Explosion

On the day the truckload      

of explosives

drove into the central bank,

for a long second

time staggered

All sounds of a workday morning

in the city

even the cawing of the crows

merged into a solitary

Boom

Prism of fire and fury

Lives ended

eyes were blinded

retired wage earners

collecting provident funds

were crushed

under brick and glass

the nearby vegetable seller’s

hands were severed

like cucumbers,

Women in sari

held their eyeballs in their palms

and blood spattered

the streets,

erasing memory.

Out of the broken window

of a damaged car -

dead driver -

the radio blared, unscathed

on a commercial break

a man’s pleasant voice

announced

that big or small, insurance

protects them all

 (From 'nothing prepares you' - 2007) Posting this on the request of many teachers and students who need poems from the new syllabus of the GCE Advanced Level English examination

Untitled

Today you are all day
On my mind.
I hear your sighs
In the wind
I see your lips
In the leaves of
The Na tree.
The silver finger nail moon
In the sky
Is your smile.

Both now are beyond my touch.

I miss you.
Not the cursing, swearing
you, now filled with the rage of a hurricane
not the you with the stone heart
But the you who dried my tears
And said you will never forget me
The you whose hands
sculpted for me a penguin
out of yellow soap.
This is not a poem.
It is not a plea.

It is just a note
my tears wrote.

Gecko

 

when love releases you

from its warm embrace

your first impulse is to hug yourself

to keep away the chill

Odd, that need for self preservation

even in the moment

you’re  tottering at the edge

of the world.

The body goes on

even when the soul has

been torn out

the limbs move, the eyes blink, the nails grow

stubborn in their slow routine

and the heart keeps running

its steady and futile race

like the tail

that wriggles

long after the gecko has gone

Stitch your Eyelids Shut 2010  (Akna: Colombo)

Crossings: a memory map

(For my sister, 2007)

In a few weeks

you will

cross several oceans

and two continents

in search of new beginnings

and fulfillment of old needs

my mind hovers around

the days we sailed paper boats

on rivers made by

monsoon rain on a coconut estate

streams afloat

with pol mal and tamarind shells

and halts near the talk

of leaving

the concept of home

and crossing oceans.

With you I have confronted

the intricate twists of

growing up

negotiated the algorithms

of loving and losing

divided grief

into manageable chunks

With you I have constructed a history.

So geography shall remain

only a syllable

as you leave,

a small twig in the river

that flows inexorably

to the sea

Cadaver

They say that holding on to the past

is like tying a corpse

to your back and taking it along

with you

wherever you go,

the stench horrible,

people around you hold their noses

and avoid you like

the proverbial plague.

(A radio DJ spouts such

words of wisdom

between Beyonce’s song

about replacing her lover

and a commercial for detergents)

Driving in rush hour traffic

with a knot of grief

in my throat

I believe he’s speaking

just to me.

So I’m thinking

I should let memory die

let loving you go

imagine the maggots surface

white and thick and sticky

from the depths of  your eyes

I drowned in once

and try to hold in my hands

the crumbling flesh

of your once-loved body

as it falls

bit

by

bit

from

the skeleton of

your devotion

I should untie you

from the back of my heart

dig a hole in the dark deep

night of my past

and bury you,

kisses and all.

My new book is now available, published by Sarasavi