Brood

1. The rain falls and I feel something is trying to break free inside me.

I run out and stand there still.

People look at me and think it’s the same old urge to wet our hearts in rain

But oh it’s something more

Swaying to the music that only I can hear.

The wind smiles back at me.

The soil gives me lift as I jump.

The water tells me to dance like crazy.

I swing and swing I’m leaving the humanly feelings behind.

I am holy! Holy!

No love. No hate. Or concern. I am laughing. I am crying.

Oh people you think this is lunacy.

I now understand but I am yet so naive to grasp the meaning.

I smile like crazy

I am holy! Holy!

2. Oh, soul this rage of yours

The storm inside you melts from the eye

But you take it all back in,

Burn my blood, Rot my brain.

This body is confining you in,

If there were no walls of flesh or bone or shame

You would have been flooded.

What is you do that attracts the pain?

You throw me high as much as you pull me in

How do you manage to attract the joy?

Oh, soul this rage of yours

Spinning me around.

3. I spent my childhood chasing these words

These feelings are not just my own. I borrowed them in my blood from

my mother who borrowed it from hers.

And she, a fair old lady hid them somewhere so we may find it.

A few drops of sweetness in the jams she made, songs in the plants she watered         every day,                      

Laughter laid in the verandah where I would spend my sunny days.

She passed on and left me a lifetime to wander in her wrinkles, in her white sarees.

A lifetime to chase these words.

4. He wants not the prints of edited poems.

But the torn pages of my first drafts.

The words cut and replaced, he thought over and over.

The feeling that laid and the feeling that made it through my pen.

The sloppy handwriting. The smudged ink.                         

He tries to find my hidden meaning between the lines.

Oh darling you are going right.

Within the words I say. Between the words I feel.           

He is here to read me. The journals, the diaries, the letters.

He is here to read me. My mind, timid smile, my eyes and all that is behind them.

I laugh as he holds these pages. I tremble as he touches me.

5. I have stone for a heart.

And concrete flows through my veins

So forgive me, my touch doesn’t feel soft.

I could see the cracks in my hand as I clasp you tight

If I rest my head on your chest or caress your face,

I might leave sand behind

I burn at the touch of love,

So do not kiss my fingertips

For the ashes might stick up to your lips.

Do not try to extract from me what I have not

For I might pour down into dust and drown.