A bowl of Rice,
Soft, simmered
And milky white.
Evenly shaped,
Each one like the next.

Rice was this abundance of
Easy going grain.
Wholesomely predictable
But comforting all the same.

The Pol Sambol had double his fury
A haphazard mix of harsh spices
Woven into soft textures.
The tangy taste of lime,
With a sweet coconuty crunch.
A burst. A passion.
An unevenness. A pattern.

Palatable extremes
That Rice had grown to love.

Their journey never began,
So there journey will end in never.

Rice was the base.
And Pol Sambol was the taste.
And so they lived forever.


Pol Sambol- A spicy coconut grind based sambol

Never ask a linguist a question.
Your ‘question’
Will never fit into that tiny two syllabled linguistic feature
, Or be a string of words
that you think you control
Because they are, what you invented.

Whether it is fashioned into a simple- one word,
Direct, Indirect, Sarcastic, Rhetorical, Interrogating,
Requesting, Accusing, Information Eliciting, Affirmation Seeking,
Cross examining, Spot Light Shining
Figure of speech,
Where speaker assumes A Position of Power….
It Will be heard not only for its
Bare-naked lexicon,
But also enveloped in its unconscious inflections,
intonation, micro pauses, combined with gestures
And set within that ever so important context.

With every move, you may hope to extract.
But be aware that you may give away
Much much more

I used to trace
your face in every face
and yet could not place
your face at all

in my corporeal world
i used to find
pieces of you
entwined
in lyrics and in phrases

the once clear photograph
that turned mosaic was now
a fragmented work of art
and everyday rips you
further apart

then to meet the original article
to see you with sight
your voice auricular
your fingers tangible
in a fraction you converted
from the surreal to the somatic

you that breathed seemed exhausted
and every gulp of oxygen
seemed to rust your pipes
the ones you galvanized
in alcohol at night
knowing it would increase the rate
your organs would take to depreciate

your zestful pipes were drained of color
punctured perhaps by careless claws
or by your own negligence and flaws
you always loved to tease death
and now you seem to prompt it

"Life" was over
you were passed "Survival"
now it was "Endurance"
a step away from "Existence"

"you" that fueled my memories
has now decayed
so how is it that i still feel
a faint pulse
in that corner of my mind
you still occupy?

Looking down and around
During an upward climb
Can sometimes confuse
Our discernment of direction.

When motion is set,
Against an unchanging sky
Even movement
Is seemingly, still.

So wrongly perceived
Is our sense of advancement,
For eyes only see
What appear to be,

And deceitful Sight,
Trumps over Insight
And our sense-less introspection.

We are told that
The ‘patriarch-ally- pup-petted’  and produced
Stereotypical, cross culturally similar
‘mother roles’
allow little margins
For individual identity,
and Women are subsumed into this
Large all encompassing
Earth like word.

This word
Has power in just that.
Its gigantic homogeneity
That swallows
All who enter it
And everything within its radius.

And once in,
For some, it becomes a  clash
of’ Intrinsic’ with the ‘Learned’,
the Reflexes Vs the Rational
the battle and balance
Of both You and Mother
And the existence of both:
In moments of synchronization,
The alternate emergence,
The topsy- turvy Co existence.
Or the complete
Beating to pulp of both,
Into near absolute polarization.


The daddy issues
Are fancy Freudian
Easy to display
Easy  to  pin down.
The Mother. The Giantess.
Becomes your most silent fear.

The severed ends of a rope
Jagged like jaws,
Limp like dying leaves,
Hangs loose.

It wasn’t cut
But it frayed
Because of the beating sun
Because of the heaviness of load
Because it was taught with tension
Because it was not meant to hold
So much

No matter the rope,
There lies a moving sea
Between the shores of souls
As Gibran told.

You can’t let go
Of something in between.
You can’t let go
No matter the fraying rope.

You never let love in.
You only taste it
With the tip of your tongue
And tease Lvoe
Only to spit it out
As if it was venom.

Lvoe hangs around you
Like a peeping tom
Eager to see what you don’t
Want to show some.

Loev that took you for dinner
And insisted on paying the bill
Who said you looked nice
But it only made you feel ill.

Lveo that wanted to take the “next step”
As if it were in a manual
That society writ till death.

Lvoe that made you nauseous
Lveo that made your cringe
Lvoe that made you anxious
Lvoe that made you binge

To all those girls I’m here to say
A "once upon a" love doesn’t happen
Upon us all

But something better may come
Something better will come

And you won’t break out in hives
And you won’t guard yourself with knives
Like a duck to water grasp
A love that will forever be in your clasp.