Best Distractedly Poems
As Miss Luby watches from her window
a moving van backs up
the driveway across the street
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
its warning cry has a beacon-like effect
on the neighborhood
arousing interest from all corners
everything suddenly shaken awake
Even the squirrels stop, stock-still
save an occasional flick of the tail
Miss Luby's cat, also
watching from the window
pauses momentarily, paw suspended
before continuing to clean herself
And one by one, the other inhabitants
invent clever ways to investigate
without seeming obviously interested
Miss Luby's next-door neighbor, Fred
flits outside to water the plants
in his front flowerbeds, distractedly
soaking the sidewalk instead
While dotty old Mrs. Pappadopoulos
puffs along, pulling her little Pomeranian
up the street for a “walk”
slyly turning her head, rather owlishly
as she passes by
Silvia, Miss Luby's other next-door neighbor
is still in her housedress and can't go out
so she sends her three beastly little boys out
to play, knowing they will get the inside scoop
and sure enough, within forty-five seconds
they have accidentally-on-purpose
sent a toy airplane across the street
and spend the next half hour retrieving it
following the new neighbors
in and out like so many
playful puppies
Not to be left out
of the hullabaloo, the hoity-toity
housewife from two doors down
high-steps out to size up the new arrivals
over-casually strolling with
her beautifully bundled babies in tow
putting on quite a show
suddenly disappointed
realizing they're just common-folk
not the kind she wanted to know
All the while, the new neighbors
exhausted, amble in and out
of their new home
staggering
under stacks of small pieces
lumbering along
awkwardly lugging larger ones
A teenage boy
silently glides past on a skateboard
giving side-eye to the boring, middle-aged
couple- as he is nearly hit by a car passing by
driver distracted by the moving van
Stepping down from the AC coach
on to the railway platform
A hot wave of salty moist air
drenches me
On my customary visit
to this city I'm tethered to
by my memories..
She coyly calls herself Chennai
like a new bride renamed
in her husband's home
At heart though she is still Madras
and to the likes of me ;
It's a relief to slip into my mother tongue
to bargain with the auto walla
after mouthing words for months together
in an alien tongue..
We slice through the dense traffic
As I nod distractedly
to the driver's political soliloquy
While my eyes search for familiar landmarks
that were part of my youth
Moore market
Poppat Jamal
Saphire theatre
Gemini flyover;
the city rushes by
a phantasmagoria of urban scenes
until the fragrance of panneer roses
attack my nostrils
as I watch flower sellers
deftly spinning silver threads
around thick rose garlands...
The milling crowd at Pondy Bazaar
with women shopping tirelessly
for jewels, sarees and utensils..
Saravana bhavan coming to the rescue
of their cravings
for sambhar vada or bhelpuri....
I quickly make a mental list
of goods to take back when I return--
Coffee powder
baby mangoes
mor milagai
ambika appalam
not to forget
a visit to the Naidu Hall..
The bottle neck at Panagal park
a hub for matrimonial shopping
slows down my journey,
then a familiar slide down
the doraiswamy subway
and a furlong along the railway tracks
I alight in mambalam
where my mother awaits with open arms;
A week's time for me
to imbibe the city's moods..
to gaze at cawing ravens on neem trees
to discuss the story line of soaps on TV
to inhale the simple aromas of brahmin meals
Before I bid farewell to it temporarily
The strongest woman that I ever saw
was born thirty-four years ago,
to loving parents who doted on her,
told he of the great places she’d go.
She was popular all through high school,
never failed to pull down straight A’s,
was taught to be strong, and never take crap,
a path for women she would blaze.
She had not a head for the hard sciences,
but in business she quickly excelled,
got her MBA from the finest of schools,
a master of finance, and of what sells.
Moving to the city, she got a good job
and proclaimed one day she would be in charge,
she brought in accounts all through her twenties
and was rewarded with a salary large.
She shot up the ranks, quickly at first,
found herself in the office by my desk,
though we were in different departments
it was clear, she was one of our best.
But when she turned thirty she seemed to slow,
though she stood by her stated goals,
and every so often I’d find her staring
distractedly out of her office window.
All of it charged starting one fall day
when she went up for a big promotion,
but her numbers were down, and it went to
a workaholic named Danny Bagosian.
This spurred her on to work overtime,
by coincidence I was doing the same,
alone in the office we got to talking,
what she asked me nearly fried my brain.
She said,”I’m here sixty hours a week,
I’ve no time left for relationships,
and though this may sound inappropriate
I want to ask your opinion on this.
“I could use a friend-with-benefits
to relieve stress and have some fun,
you’re a handsome fellow and it has been
three years since I have had one.”
Now I suppose the right thing to do
would be to run down to H.R.
But a woman like this has a way with men,
and I said,”I’m game if you are.”
So began a secret and torrid affair
that no man could ever forget,
in hotel rooms and there in her office…
let’s just say that I have no regrets.
But as the months went on something did grow
as often happens with ‘benefits-friends,’
at some point we dropped the charade,
no longer willing to pretend.
And in her I sensed something new,
a sadness I’d not before seen,
it came out into the open late a night
when she woke me from a restless sleep...
CONCLUDES IN PART II.
On the sandy knoll he stands, a solitary, forlorn figure gazing at the sky. It’s a clear night, and hundreds of stars shimmer like fireflies pinned to the firmament. His eyes fix on one of them, a twinkling pinpoint near the center that seems to give off a faint amber glow. Looking at it distractedly, he wonders what star it is, which galaxy, how many light years away. He has been mired in a persistent gloom brought on by a bad breakup which life in general has done little to lift, and in his pensiveness, he yearns to be where he is not.
