there are a million yous maybe
two give or take a half mil
and there are as many loves
furious selves as many others &
then a billion or six more
give or take a half bil & then
there is capital the ladder of poems
one at the top calling others
non what about the billion
yous loves selves poems give or
take a half bil no you say
that won’t do thkuverymch-
the moss of beginnings
i.
at the edge of some
beginning lies the humanoid lacking requi-
site evolutionary cogs
& bits to fully process daytime
(it’s blinding but so is karma)
it blushes &
retires -
ii.
where water goes to quench its thirst, there
it is that the
bumblebees bumble, where herons and
heroines speak sky &
the courage of humans falters, mixes with
the rust of
trees, the moss of beginnings & the roots
of poems past &
here -
iii.
it would have been a new poem
had it not been for the oldness
of knives, the oddity of
pale, the sunken brevity of the
odd word, the fondness of
being strange &
still -
livid ash
This summer, the nights are woven
as livid ash – sunken
tombs are once again
called to make their faces known
This summer, nothing is moist save
this livid ash – heathen
tombs are allowed
to mingle in open secrecies
This summer, demythified doors
wear livid ash – leaven
tombs are broken in &
doctored as a single machine -
if you meet the buddha on the road..
I met him on that untrod road &
he eyed the menace in my eye, said “look!
behind you, there’s the buddha you were
looking for.” I looked back, nothing,
and the buddha went a-scamper cursing
that oft-quoted license to kill, yearning
for that time under the tree, when
hunger & fire sat side by side with love
in them howl eyes and menace -
Everyday foibles
Look into the mouth of horror
& you’ll find everyday foibles
wanting to sleep by the kerb
side, if only
for a few more minutes
of untarnished dream -
Is my mouth political or just its
corners, when it turns not mind
ful of euphs and misms? Is the
Twitch of my nose mere biology or
is the canvas larger, mindful of
the oophs, the eeks & the isms?
iii surmises
On silence
– there are no silences, only doors that refuse to open to let the mute sun in
– if silence was certain, doors would be humorless
Each story runs late
the verbs are hassled, thunderous grammar is a tasseled adjunct to power that refuses to give tao runs dry but no sooner than the parch soars, new words begin to form as grammar vows blood – the story as parchment & love
A resonant lamp
resounds distance is three harks away 1. come no further than the eye’s hover 2. seek no earth that claims sky as father 3. while away this distance as you while away your grandmother’s patience
the knife of the slow word
In the murk the Way advances
as the knife of the slow word -
in the murk there is a mark that
breathes which poem gets lost
in that breath? the knife of the slow word
cuts only when the river flows -
I collect quills and count moons - where
the worries are taken to pitch and the quills
remain, there I anchor my poem -
I do not know its name
– Lao Tsu
I style it “Tao”
Until her knife had pared
– Sylvia Plath
The moon to a rind of little light.
Khadija in her own words
I did everything in every field, I just didn’t like cleaning jobs like sweeping and dusting. My mind was always towards creating different things. If in a day I wasn’t able to make something, or complete something, I would feel my day is wasted.
I had so many questions about religion. I go for logic, you know, unless something convinces me with logical reasoning, I wouldn’t accept anything.
Being a mother… I don’t know… I passed the formative years of my children very busy in my work. I would stitch clothes for children and supply to shops. Most of my time was busy in stitching away…
…and I don’t remember how much attention I paid to them… though my children are always saying ‘Mummy you did so many things for us, you made such lovely clothes for us, you cooked such lovely meals, you did everything for us,’ so I don’t know.
In a way it’s a good thing to get yourself ready for your final exit from this world. I created so many things, so many things, I’m proud that I did so much work…I’m not materialistic, I like to collect art, that’s it, I like beauty…I made something, for everybody, I took interest in so many things and it was worthwhile living life like that.
Quotations are from an interview Khadija gave to Sakina Marvi (her cousin’s daughter) a few years ago.
Khadija Mamuwala
Mother-in-law, Creator of all things beautiful
January 23, 1940 – February 10, 2021
In my daughter’s name
Audre Lorde
I bless your child with the mother she has
with a future of warriors and growing fire.
machine unlearning
Buying a plot of land, I saved the deed on my hard drive, and it began to run out of space. Not knowing what to do – imagination limited by happy endings and twist plots from too many movies – I attempted to de-fragment the drive only to find it had already been optimally atomized. How do you come to terms with a drive that has opted out of alternative spaces? Overnight, the plot thickened into a miasma filling up dropbox which then complained of fatigue, oversubscribed by technophiles dreaming of escaping to Mars and buying a plot of land.
I am silence of the boat
carved of necessary wood –
Will I sink with the voice of
the heaviness of name or
Will the fight in me fly home as
song, as the otherhood of song?
the Wounds of Capital & its Undoing
It is pointless to resist power – the brea(d)th of powerlessness is precisely the point
The only truth is non-truth & the whole of it is untrue, therefore full of holes
The macro is but the sum of individual micros – even plus odd is forever odd
The foremost poet wrote perhaps the greatest poem ever written, but it was untrue
There is no alternative, no such thing as society, except when you forget, except when you don’t
