Pani is Urdu for water.
Pani
You do not know me
I do not know you.
Let me call you Pani and float this out to you
I have not seen you on TV
Or in a picture in a newspaper.
You have not appeared in figures or statistics
There is not record of you yet.
But allow me to float this out to you
A folded paper lotus veined in words
As a 1000 ties of chords are yearning for you
Willing you to be found, mother, father, uncles, aunts
Cousins, their criss-crossed net of longing trawls for you
But you slip through like water, Pani.
You are water, you are current
The rice paper thinness of life got too wet and tore
You flipped and turned, dust washed from your feet.
My arms are too short, my voice is too weak
My anger does nothing, only flair and burn on a wick
Keeps me awake, moves shadows on the walls
Like eddies until I am distracted again.
The vanity of words
The conceit of poetry
To float folded lotus,
Origami torches on a
Country of water.
You see for all it’s emptiness it’s all I have
You have flowed away Pani
In the company of singers, dancers,
Doctors and farmers teachers, sisters,
Daughters, lovers, sons and brothers
Heads of wheat that will
Find no solid ground
Unheard voices flow together
From dialects to one.
I have heard you Pani
Because I say I have
I say you were
Because I said you were
You do not know me
I do not know you
But allow me to float this out to you
I have not seen you on TV
Or in a picture in a newspaper
You have not appeared in figures or statistics
There is no record of your drowning yet
But allow me to float this out to you.
To donate to the relief efforts in Pakistan click on this link
Hare
Gold eyed with amulet pupils, the hare ran to me,
So confident of flicking, turning,
In it’s fist flexing muscle, one force of direction,
An eerie thousand year gaze
It moved through my space,
A coin or arrowhead turned up from a ploughed field
Could not have been formed, pressed and embossed
More of another time.
The Lock Maker
The blossoms catch the dust at
the gate of the old city,
The old man had opaque cloudy eyes,
peacocks eggs with a tiny hint of green and blue,
a smile of Pan stained gums, but a real smile.
The heat was caught in the narrow street on
the back of the goats and in
the folds of the black shalwar kameez.
He fitted the parts of locks,
each cut and filed into synapse snapping shapes
that slipped over each other.
He lifted up a steel skull of moving parts and rivets,
repeatedly turned the key displaying it’s ability to
lock, unlock, lock, unlock
Urging me to try he pushed it towards me
I nod, smile, and pay the first price asked
in damp, dust stained notes,
Touching his forehead we share the joke
that I’ve paid far too much.
Between the Heavy Gold Ear Rings I Kissed Her
Between the heavy gold earrings I kissed her,
so expensive they hung weighted by their full gold content.
At the end of the line of jaw, her mouth.
She chose to shape that mouth,
not in words, but a kiss,
for all the words it forms, the mouth’s kiss is
the only that means nothing done alone.
How do you write a kiss?
Between the heavy gold earrings I kissed her.
For all we are in our end of terrace by the field,
The edge of the small town,
It mattered somewhere else
Where, I don’t know,
But more than that
I mattered here.
Night
Longitude.
Here comes the night, the tide turning against receding day, they over lap It will hide the breathing world and coral houses under it’s own exhale and draw. We will bob on our raft bed and turn on swells as it rises. Night must be carrying us between continents, always seas are pushed between edges, contained by barriers, defined by limitations. The night between days.
Latitude.
The wind has been strong, so the traveling will be turbulent. No fear in the absence of light, children we are under covers of change, later we must be serious. God in the parting curtain clouds,
the vaulted and invisible bedroom ceiling, is blowing gently
the exposed heart, it spasms,clenches, plays like a shell of chambers, conical deep throated. The dim mind glows clearer in the absence of light.
Here comes the night, there are no watches no bells to mark time between the living and the dead, leaving and arriving. No mapped triangulated points. The cold wind that carried night’s smell ahead, whispered it was here, and will be long. Untie moorings or break,
do the journey or it will buffet, lift and drop,
shaking deep dreams from us like bilge.
Copyright G S Buss 2009