The truth of heartstrings
22 October 2017
Tell me tale
As I will inhale
Pollen struck
Flower pots
Loose scent of forget-me-nots
Unraveling slow
Wade with me
In murky rivers
Three bereft
Cleanliness
A phantom while corpses left
On pyres alit
Shower me
Blue meteorites
Corpuscules
Caving in
In sync with the whisperings
The truth of heartstrings
Reading of the poem:
Of Life and Love – Rumi poetry
Tales of the Wretched: Fantine – Chapter 1: Haunting Rue des Pâquis
15 October 2017
Fantine quickly put on her coat and rushed down the stairs, her suicidally high shoes almost tripping her as she ran down the narrow staircase. She was slightly irritated at her mother for staying so long on the phone with her that she missed the first half hour of the prime time. This was the time between five o’ clock and seven o’ clock when most of the customers came as they could still invent a late evening at the office excuse without it looking suspicious. It was now half past five and Fantine was still not out on the Rue des Pâquis where her regulars would surely be picked up by some of the newer girls who did not respect quarters.
As Fantine emerged from her building sure enough she could see some of her regular customers being chatted up by the new girls. She rushed towards them and shooed off the girls who did not dare question her authority as she was one of the older girls in the neighbourhood and benefited from police protection as one of her boyfriends was a police man and she also knew how to pay the others without the related money looking like a bribe. Indeed, although practising as a sex worker was allowed by the government and followed a strict set of hygiene and other rules, it was a criminal offence to bribe a policeman.
Fantine always chose an appropriate gift that the policemen could convert into cash as she made sure she gave them something that could be refunded at the counter. It was usually costly perfumes, cigars and expensive clothing that her boyfriend gave to his colleagues on her behalf. One could think of him as her beau but strangely enough Fantine never introduced him as such but always referred to him as agent Patrick. Although there were not huge fights in those alleys, it was always good to be able to count on the police doing a tour of the streets and Fantine felt better that they always came up and down the Rue des Pâquis several times per night so that no customers got any strange ideas.
Several weeks before Fantine had been late for her regular haunt of the Pâquis because agent Patrick had paid her a visit but it was seldom that he resorted to passing time with her in her small bedroom. Today, she could see him at the corner of the restaurant where they usually met to chat casually and smoke. Agent Patrick liked chatting with her because she was one of the few women he could talk to without feeling inferior. All the other women intimidated him and he felt too shy and awkward to start a conversation with them. With Fantine on the other hand, the words flowed freely and he could feel the burden come of his chest.
It was thanks to these conversations that Fantine grew to know absolutely everything about agent Patrick. She sometimes felt more like his psychotherapist than his girlfriend and he surely did everything to make it feel that way aside from the very rare times when they would share a certain form of intimacy. Fantine signalled to agent Patrick that she would need some time with her current clients before she could come and chat with him. He did not voice out anything but signalled back that he would be waiting and indicated the number three. To Fantine it was clear that he was telling her to come after her first three clients and she mouthed back yes.
Her first client was finicky and insisted that she bathe first which she had already done before going out but she humoured him and started doing so while reminding him that her charge was per the hour. He asked her to bathe slower so that he could watch her while she did so. Fantine started to soap her body much slower and it seemed to please the young man who told her that his wife was pregnant and he had liked to watch her shower but now he felt she looked horrid and missed those moments.
After her shower, Fantine lay down and started compiling mentally her list of things to do as she usually did when someone shared their emotional secrets with her. It was her way of keeping a distance with all the emotional surcharge that was poured at her by so many clients. Very few clients dealt with her as a commodity because most of her regular ones had come to know and had recommended her as a witty woman who was also soulful and could be trusted with secrets. Fantine on the other hand was not always happy to carry around these little secrets and these peeks into the sad parts of her clients’ lives. She preferred to see the clients as a means to an end and that end was having enough money to buy a house back in her hometown, get married and have enough money to live off when she would become old.
Some of the girls laughed when she shared her views on retirement because they could not see how anybody would want to marry a prostitute but Fantine would also laugh shake her shoulders and tell them that nobody in her hometown knew what she was really doing for a living. Her mother had told all the folks at home that she was a seamstress and Fantine laughed inward thinking that yes, she was definitely stitching back the burst seams of men whose life was often in shambles.
After her third client, Fantine showered again and went to meet agent Patrick. He did not seem in a very good mood today and was sulking rather than talking as he usually would. She ordered a shawarma meal for both of them and put the money on the counter between them. Next to the money she also laid the monthly bag of gifts for agent Patrick’s colleagues but he pushed it away.
