Week 52: Through the Lighthouse

Like the songs of shells in the ocean,

 The past feels like an inconceivable dream,

Breathing beneath this lighthouse,

as its eyes permeate the night.

Lost in the shadow of a family tree,

I was but a struggling amnesiac.

Till I felt the weight of my bones

and learnt the art of breathing,

through the length of arid days.

Till I learnt to be of service

and soothe the pain of vanity.

Now through these stone walls

and this sword of light,

Free of the borders of skin,

A stranger no more,

I am found upon those waves...

that carry the lost home.

Week 51:Meridian

They breathe...

this wood, these walls

and the memories upon them.

Free from my forgetful haze,

To compose calm from ruin.

Held in this lunar caress,

We lie in silent witness,

To the dance of fireflies 

in echoes of our old lives.

And in your soft eyes,

In this thirst between our lips,

We find maps to this meridian.

Week 50: Brothers

 Brother...

My eyes swim in a retreating light,

between the shadows of our twin plight.

Our hearts gripped by winter's collar,

Furious and blind, bleeding summer.

I ache for a return to those times,

When as brothers we'd trace

those hills and rooftops,

unknowing of this end. 

For were our lives

not writ with the ignorant ink of men?

Wrapped in traps of intellect, 

Wearing muted masks to cast

illusions of strength that fool none.

Hostage to our tragedies,

Only to find fleeting solace,

 at the bottom of a bottle,

estranged from feeling. 

Yet even as we raised

our walls and our voices,

We were loved...

By the casualties of our silence,

Beyond our deepest afflictions.

May we be candles to our children...

Week 49: Black Candles

  

I walk to the tune 

of her pan flute sympathy, 

Withering woman on pavement home,

governing her silver providence

as the traffic light smiles red.

Watch teenage fans of alcohol,

Like wolves through parking lots,

Lunar howling for release,

Emptying their veins of angst 

upon this gothic canvas,

always true.

She's folding her apron routine,

Drifting into caffeinated dreams

of his mirror eyes  to see

the beauty of her fortitude. 

Tangled lovers in the promenade,

Holding on to threads of the night,

Teasing the roots of solitude 

with promise filled lips. 

News from Sudan filters through
a muted TV screen,

I'm a solider of the night, 

Floating through suburban streets,

Black candles in my eyes. 

  

Week 48: Smoke

Smoke

The click of the pendulum was a thread of sound in a fabric of silence. A mixture of waning daylight and the warm glow of a solitary bulb stretched across the white walls of the room. He was seated at the head of the dining table, surveying his surrounds with a curious gleam in his eyes. His dog lay at his feet, twitching as he ventured through a mysterious realm of sleep. He watched his mother's beige curtains flow upward as a delicate wind wafted in through the open windows, suspended in air for a precious moment before easing into place. His gaze shifted between objects in the room; the antique furniture, the African masks, the crystal ornaments, the paintings and old photographs. Each with an origin and history far beyond the space they now occupied. Yet they were at home in this house in Colombo, fragments in a network of memory.

A smile dominated his expression as he rested his head on his left palm. He muffled a cough with tight lips and a clenched right hand as he rose from the chair, careful not to wake his sleeping companion. He walked towards the grills on the windows and looked out onto the garden, the bright green of the palms were fading with the retreating sun. Traces of orange longing clung to the clouds in defiance of fading prominence. Witness to transition, the words and pictures in his mind awoke and fixed upon his chords.

" The yolk of past circumstance wore me thin. The marrow of my consciousness has been but a stream of melancholy, secretly welcoming adversity. It is only now that I differentiate between a chronicle and the person beneath. It is only now that I feel with a sense of certainty, the treachery of time in my mind and the length of my preoccupation. This near silence is pristine in its spaciousness. I am adrift and feel no containment in this supposed solitude."

He heads back towards the table and kneels next to the chair he had been sitting in. A quiet surge of affection drifts through his eyes as he watches his dog, still deep in sleep. He bore little trace of aging as his chest moved in rhythm to his breathing, his paws stretched across the tiles. "I may never see you again boy. Yet I feel no great sadness in this as I did before. It's no exaggeration...I've had more time with you than with my own father. In truth, next to no one has been a part of my life as you have. And it may be... that no other being will be as consistently happy to see me and show me affection with such simple immediacy. But we've had so many years...we've grown together. I could so easily slide to the sorrow of reflection...but I'd much rather revel in how peaceful you are right now. In this series of moments, a link of liberating truths have dawned on me. I can only describe it as being the death of a shadow and a lightness of being. We as humans fall prey to the very complexity that fuels our vanity. You have little need for words and intellect to just be...free of wasteful cognition and resistance. What use have we for life stories. Our minds can be the very smoke that shrouds our spirit from all things of consequence."

Lying on the floor. Moments trickle with the grace of long awaited raindrops as his eyes begin to seal. He thought of the strange but beautiful punctuation that had ended a most turbulent sentence. Hours later, he was greeted by the familiar touch of a wet nose. The clock chimed with self importance but found no ears.

Shanil Samarakoon

Week 47: Innocent Still

There was a time when

our laughter scaled those hills

that our little feet couldn't reach.

For we were giants of ambition

with senses tuned to wonder,

cosmic hosts to a million personas

dancing free beneath

a confluence of sun and skin.

Ah...

I remember those afternoons,

streaming through the canopy,

 When David wove the clouds 

into pillows for our thoughts and

I made a bed of Pa's endless lap,

our bellies full of ma's magic

as she sang of home. 

No strangers to the tragic,

our tempers  swelled and thundered 

and tears in torrents did come,

But we were innocent still,

smiling by morning

after every bitter pill.

But there were no signs of warning

as our skin and bones stretched

and the lottery of life unraveled.

We found our hearts heavy

with an inheritance of woe

and our eyes came to find  shackles

where they were none before. 

And after years in a neon haze, I've come to see,

my pulse surrendered to machinery,

The monetization of our dreams 

into a cold network of revenue streams,

Depleted wells of compassion 

amid deep unconscious self-obsession,

Where our eyes are trained to difference,

Where war is a righteous path

and the earth a mere limitation.

As only the lure of distant stars will satiate.

this estranging hunger. 

And I yet ask myself, if we are innocent still?

For is there not beyond the shadows 

of our being, a glistening spark?

Persisting in our child's eye,

Still playful and loving, longing

only for the thread 

to weave a fabric of hope

that all hearts can touch,

And tonight  I wonder 

If there will be a time once more,

when our laughter scales those hills

that our little feet couldn't reach
and sing as ma did, of home...

Week 46: Melpomene

Drawing breath from the depths of a dream,

You swim beneath the solitude of skin,

 To the primal pulse of my mind's eye,

Where I yearn for your fugitive lips...

Your language, not of the tongue,

Swells with the promise of home.

And my eyes hunger upon wake,

Through the doubt of day,

For the mere sight of you...

Yet words are but the surface,

shimmering arrows to the wind,

There is no labour in tenderness 

Only the ache of our separation.

For your beauty is a feeling that flows,

Like the seasons to the trees...