peripherals

you stand so aloof
yet the stillness of your body
throbs against my own

************

I rub my chin
reflectively 
each pore of yours
is doorway to heaven

heaven I find
deep in your eyes
iris reflecting
I caress your spine

haunted by your scent
I house myself
in periphery
of my disintegration-
amalgamating into you

something fishy

marinated fish
goes into that flat frying pan
oh, splattered bliss

bliss leaks from sides
releasing smells into my brain
making mouth water

but fish seek coke
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am following it from about fish, chips, nothing much else. Go check that out too!

Why not write a poem or a story in exactly 160 characters each Sunday? Spaces included! Head for Monkey Man for Sunday 160!

PS: No, I wasn't cooking the fish. It is all imagination.

silent alphabets

alphabets of speech
escape in vibrant spaces
leaving silent hums

non-negotiable

why I negotiate
your so very random emotions
but let myself ebb?

transient

it is two o'clock-
time when someone else’s love
becomes transiently yours

birthday swan song

song is but a joy
illogically I sing offkey
on my birthday today

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today it is my birthday. I had looked forward of it being the best one of my life but that didn't happen. So what? I can still celebrate it, can't I? I will gift myself with some jewellery, I am hankering after. Another pair of Platinum studs and of course, books. What else should I buy? I wouldn't mind suggestions.

special talent

your pregnant pauses-
are your only special talent
mine is to ignore

night sounds

fraught with such distraught
in darkness he touched her arm;
said, dispel my insomnia

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

in the red tent
womanhood is celebrated-
which genesis ignored

~The Red Tent by Anita Diamant/1997

We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust.


Title: The Red Tent
Author: Anita Diamant
ISBN: 0312195516
Publisher: Picador/1997
Pages: 321

The Red Tent is a story told in the voice of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah. Jacob had twelve sons but only one daughter. Dinah was loved by all her four mothers: Leah, Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah. She had different equations with all of them. All the four told her about themselves and their experiences, right from her childhood. She was not left out of anything.

The Red Tent represents the tent belonging exculsively to women, who go there once a month for about three days to menstruate, where they deliver their children, where they tell stories and sing. The differences between the women is left outside and inside the tent they experience spirituality, which is not separate from the physical world. For them, everything is holy, dreams show the future. The bodily rhythms of the women is attuned to the rhythm of the Earth and they feel so much near to spiritual insights. Prophecy, interpretation of dreams, clairvoyance are not something to laugh about but to experience. Inside that red tent, women are very powerful.

Men are not aware of what happens in there, going about in their crude ways. They don't understand the spiritual aspect of it.

Told from Dinah's point of view, she fell in love with a Shechemite. And her brothers did not like it. They said she was raped and had to be avenged. Hungering for power, her brothers Simeon and Levi attacked the Shechemites while they were recovering from circumcision which the Jacobites had ordered for all the Shechemites as part of the bride price. This treachery forced Dinah to curse her brothers and she escaped to Egypt with her mother-in-law. After giving birth to a son in this new place, she becomes a midwife, that skill she had learnt from one of her mothers, Rachel.

The Red Tent speaks of the power of Woman, even those who don't have a voice. With good prose, Diamant makes it feasible. It might be a work of fiction but if Dinah had been given a voice in the Bible, she would told it this way. The Red Tent celebrates woman. They way they ought to be, should be.

Senryu: Ruing it?

I tried a senryu after very long. Hope it works!

ideal resolves
very impressive show
bitter to swallow

for my closest friend-----a senryu

twenty five years ago
you steamrolled into my life
stuck through thick and thin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As both of us are not into mushy stuff or display our feelings for each other, she is gonna hate me, if she sees this! And a sloppy one at that!

Snaked Fingers