Not equal
We are not born equal
I'm born in a naked cage
Open hostilities
A crown of thorns etched into our being
Namelessness is considered a gift

We are not born equal
The weight of expectations
The brunt of brutal suppression
Of our existence
Is incomparable
The pain that we never deserved
Yet is destined for us

Religion defined me
Contained me
Yet changing it
Abandoning it
Does not break my chains
Often I wonder
When people cannot realize
The wholesale selling of humanity

Eyes dripping blue
What loaded words!
Tears forming pools in which
Hard-handed men examine their own
Namelessness.
Their place in this world
Is drowning amid the waters
Of a well-wrung soul.
That name, that identifier
Will never capture her.

Eyes, lipid pools of starlight
Mixed with the blue grey of a dolphin’s back
Swimming in the storm of her irises
Those flowers that bloom
In the milky white of tainted purity
which hold a black hole in their round chests
Swallowing soul and spirit indistinguishable

When I met you, I was merely an average girl who used her pen to scribble the words that couldn't ever leave her lips.
I hid behind slanted handwriting and poorly structured sentences, rusty metaphors and my pathetic namelessness. I could paint snow-frosted trees and lakes that reflected and distorted your face without even touching a single paintbrush, and make people's hearts feel as alive as if they were ten.
But you didn't fall in love with me, not in the sense I wanted you to.

And so began my obsession with you. I hated you and wrote about how your eyes were bloodshot and how your smile was slanted and how you made my heart physically hurt. I loved you and wrote about your body perfectly slotting into mine. I made you my muse, and created dozens of metaphors and made up various words; to try to describe how you made me scared and nervous and warm and fuzzy.
I hated how I loved you and loved how I  couldn't hate you.

Months later, I'm still smitten over you, unable to get over your sad smiles and witty comments, so I beg you, just let me have a chance to show you how together we could be king and queen of the endless words I can create with my pen, how we could wear upside down crowns and dance along to the beat of my half-broken heart.

We walk through the shadows
You will not hold my hand
Stubbornness is a thorn in your side
And a whip on my face
It smarts, as only words can
I think that I know better in my finite wisdom
You will not even look beyond the fogged glass before your eyes
I am no better
I cannot cleanse myself of my sins
They bite at my ankles and nip at my heels
When I look for rest they find me where none should go
It is in the foolishness of my own steps that they have followed
I have made the way
The blame is upon me
For my shoulders bear my own coat and not that of another
I am humble in my namelessness that you would call upon me
What is this to be known
And more so to answer with a voice that is so young in its speaking that her tongue crawls between the ivory of her teeth
This resent has made a home in me
I let the door open for light to come in
This has not come to pass
Now I act, on a halfhearted hinge
That I could usher in a hope
That will light itself within
Stubborn as I am in my plight
If only I was so strongly pressed in my foolish wanderings

Chaotic, I may seem; but you've witnessed all my game.
Yet, for all of my monotony, I never seem the same.
I shift within a void that slips between your thoughts,
Shifting voidless, namelessness; what you've tried to hide, I've sought.

I interrogate electrons skipping neuronic paths:
Unhinged and broken walls and doors that kept livid fear at bay.
Dripping Holy Water on evil dreams, giving steel acid baths,
Tinker, toy, explore, destroy; I'll find your "hidden away."

Disguised and masked, though they may be, the habits always show.
Through twist and turn your shadows burn, recoiling from the glow
Of a searching heart and reckless eye and selflessness below.
I've found you once, I swear to you; I'll hind again, I know.

Despise me all you want, retreat from ling'ring words,
In this knowing - of my doing - I've seen the truth behind the lies.
Flit about as you may, controlling thought like wild birds,
Someone taught a treacherous thing; and I'll break those ephemeral ties.

No one's permission you need-
living your life
is not like getting
a licence or permit
to do this or that--or passing
an exam-
you are
your own government
you are
your own authority
you owe none
any obligation or duty

it's your playing-field
to none
do you yield
only that to yourself
be sincere and true
for none
does care or bother about you
in their selfish and often
blind and senseless pursuits
so sad indeed but so true

it seems to me
it's best not to have a name
as namelessness attracts
the attention of none
it sets me completely free

how churlish
are so many
who assume
they are born
to superiority
who proclaim:
' look to me
be my follower
in me
you'll find your destiny'.

how much more
I 've learnt
wandering in the wild
of nowhere
where nature teaches and smiles
the flowers greet me
the breezes sing their songs
in glee
the butterflies, the bees
the birds,  the insects
the warbling stream
the dancing leaves
nature in her pristine beauty
beneath a mild and gentle sky
each living thing relates their own story

only, only
I should be silent
humble, empty
ready
their voices to hear
(how innocent this elemental life
that does over the folly of man transcend--
how sweet, how comforting, how endlessly dear!)

here
there's no coercion
no human clamour or commotion
here's perfect freedom
that teaches me every lesson
about living
I am transformed
transfixed
to the mystery and splendour
of timelessness

no one's permission
I need
this, this is my truth
my salvation
my liberation.

