postcards

A Martian Sends A Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings -

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside -
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves -
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

-- Craig Raine

ps: this rainy, misty bangalore seems like that - a dim and bookish world. like being trapped within a story..

Go Jenny ... you won't need your purple dress and red hat

Nobody could say you didn't warn us .. :-)

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

-- Jenny Joseph

its not going to stop...

Wise up from Magnolia Soundtrack


Did you know that one in a million flights crash? But did you know each flight changes global climate? In the midst of often praying that it be my flight that crashes (often for the sheer drama, besides a million to one are good odds to pray against) I wonder if this is how relationships are. A one in a million actually crash and fully self-destruct, the others just continue to deteriorate your living conditions to the point when you say -- okay, collectively as a human race -- we have to get rid of the following things
1. inefficient aviation fuel consumption
2. heteronormativity

This is what I wrote a year ago. Though 'stuff' can be as hurtful as it always has been, there's the beautiful acerbic tone of the freshly hurt, still bleeding and juicy. Much as I graze the edges of inexplicable sorrow now, I can't quite get that tone.. :-)

The song is from Magnolia, the only time that I have actually enjoyed Tom Cruise in a role, discounting the juvenile enjoyment and fixation on Top Gun. Magnolia is the movie I watched four years ago, when my lover (then) was snuggling up with his ex, because I had said, very graciously and stupidly ofcourse, that I would be okay/fine with it. It almost feels like I say xx years ago too much .. its a good thing I haven't watched that many reruns of Buffy to actually turn immortal and have too long a life.

The song is a suicide risk's wet dream.. watch out for the last words.