Fantine sighed and looked at the other customers of the dine-in. They were either clients that she recognised or some tourists. Funnily enough, despite being the red district area of Geneva, the Pâquis attracted a lot of tourists because of the artistic atmosphere there. On occasion though some fights would start and it was better that the police be around to make sure nobody got seriously hurt. She knew from experience that the men who haunted these streets did not have much to lose and often thought of women, especially prostitutes as the right target for their unjustified fury after a few drinks. She sighed again and started thinking of what she could do to make sure the new commissioner would not change the status quo…
Alone in the Dark – Flaer Smin
Tales of the wretched: Ashok and his mother – Chapter 3: A place to call home
5 October 2017
After he had eaten all of the bread, Annie washed her son’s face with the little water in the bottle she had carried from the shelter and hugged him. She then lay him back in his pram and fell asleep next to him on the mattress on the floor. The otherwise silent night was interrupted only by cooing of her son who seemed to be questioning her presence and to which she responded by a croaking type of cooing that seemed to delight her son. Slowly, both fell into a deep slumber.
The next day, Annie went to the shelter again, feeling more emboldened by the previous night’s success. She looked for Ashok and finding him there volunteered a smile which somehow lit her otherwise crumpled and unhappy face. Ashok smiled back at her and moved closer, hoping that she would tell him more about herself. It was not that she interested him in any way personally but somehow he felt that if he could help her, then it would be like compensating the time when he was not able to help his mother. Today the meal was vegetable patties and he had saved a couple for her which she took with gratitude and slid into her bra.
As she made her way out after the meal, Ashok followed her stealthily and found out where she dwelt the night. His eyes took in keenly the presence of the child and the feeding scene that brought tears to his eyes as it reminded him of a time when his own mother had fed him like that. He retreated soundlessly and promised himself to come the next day so as not to startle her during a timing when most women would feel vulnerable, especially that she would know he had followed her. He did not want her to mistake him for a stalker although funnily enough it could be viewed exactly that way as he had followed her from the shelter.
The next morning when he arrived he was surprised to see a bulldozer on the premises knocking down the building. He started running towards the house before he was stopped by one of the workers.
The workers stopped and Ashok raced inside to where he had seen Annie last with her baby. Sure enough she was there lying on the mattress with her baby next to her, oblivious of the fact that the building was about to cave in on her. Ashok woke her up and the trio left the building closely followed by the workers. One of them who seemed to be in charge mentioned they would have to report the incident to social workers as there was a baby involved but Ashok mentioned that there was no need for that as he would take in Annie and the baby. The man resisted but Ashok and the other workers sided together to convince him that the matter was better solved this way.
Annie followed Ashok to his home wondering why he was being kind. Many thoughts raced across her half-dazed mind on what may be the reasons: was he a weirdo, would he hurt her but that thought disappeared as soon as it surfaced, would he attempt to pimp her off, etc. Meanwhile Ashok just glanced at her from time to time sitting behind with her baby in her lap and the seatbelt fastened on top. He thought to himself that he would need to buy a proper baby seat now. For some reason it created a tight knot in his neck which was not uncomfortable. On arriving home, he opened the car door for her and took the baby from her while she eased herself out. He could see that it was a long time that she had not been in a car from the awkward way in which she came out as if emerging from a pool.
Ashok put the baby back in his pram that he retrieved from the trunk of the car and pushed the pram along while Annie was taking in the surroundings still dazed. This was a nicer neighbourhood than any she had been in aside from that neighbourhood a long time ago when she had worked in a beautiful office and earned a lot of money. She sighed thinking that sometimes one ruins one’s own life with some very small mistakes that cumulate over time. She could not even remember how she had slowly got into debt and how it had lead her to prison. She could not even recall properly the time after that when she had had a child with a man who had then abandoned her. Slowly but surely her descent into her wretched state had finally led into living on the streets with her baby.
When they reached the house, Ashok eased the baby out of the pram and put the child in his mother’s arms. He then proceeded to show her the bathroom mentioning that she could bathe the child there while he would fetch some clothes. He left her and the child and rapidly went to a convenience store to fetch some food as well as some clothes both for Annie and her child. Upon his return he could hear loud splashing and when he knocked on the bathroom door Annie mentioned he should not come in so he mentioned he would put the clothes on the floor and waited in the living room. Shortly after he had started putting together a meal, Annie entered with her baby. Ashok was surprised to note that she looked less grumpy and was almost pretty though her face was still puffed up. He smiled at her and she smiled back.
Annie could not hold back her tears and rushed to Ashok and hugged him tight, feverishly repeating may God bless him to which he answered that he already felt blessed because his mother was surely smiling now from where she was.
