After the stars left sky,
I counted where the gunshot
wounds lodged their metal
mouths sucking blood out of moon
until white as bone, she fell
into the water
& drowned & her hair floated
among the sea weed,
draining mangrove trees their roots,
until muddy with dirty
feet, she walked right back
into sky dressed as meteor
shower & I thought
they were Christmas fireworks then
the holes burned into my tent
& I caught the fire
with my forehead, a cannon
ball & it hurt like
leaving, in my chest, places
you've touched & waiting became
a companion in
my mind, something I could talk
to while the sky stitched
wounds close & drew his curtain
over my eyes like theatre
had ended even
though I could hear the ongoing
scene enact behind
the props of fireflies & frog
chants. But Christmas ended &
you did not return
& when the stars returned like
nothing happened, I
knew that waiting was also
a liar as much as leaving
was honest. So I
picked up the bullets I found
in the muddy banks
of my empty cup & placed
them within reach, a trigger
finger. It was there
when I returned, grey cotton,
rusty & unspent,
turgid & ripe, a bloated
body floating down the moon's
sad face, a reminder
of the war I dodged, looking
for you, the debris
of bombings. I came back, dried
by the famine of words &
wooden gaze people
had, who had lost more than love.
The bullets laid on
a scrawled finger saying you
came looking for a memory
of young dangerous
love & found presence without
teeth was the best teach
& the nostalgia you felt
is now a clean piece of nail
with which you can nail
the past shut. I sat there on
my rocking chair, my
bird binoculars caress
me, thinking of what modern
romance carried you
here & what character you
will take out the sealed
hermit of my life to your
novel stories. I wondered
if you saw the spore,
shrivelled dust here on the shelf
within the arm length
of a clean rag, you would stay
& try to dust my life to
get to the bottom
of the dregs, to see if I'm
still there, a shiny
new coin in the ferryman's
icy pall, bony fingers.
I've been reading a lot poems and I recently discovered the Japanese poetic form, Tanka. This is a poem of five lines and thirty one syllables. The first line has five syllables, the second line has seven syllables, the third line has five syllables and the fourth and fifth lines have seven syllables. Why I enjoy this is because it is helping me build my technical skill as well as tighten my form. I hope to one day be able to blend lyric, strong metaphors and deep emotion into a piece and for me that will be the cumulation of years of experimenting.
Above is a poem written with the metre of the Tanka. Every five line of the poem is a Tanka or at least something similar (I am yet to achieve the sublime language of japanese poetry).
