Poems Omega Minus - Parts Three To Five

III Kept out kept out he was: muzzled and shut out from mothering social approval and the usual conning courtesies Kept shut Involuting in the hippo-lipped paranoïa from the darling eyes of his deriding kinsfolk from packed houses’ applauding mental aneamia. The touch-me-not pricking even in the withdrawing shyness no middle way in the eight-fold path piston-pummeled by the venom-limbed banyan the unsuspecting aqua-anemone lashes bludgeoned from the bandit-fish club the unhailed conquering hero without a hometown coming bullied by the brass band’s trumpeting forgetful brashness He bound his house using unseverable streaky tissue drained of the blood of lost causes propped his wordy-walls up with nervous sinew and for want of laughter hung his loin-cloth up high on the mast posts of his fluttering shame Something In the nature of his coming to his senses compelled the inviting of contemptuous laughter something of the brazen sea’s encroachment upon land. Would that he had in the Three Kingdom’s way been raised he would hoist his sorrows in the public’s jaws and sport his ennui by pleading laws. IV It was a time of year too that mattered not just the finite month disgorging it was the time of doing. Into the empty mouth of his scaling he saw, not just wanted the alien assault, the politicking manoeuvring mirth. It was a time too for waiting all alone for the luckless voices belted to cries. They changed, not just moulting a tan And dug and divided into splintering worms. Was it the time of year now he bowed out and away When the Chersonese smote his pang’s worsted bile : he lay there not daring to move nor just faking (the least he could do) unfret his ageing anger to work his passion to a numb centre and die there a shamed and inglorious thing. V Once coming down from the mountain to which he never went there was no mountain from the summit he never left Once coming down the mountain to which he never came he stalked down the leeward and said : ‘I am come from the mountain which in me shows no pains I am locked in the mountain my feet dug in the plains.’ Can you hide a water-melon in a plate of rice Or a mountain under the earth without a rise There where the lowly land barely humps I beseech you seek my nuke, my knees, my lumps. (c) T. Wignesan, 1965 (from the collection: tell them i'm gone, 1983)