The name was Antappan.
On his wedding invitation
He printed the famous words
Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi -
(Today it's me, tomorrow it will be you.)

Whoever  asked
“Are you nuts, Antappaaa?”
Got a voiceless laugh in reply.

In native tongue
The laughter said
No quotes are quoted
Except through one’s own life.

Though not a charming name
It ‘s true that from that day
Antappan came to be called
Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi Antappan.


Everyone who attended
Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi Antappan’s wedding
Wolfed down the pork and the beef.

Everyone who attended
Hodie Mihi CrasTibi Antappan’s wedding
Gifted pretty sums of money in envelopes.

Everyone who attended
Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi Antappan’s wedding
Said nasty comments about the bride.

Everyone who attended
Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi Antappan’s wedding
Asked the sound system guy to play
You are lucky I am lucky loudly.

But before that a small incident at the church. As soon as he set his eyes on Antappan who was a grave digger the Chaplain forgot the wedding and without asking who died began to set the church bell tolling in that rhythm reserved for deaths. The senior Priest who heard it came running and opening the small prayer book for the dead began to sing the song the seeds sprout in the fields when it rains. Hearing that the girls in the choir sang the rest of the song when they hear the clarion call life sprouts in the dead and went on to the prose portion I call you lord from the abysses. Seeing that the boy who helps with the communion lighted the candle and incense stick for the dead. (Meanwhile the bride’s naughty song you who is not dead yet will you not **** me tonight also rang in Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi Antappan’s ears.) Hodie Mihi Cras Tibi Antappan who realized that the same flowers meant to be wreaths at some house of death were now adorning his ***** as a garland laughed his famous voiceless laugh.

It's hard to say
When the first onset
Of insecurities
Had taken place

Was it at 17?
When I stared deep
Into the mirror
Despising the reflection?

Was it at 15?
When I dug my fingernails
Into the side of my thigh
When he made me feel like used garbage?

Was it at 13?
When I showed
My mom that award
And it was carelessly tossed on the table?

Was it at 11?
When the snickers
Of my classmates
Reached my heart?

Was it at 9?
When I watched
Mother try to desperately
Cover her imperfections with powder?

Self love?
Self love?
Self love can't dwindle away
When it never existed.

And now at the age
Of barely 20,
I've been searching
The ground
For a speck
Of confidence
And trying my best
To piece together
A backbone
That I never had.

My soul is not tortured like the skin of a man alone in the searing heat of the dessert.
My mind does not crumble into the rubble of a post war city.
My body does not shake it's self into a shaken, splattered, spineless sorbet.
I am happy, not like a bird in spring but happy as I can be.
My mind is composed, not like a master archer but composed all the same.
My angst is not kept in a box of self disbelief wrapped in a ribbon of doubt and despair.
I am, me, happy to be me. I have my issues which occasionally need tissues but nonetheless and nevertheless and nonethemore and alwaysthemost I am happy

I stood at the bridge on Monroe,
peering into a stale brown river
hoping to be swept away
by a historic flood.

Reflections of these steel towers
bent, cracked and refracted,
becoming ripples where the water lay flat.
And as I turned, a great roar exploded
like a thunderous train
galloping over a brittle iron bridge.

Slabs of forged metals and concrete
crumbled like an autumn leaf under a footprint.
Mighty architecture burst out in a spectacular grey;
a Fourth of July before 1855.
Everything built, believed and once conceived
now fell like deflating balloons:
slowly, calmly without hurry--only certainty.

And I stood amid the wreckage,
where we once built cathedrals
surrounded by heavy lights and one-way flights.
One step wedged another mile between us,
and our dusty promises became harder to see.

the perimeter remains
a puzzle
without its centerpiece.
as at rest
as an
open beat.
a fist full of meat.
a trophy
of
atrophy.

My mother wore wigs and drank bourbon on Sundays
while my father worked across the street

I'd watch him from my bedroom window
sewing, stapling
hammering out frustrations I couldn't name

I called my sister David
because I wanted a brother
and a different family

My mother called my father Jesus
because she said he thought he was perfect

"Jesus, cut the grass."
"Jesus, take out the trash."
"Jesus, just ******* do it."

I'm grown up now
my name isn't Stupid Girl anymore
I've inherited my mother's rage
and my father's heavy sighs

Dark days I find myself thinking
my finger tracing the rim of a shot glass
you can't outgrow
what you're made of

And I feel inside of me
the breaking of glass

My sister writes me long letters from New York
she signs them all
love, David

Inhale and exhale 46664 times... My heart spent 27 years behind bars of my skinny ribs; I remember every inch of her Tibia and Fibula...

The Cold air from our long distance formed cracks inside my heart, luckily these cracks never developed large enough for you to escape. And if you did escape; I'd go standing in the Kalahari desert tracing your every step back to the exact tile where the first syllables from our mother tongue has made the Click. "QuQuQaQa" what if our past was written on stone by feathers of an ostrich? The same ostrich who ate the seeds from our forefathers now growing inside his stomach...
  
#My bare feet are standing ontop of shining stones similar to the ones found in Kimberley: Kimberley the place where untold stories are buried beneath the Soil of guilt... So, Can you DIG it, Sucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The train changes tracks and
there is a pull, a deep sighing
of engine and steam

We glide from platform into water,
the train dipping beneath cool waves
into a mercury world  

Far down
dragon-fish watch me through the window,
their silver stripes like seaweed
splayed in slow motion,
moving left, then right

Like my sister’s hair
that summer in the Red River,  
my parents fell asleep in the sun
lips stained with wine,
forgetting she couldn’t swim

Her fingertips reaching for light,
a stream of bubbles surfacing,
signaling the quiet struggle

How long have I been dreaming you,
grasping handfuls of water in my sleep,
searching for the memory of your body?

Deeper down the light burns a cold red
The train groans under the weight of the sea

And she is taking me,
the sea is taking me,
a lost child in her great arms
to the red darkness below

The dragon-fish rise,
their eyes a road of stars
I cannot follow.