The following poem is deeply personal and autobiographical to me. It covers grounds of trauma and physical/sexual harm that is very much a part of my narrative.
Trigger warning is already in place for its subject matter as such.
***
'THIS IS LIFE'
In a city that never conspired
to launch a thousand ships
or divided seeds
in the realm of ghastly eras,
I pull myself
in and out of consciousness,
with misty eyes like the day
at seven
and the sun
like a bulbous God,
keeping his right angle
unbroken like those icons
from these umbrella shaped storeys.
Above them, he is a humble supplicant
to this man-made modern wonder.
I am a beholder
who prays to make permanent
residence underneath this bridge,
the network of trains above
as integral to me
as my morning walks.
'This is life'
memorialized in my mind.
I can just lie on the grass
and let the bougainvillea in full bloom
touch my most sensual point of restraint
or it can come
from the most gentle hands
of an entity
who shares my own gender
and has ripples of water
in his fingers.
That's why I come here
to begin with the efflorescence
of an adult mind,
still restless to embark
with the pursuit of innocence
before summer fully burns our bodies
and temples.
Every thing is in its right place
but a verdant bed where two
friends can stay conscious
while rejecting
long, hard stares.
The fear is always in our minds first.
The deep end of passion
like a paradise out of the question.
We accomodate the first.
We let the other reach sublimation
before its time comes.
***
In a city where no one
vilifies with false testimony,
he became an object
to the other 'him'.
'Come here'
ferreted out of the ruined
ramparts over two years.
The prowler could disappear into those ruins and overgrowth
before the grass turned yellow in May
and become a transplant of
misplaced lust
in the other.
It was the voice
that asked him to give up
run
and be shamed
like a dirty offender.
He had said 'no' to the advances
even as wellsprings of
repressed desires
became a circling motion,
pulling him
in and out
of consciousness.
Sometimes
with misty eyes
like the day at seven
and the sun prickly
in its perch
and bulbous,
he sees him
plotting revenge
for his
refutations.
Marking his territorial
entrapments,
showing the passive one
a dozen other
conspirators
vilifying with false
testimonies.
Go with the order of your innate nature
but do not become a crushed bone.
A dead soul
entombed under the sweat and blood
of bodies
meant to victimise
and pull you
in and out of consciousness.
Leave.
Do not return to this site.
Not in cowardice
or as a foolhardy outcast
but to save your skin,
your unaffected youth
from the terror and fear
of a dozen 'come here',
the long and hard stares.
On the flanks of
this river bank
is their colony.
Leave it to their
territorial trap.
They have their nets cast
and their lairs are still
in their reach.
Let them be beasts
in that northeastern tip
before the bridge.
***
Go back to another route.
You know it
and were always keen to
get in touch with.
Go there.
Take that left turn
on the way
to reacquaint yourself with
the golden crest of your best years.
Memories can be cast anew
just like the changing face of May
and such cool winds are hand to find
at this torrid time of the year.
This is then an initiative.
A renewal.
Go and diverge yourself
from prior weeks
and months
or the transformation
in these last two years.
The new yet familiar routes
are here.
Go walk in those lanes.
To never memorialize those lines,
'This is life'
in one frame or mould
ever again.
*****
