Tuesday 5 December 2017

Unwinding


Persistence of Memory (1931)
By Salvador Dali




Oiling mother’s tired hair
Withered under each day’s sun
Tangled hopelessly behind her deceptive bun.

I moisten it gently
Like the month of July
And then,
Like I’ve seen her sometimes
Loosening the tense soil of a potted plant,
I push my fingers deeper
Into her slowly softening scalp.

The hair lusterless all week
Slowly grows adazzle and sleek
The strands of black and hennaed brown
And even the few greys that make her frown.

I go on to part her hair
Carefully
Like opening a precious gilded book.
And almost magically
Flanks and flanks of regal silver
Tucked within these unseen folds
Come into my full view.



Was it Time I was staring at?
Wound up and waiting
In the heart of my mother’s dense hair?



In any case,
I oiled it too, tenderly.
And then,
Braided it with the rest.


Sunday 17 September 2017

August Mornings

Waves of Love (1896)
by Edvard Munch


The cloud of sleep dissipates.
I wake up free falling.

Eyes still shut
I begin to feel once again
That ache
Unrelenting in its grasp.
Much like how you reached out to me.
Shoulders first.

Eyes still shut
My nose tingles next
With the dust in the stale air,
Suspended lifeless
From weeks of fastened windows and dead skin.

Eyes still shut
I hear my heart
Dripping through my ear into the pillow
Setting my head a-ticking.

Eyes still shut
I can see already
The dark
Like waves
Lapping against me.

The cloud of sleep by now dissipated,
With eyes still quite shut,
I wake up sunk,

Again.

Monday 15 May 2017

Cloud and Sky


The False Mirror (1928)
by René Magritte 



As day broke
and so did my dream
I woke up
With one weeping eye.

Still rubbing one
and wiping the other
I could not tell
cloud from sky.

Blue clouds and white sky.
But how could that be?
I focused and refocused my eye
The white surely exceeded the blue.

So it must be.
Unless this strange morning
There was too much cloud
on too little a sky.

But every time I blinked
They switched places.
Both seemed still
And both seemed afloat.
Both changed forms from beaks to boats.

Exhausted, I asked a friend
To look out his window
And describe me his view.
Despondent he said,
"All I see is grey"