Have you ever had an open box of cornflakes
slip out of your hands
(at the precise time you were constructing a poem in your head)
and scatter all over the kitchen
like the fragile egos of self righteous partisans
(creating a bigger mess if you trample them)
and thus, you find yourself on all fours
sweeping a recently swept floor
once more.....
We’re brought up looking for divine expedience in any mishap that happens:
“Maslehat” they say.... there must be a hidden benefit in this!
“it’s a small loss in lieu of a bigger one that it prevented”...
....and we tune our frequencies from ambition to complacency....
year after year,
generation after generation,
till that becomes the default station.....
I even start looking at the benefits hidden in the mess at hand...
I’ve discovered crevices under the stove where my cleaner never reaches,
(now I can prepare an admonition for her
—-wouldn’t have happened without the corn flakes.... thank you!)
I imagine worse scenarios.... it could have been the bag of flour, or the spice jars .... or.... glass bottles.
The work instantly becomes less tedious, as I weigh it against shards of glass and invisible weapons of potential exsanguination....
oh shukar , shukar, shukar..... Alhamdulillah.
It’s ok, it’s only cornflakes....
It’s only cornflakes, and my attitude.... ( that’s in question)
keeping things together, even when they’re crumbling,
cleaning up messes, and counting on second guesses,
Using crafting glue and bluetac to hold up foundations
( this doesn’t merit any recommendation!)
A friend once said, “ sometimes you have to let it break, so that you can build it better....”
but what is better, when each damage is a consecration
that is the conundrum of creation
it’s all a substrate
it’s all a message
its all salvation
I had told my friend, “listen I don’t know how to use metaphors,
and I only have a few of my own,
will you give me some on loan?
I need them to break and remake my ache.... “
The silence meant yes.
I could take all the phrases,
all beautiful words, all dictions, all praises
In these clumsy hands, ( since the heart understands)
And if I spill them like cornflakes,
no matter what it takes,
I’ll find a way, to scoop them in a poem.
A.
20.9.18
These events actually occurred