Author: Afya

Poet

Haunted Houses

I lean with the gravity
Of a dark vortex
Of possessions
Of possessions,
It has opened up
a zone
of

Houses
how are they made
haunted
With dancing the same dance
Washing the same hands,
Hoping the cycle
Would turn into a spiral

About a night

A night filling
outside the kitchen window
While the street is all empty
And the pup
that was yowling in the night
Has died upon the pavement

The automatic sound
Of the cycle
Spinning water
In my mother’s room
Slept a silent transition
And there came an awful silence
Inside my heart

The lights have gone off.

Bald Tree

 
I had grown up beside a bald tree. 

Whether be it the spring
or full moon,
the tree watched its days
in stillness of 
impotent life

And over it,
spirits shuffled in the night
when the yellow bulb of the house flickered
and mother would cry,
the pigeons were dead under the AC
and the dogs ran like wolves

The lights went out in the powerhouse
a beast shook the floor,
my mother hid under the pillows

but I remained still 
Very still,
like the bald tree.

Campfire

 
The light fell on us
and you noticed how     
I had dropped the eye/I
to see 
without a maze of mirrors

I used to write
"you and I"
[self-reference is for famous poets?]
with regard to 
a Pozzo and a Lucky,
but as the language decreed,
the twigs had snapped
into the baritone of the firewood. 

yet
I seem to think
there is a little bit of "we" 
about us
in the bite of the fire--
we are together in chaos,
if not order.

Fruit Ninja

There are two knives
and there is a battle for the Lieutenant General.

From the oblivion of Plato’s roof
a golden fruit falls down
and out come the knives
for outcome of fight
and outcome of fight
decides the seed:
the book.

In the book,
the bloodshed of the other
knife has never mattered
In the book,
the meaning is owned
from temporary (matter)s.

It is so dual
my mind becomes its weapon,
because how do you preserve linearity
with multiplicity?
Every second, the knives sharpen.



The Agent

As you turn-twist
you realize your own automaton
and that,
many things were never voluntary.

This is not to pan-flip
the age old egg of free will,
This is a war

against
the time travel agent sitting inside your head
who thinks,
and very well apprehends
your blouses, suits and cardigans
your armors and knee-tights


It is a printing press
It presses before there was an apprehension of a button
and out comes the news,
the rumor based truth.





Stillness

In the summer,
when my ears rang too much
with the footsteps, those small scooped
green colored rice of the household–I looked away–
they asked me
why do you run off?

I thought of Eliot’s flowers
and the undissolved in my chest,
those whimpers that came out softly,
like a baby cooing
against the fuss of all awake world

I took it to a rivulet,
there, in the moving shadows deep
with the fish-tint of the glistening blue,
no one asked me why
no one asked me who
and I dreamt of lands beyond death
and the final sleep.

I did come back (though)
(though) with deep peace,
knowing what little I hold
knowing how little I can keep
no rice, no flowers
only few hours.