Every sunset when the light grows faint behind the Peepul tree, I notice a mundane miracle of little note that repeats its defiant cause on the electric lines. A branch from a now dead cactus plant was drawn in by some unknown wind and carried unambitiously to the electric wire by my balcony. Long and alone in as much as a year the branch has kept alive, with green leaves and purple flowers crowing its upward grasp, the branch has lived past its parent, hanging on by only a twig. How among the endless lines crossing the streets and the loud lives of everyone here does this little stem keep still on its tight rope? It must be akin to holding your breath and keeping a low profile, if the branch ever grew bigger or expanded in any direction, it’s fragile balance would be lost and the mundane act of survival would soon decay among all the leaves and swept up refuse on the streets.
Tag: Life
Rough Threads
heat waves
hit their peak…
this flower-like human heart
chasing flies
some can sing
gazing outside
a soft breeze
from the open door
my friend brings
morning coffee
Breathing room
Some days you write and you just don’t want to share. Some days you breath in and it just isn’t enough so keep it all in, share nothing but how you’re feeling.
That’s worth writing about.
Night Walk
Journey by moonlight
As it spills through the highway
So many boulders
Yet,
The river finds it’s way.
Still
A fallen leaf-
Unmoving
Around it
The water ripples.
A blemish on the mirror
But the river isn’t moving
A fire on it’s bank
Now in the water
The smell of burning leaves.
Streams
Briefly a broken mirror
Then-
Submerged branch
Flying leaves and reflections
And over it flows a river.
Taxidermists
We are a family of collectors. We have diverse interests and collect many things- perfume bottles, magazines from the soviet union, yellow pages for cities that don’t exist anymore. Even seeds. In the summer we often catch fireflies and lost flowers. The flies are pinned up in memories, the flowers in books- so many of them. All for a personal library that began decades ago. Yellow books that’ll never be used, no one can write over flowers and perfumed paper.
So much for memories I guess, but you won’t me writing on those pages either.
Back then
All I remember
The sound of tea
being poured
While wool
Disguised as fog
climbs up
closing the windows
The tick of the clock
interrupts.
My neighbors cage
Bird cages become terrible things if you think about them. They seem to come from a ancient manors covered in dust and with white drappings over furniture. When empty there’s a soft melancholy that comes with rusted, black bars that might break if you pushed hard. A swing is just more lonely when there isn’t a bird on it.
Putting a bird in won’t makes things much better. I’m not one for heavy handed metaphors but it’s hard to image any contentment coming from anything that could claim the entire sky, being restricted to a tiny cage. It’s damnation. Insanity for birds and condemning man to be a callous and unfeeling thing, amused by petty, pretty suffering. Color the cage with your own horrid indifference, the bird might not have much time for you either.
My neighbors either poets or masters of atrocity have gone a step further. In their grotesque tower that looms over the entire neighborhood they got a cage on the highest floor. Rather than put any birds in their cage, they’ve found themselves a better metaphor- they’ve caged light. In a corner they’ve wasted for a concrete, meaninglessly stylized balcony that no one can reach they’ve put a solitary light bulb that’s lit for no one in particular.
In fact I don’t think anyone would bother to look that far beyond the trees, street lights and other squalor all the way up a rich mans house. Maybe they think it looks good no matter how futile; another ornate holding for us to want. I’m not sure they’d take much notice of it themselves so there it glows, in an uninterrupted darkness. Unseen and meaningless, trapped above us all.
Eating through memory
Heavy from his feast
Through 3 years of letters-
Swaying silverfish.
Rijul Ballal 