La Terre vue du ciel – Arman Amar
In punctuation
31 August 2017
Erasure
Obliteration
Inside me
Doves fly free
Outside borders now shaken
Through vows we’ve taken
You fly high
Your shape dark tattoo
Etheric
Composure
Minutes before disclosure
Tale of who is who
Vibration
Energy coursing
Through my skin
Subdued din
Voices hoarse together sing
Branding face with wing
We summed them
In punctuation
Dots in cross
Cross in dash
Marble now crumbling to ash
Fragments of unseen
Reading of the poem:
Every day I have the Blues – Blues Dealers
Night Time is the right Time – Blues Dealers
You don’t Love me – Blues Dealers
Sunny times reeking
23 April 2017
Bedtime tales reading
The young of morrows breeding
Through the light speeding
Magnets heart reaching
Renewal of Time teaching
The end of preaching
Heartbeats loud peaking
Serenity now speaking
Sunny times reeking
Reading of the poem:
Serenity – Sleep Dealer
In beating temples
17 April 2017
Hawk’s eye stirs
Mesmerised iris
Glaring whirs
Into sight
The shadow behind that blurs
Witnesses of light
Invoke me
A game to dethrone
Casting stone
In rivers
The thought that blind delivers
From mirrors of old
Beat the cold
The breath throbbing drum
In the hum
Tale of two
Passengers that we once knew
In beating temples
Reading of the poem:
Heart Warriors – Byron Metcalf
Renewed the divine within me she’ll dwell
14 September 2016
With the dancing breeze I compose a song
Come hear the story of a tongue riddled
Of heroes hoary who lifetimes piddled
Stir your quaking knees and come hum along
My tale comes in threes that if bound are strong
Cross lakes ye Tory ride horse unsaddled
Awakened glory spirit unbridled
In Queen of the bees I right me the wrong
In flow of the vine decant me the well
When springtime’s blossom reaches towards skies
The blood and the wine within me they swell
On crossing the line I will sound the knell
Sorrows in bosom as withered past dies
Renewed the divine within me she’ll dwell
Reading of the poem:
The Secret – Adam Hurst
Dusk – Adam Hurst
Ritual – Adam Hurst
Tainted veils that fall
22 – 23 July 2016
Blue shadows
Overarching reach
Into mind
Wind patterns
Blowing with the Heart that yearns
For tomorrow’s seed
Foreign breed
We are from the stars
Dust of space
Silken trace
Flowing from infinite dams
Waters of dreamland
Overflow
Spinning into soul
Threaded streams
Made of dreams
Pulsating within the Eye
Gathered momentum
Curtains split
Inner feelings stir
Mind retreats
The door slams
Hushed countenance repealing
The call of doorways
Mirrored fins
Remnants of the tale
Echoed voice
Call of whale
Replicating ancestors
Calling through pitch black
Souls recall
Meanings of somewhere
A lost home
Forgotten
Discarding sheen now rotten
Tainted veils that fall
Reading of the poem:
Fly Over Me, The Approach and Vibrations – Sequentia Legenda
Au revoir – Sequentia Legenda
Somewhere – Sequentia Legenda
A Tale of Two Crowns
18 July 2016
Fleeting touch
Intensified grip
As I dip
Into you
Spilling over countenance
Your voice my penance
Silent prayer
The nuns mortified
Broken words
Leading herds
Into the gardens of dark
Gone is the light spark
Night crawlers
They worship the skull
Lonely bones
Adorning
Intricate architecture
Hallways of priesthood
The suns rise
In confined spaces
Crisp contours
Black white squares
Sunsets and sunrises spent
As brood-breeding mares
Fences dense
Virgins lily white
Pulsating
Sacred heart
Of eras of knighthood toils
The best of the spoils
Rising star
Bees and flies flutter
By your sight
Twin twilight
Purple points to where we are
A Tale of Two Crowns
Reading of the poem:
Clavicula Nox – Therion
Raven of Dispersion – Therion
Son of the Sun – Therion
Breathe – Aleah
Vapour – Aleah
Sacrifice – Aleah
Whole nine yards
8-9 April 2016
Parting words
Realms of never more
Free will’s stake
Random spake
The churning for the Heart’s sake
Wuthering waters
Blue whirlpool
The boat at the peak
Flying high
Touching sky
Journey back abysmal fall
Dull thud of settling
Waters close
A graveyard of sea
Within me
Shutting tight
All but remnants of the light
Flickering softly
Inside Blue
Heart clamours for air
Upward swim
Sails to trim
Superfluous cast aside
The lighter the ride
Remember
The dolphins like sharks
From afar
Confuse minds
The hands peeling grope to loss
Watery graveyards
Eruption combusts
I swim upon tales
Of heavens’
Volcanoes
They greet me at gate seven
Whole nine yards
Reading of the poem:
The Day before you came – Tanita Tikaram
Twist in my sobriety – Tanita Tikaram
Play me again – Tanita Tikaram
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