering surface
i now understand what was once eternally ours
is no more
– sunsets soliloquy
five in the evening comes no easier than the hours before it
wandering around
treading on bare earth
searching for worms
and waiting until we’re gone
life is long, my mother always said
the days stretch into eternal swathes of time
silky moments that appear to resist slipping away
i realized fortnights ago that one of us would have to take on this burden
and it needed to be a freely given sacrifice
you need me to watch you drift away
and so i carry it on bare earth in hopes of softening its sharp edges
but i do wish that out of sight didn’t mean out of mind
the river’s sorrows
Literary Musings 