Lotus Song (inspiration from 12 lotus, royston tan)

Prologue
How pitiful you are dear lotus,
Cast into the murky soil.
The wind murmurs your name now-
Dear girl, will you sing?

(i)
Dust falls low in Sana’a
Lightly brushing the smells of porridge
That wend its way through every household.
We sit by the well, all *baltho - waifs
chewing hallucination under a veil.
Ah, the pleasure of being unseen!
-from fingers, hand, and the occasional foot.
In this shrouding sarcophagus
the world unravels its whole brilliance.
Identities fade, our bodies strain, come loose,
deconstructing into the most basic algorithm
Allah used when he lovingly moulded humankind.
Unspeakable joy-
Soon our man will return
And we will bloom like prescient flowers,
My sisters and I, as we scurry
To gather buds that wither down below.


(ii)
We had not met-
As custom went, but fortune, face, and family
Had gone ahead of us to make their loves;
Ours they sealed in dowry.
Hand henna-bound, forehead etched red.
The mark burned, though less,
Than the husband’s searing glance
As he pledged to worship the ground
That I walked on – his part is easy,
For that pledge I walk these steps-
How quickly does sari turn to ash?
Flesh to dust, bone to fine sand?
Till death do we part? Never.
Not even so. I breathe,
A short breath-
Before I take my place beside him, in his pyre.


(iii)
To him whom I have loved before-
Write me no letters;
I wish you death, quick and easy
Let a bullet stop your gentle heart
and make no mark upon your face.
So many men have kissed the dirt, mouths agape
In this roughly hewn piece of hell;
But let no penance singe your beloved face,
Or tear the laughter from your brow.
May youth dance its graceful Art,
Upon your lips, and go you to some greater sphere,
Heights my flights of sorrow cannot scale.
I only pray – that some strains of music
Ease down below, not to pleasure me
But to know you are now in joy,
And not the dank trench where good men sweat
tears, fester, and bring on
This bitter wasting of a woman’s years.


Epilogue
Out of the muddy water,
She stands like a queen above the murk,
And nature gifts its purest perfume,
And light bequeaths its finest livery,

And love sings its most piteous song.



*black robes that women in the Yemen wear

Cinematic Magic - Thoughts from NTU Cinema studies

It is quiet here,
like all other human senses,
our curiosity stretches
Out, like a cat
trying, too hard, to claw
at the fringes of existence.

Nary a mew-

For what is reality but what we can
tease cajole and coax, belly up
into purring obeisance?

Life is what i record-
with my eyes, ears, mouth, heart,
Places you have touched, lingered
and forgotten,
in a time too long past for antiquity.

Life is what you interpret-
At once high fantasy touches your shores,
At once I am archaic in its backwash.