I expected a chariot,
was trained to hold reins,
feed horses,
and know when to whip them.
Hours I spent shuffling across sheer faces
to teach me the balance necessary.
I took notes from oaks on how to keep my feet firmly planted,
legs bending, never breaking.
I suffered the hurricane
to learn to not blink with wind in my face.
I humored Time, to learn from its spinning wheel
so that I might know my own.
I turned to the trust of beasts
thinking they might one day guide me.
I glared at charioteers,
My coliseum competition.
I sat, eyes closed, by the ocean
To acquaint me with a roar
I would expect from an audience.
I stripped myself bare
So that I may learn the choices of judges.
I was prepared for a chariot.

But what arrived was a ratty coup of unknown make;
a wheezing, rusted contraption with wobbling wheels,
a cracked, insect-stained windscreen,
valves of leaky ichor,
a missing cigarette lighter,
a lockless glove box,
a tailpipe that belched black omen,
windows that rolled by hand and got stuck,
seats of the kind of leather your skin sticks to in the summer and froze in winter,
and an AM/FM radio filled with static.
No spare tire.

I was livid.


This vehicle was to carry me to my onward days,
to the paradise of my imagination?
I was to collude with my romantics in the passenger seat
of this rolling mausoleum?
To commute to my place of wage
and not have my vessel reflect my value?
To pass my days of leisure
knowing a bunker of my perturbation watched from the driveway?

I tried to hew a chariot of my own,
but first the wood of the trees of my garden proved too weak.
Then my crooked wheels seemed to want to separate away from each other.
And the only beasts to pull it were dogs,
made fat from the gristle of my meals that I threw them
in my days of anticipation.
I conceded to the coup.

Misery so often my chauffeur,
I plotted and plodded along with the wheels I was given,
Diverting my eyes from Apollos in the sky,
Pulled by glistening pegasi.

A friend,
also couped up,
Told me to make the most of it.
So I’ve been trying.

I tried to take its namelessness as something to which I might give a name.
As it wheezed I heard it breathing, liable to collapse, but
Alive
nonetheless.
The warped wheels wove their own way,
and I imagined the invisible burden of unseen beasts
with greater senses of direction than mine.
I saw the insects in front of me as company.
As the pipes oozed, I conjured hopes that they were like a gallbladder,
concentrating bile then removing it.
I sensed that the missing lighter meant I shouldn’t be smoking.
The glove box lacked a latch for ease of access,
and I read from the messages scrawled in smoke in my rear-view mirror.
The effort made to breathe through the manual windows
made me appreciate the breaths I took.
The broken sound system taught me to make my own music.
And the lack of a spare tire taught me to drive very, very carefully;
There would be no second chances.

The coup is a symptom of my broken hopes for my future’s reality.
But,
unlike the chariot,
it is real,
and its state of breaking can
Hopefully
be fixed.
I can sit when I wish to be seated.
I can bring others with me wherever.
The direction is dictated by me and not the whims of beasts.
The AC stutters, but it’s there.
There’s a trunk where I can put my memories.
And,
also unlike the chariot,
I can go very, very fast
if I want to.

describe this moment by not only using one
   word – one word used is often times crippling, scarring at that,
when all else revels in the multiplicity; even one strange moment
can be duplicated. the allure different, but still enthralling.
  except you are, when one word was hurled. I have all of this
in varying amplitudes. you will take them all like a gaping hole
   in the mouth of the darkest night and overdose in light, you slung
at such reachable height yet gloating in air like you are your own travesty
       deciphered. face as taunt. hands as feat. limbs
their steady bridges.    the guise of your face, a counterbalance. supple voice,
a trembling scenario of infinitude. i hear this is a way to
       avoid hysteria, to identify

all things as nameless, shapeless if possible. only viciously imagined
    form, contoured into the vacancy denied. this is a way to mitigate
                        demands. to keep a thing from identifying itself
so when  it   comes that   these things start unmooring themselves,
                    they will not administer their potencies. so that when they come back,
  you will keep mum like white of camphor, or the black of a hilt,
        the blue of the sky – something that cannot be perforated.
    so that when they come back, the return will never carry
            their attars, that pivotal minute will never fluctuate into an hour
     of  density, so that their namelessness
                         will be easily dismissed as the expected howl of a dog
   in the middle of the already fractured night, or a cat’s enigmatic drone
                       in its concentration. So that this thing

will remain  to have no name and that when
                        it encounters itself in the presence of itself,
     the absence will be clear and the finding,
                                  a release.

You shuffle through the streets unnoticed
Sincerely yours
I have to keep your thoughts in my pocket
Shuffling through a pocket full of things in the process of unpredictability
I mess up my numb fingers cut up by the struggle of possessions
These things need my immediate memory

A delicate blade of grass, a tiny reed, a frail leaf, a drooping flower,
a vapour, a dew-drop, a disappearing cloud, a last ray of evening sun,  a fading colour, a feather, a breath, a word, a languishing song, a sad smile, a blink, a shadow, a speck in time, a droplet in life's ocean, tears, solitude, aloneness, namelessness, a soon-to-be nothing--  this is what I am.

I have nothing--all that I can claim as mine is my humility.