Stars congregating
A salve of reticent lights
Melancholy vaults
He imagines not only life but a much more advanced civilization on the amber star (the distinction between a star and a planet he’s in no mood to dwell on), an unknown utopia in the wilderness of space where unhappiness has been bred out of the entire race, and where there’s no war, no loss, no hate, no love, just a perpetual lightness of being maintained by wisdom and moored to omnipotent technology. He wishes he could leave everything behind, and go far, far away to that beckoning star.
Soul with starry eyes
Thoughts retreat into night sky
Fantasy of flight
The star he’s gazing at is in fact not a star, but a planet in a spiral galaxy 4.5 million light years away, which would not be visible to his naked eye if it weren't for the light from over 5,000 near-simultaneous explosions that have obliterated civilization there in a nuclear apocalypse. Before life was extinguished, the planet’s inhabitants called their galaxy the Milky Way, and the planet itself, Earth.
Man-made suns flashing
Perpetual night descends
Light flees into space
Inspired by the song “So Many Stars” by Sergio Mendes, Marilyn Bergman, Alan Bergman
The Error, Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem : El Error
for Miguel Delibes
(There are just some words and phrases in this translation that I might yet want to modify or substitute with other alternative phrasing. T. Wignesan)
There must be an error in the calculation,
a hole in the sock, a trick in the game :
behind our backs somebody drinks all the alcohol of the said-one
and gets drunk and is unable to stand up ;
somebody manages to conceal the harvest’s wheat and the cream
of the meanings.
Search. in the bassement or the dolls’ quarters the reason for the
crucifixion,
and then be obliged to hide the powerful event behind the fact of
taking tea in the dining-room, below the vine arbour or in the
shade of the cherry trees.
Doubtless one will find meaning behind each vile act,
the mathematics of suffering where each crack of the whip is a
number.
Here you have the delightfulness of the encompassing of the
system which provides for exclusion as well,
the co-existence of both the truths, the framework of impossibility.
Right here, in front of us, the superb fitting together of horror and
of music stands presented,
that which engenders the enthusiastic cipher, the melody of the act
of birth and of death.
Faintly visible from an angle/a place the beauty of water spilled
over the floor,
the incessant leak from the eaves trough which makes us laugh.
Look ! How all of us dance around the fire,
we put one step after another over the firebrands without
compulsion,
we get close to the flames with joy, we become familiar with the
cinder(s).
Here we are dancing, enjoying ourselves, surrounding ourselves with ceremony and with rites,
with the rhythm which makes us get together in the moment of
the cremation.
Here we are without fear as if someone perhaps, distractedly perhaps,
or enjoying himself perchance,
had undertaken for us to magically produce
pigeons full of surprise from the sombrero or in the pocket of the
juggler,
from the other side of an incipient horizon gone feeble,
from where perchance we would be warned of it,
dissimulating away those emerging golds from the topmost heights,
an ambiguous error in the calculation,
a hole in the sock,
a huge trick in the game.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
All of my texts go unanswered
My anxious calls slither to voicemail
I glance at the huge grandfather clock
My hands distractedly sorting the mail
I then check my trusted wristwatch
Its hands surely creeping beyond six
Reprimanding my heartbeats to calm
Some dinner I start to fix
The traffic check on the radio
Always has my undivided attention
Crashes, injuries and lane closures—
Your name to God I overtly mention
Those metal and rubber monsters
Frantically accelerating to get ahead
Send a prickly chill down my spine
As I mix the dough for bread
The walls around seem to move closer
The heat of the oven is stifling
If only you could call me once
Waiting and willing for the phone to ring
Written on:-2/23/2017
Hello!
Hello in there?
Can you feel me yet?...
Welcome to the United States of America!
The U-nited States began as an incubation site
for humane freedom and justice,
although our elders were a bit ahead of
non-violent communication therapy,
mind/body communion therapy,
so we have run into some long-term monoculturing problems
with linking up our justice walk
with our multicultural peace talk.
You have chosen to seed in what was our global hope
for incubating ecological economics.
I so hope you develop neither surprised nor disappointed
in the U.S. rebranding project,
now providing global laundry and enculturation services
for other would-be sub-optimizers
perpetually fascinated,
and distractedly entertained,
with anthro-centric adolescence,
devoid of sufficient ecological heart
to assure healthy root systems
for EarthTribe's potential grandchildren.
This U-benighted States of perpetual anthroprivileged greed
and monolithic egohubris,
now aspires to become Earth's monopolistic
Monocultural Laundry Service,
divesting of polycultural natural enrichment
to thoroughly trash the exciting high risk market
in anthro-centric extract-and-burn entitlements.
If you thought you had landed
within smooth warm womb
of old school not Zero-Sum
Win-Win Golden Rule Skin
in a Permacultural Game Theory
of regenerative life outcomes...
well,
good luck being born a polypathic alien
in this Oppositional Disordered political and racing-apart economic monoculture,
this DisUniting whitewashed policing State
of fear we could never have or become enough,
out to save the globe with arms of might
now that we have proven
how great we are with shooting down each other,
in our homes and on our streets.
Welcome, baby,
it's a not-so-brave old world
in our UBeNighted State.
In the twilight between waking and forever sleep
Her hand flies distractedly to the wild strands of gray
As if to restore her perfect coif, or clutching a tissue
Dabs delicately at her nose, oblivious to the tubes that tether her to life
I study the exquisitely ravaged face
And can still see the echoes of the lovely form
That was once a beautiful woman in the full-flower of youth,
Her thick, chestnut hair framing a doll-like face
Eyes closed, her brow furrows and she murmurs softly
Muttering nonsense words about frozen soup and hard bread
She is in some faraway place – perhaps the ghetto of her childhood
Where food was scarce and siblings died for lack of it
The irony is not lost on me that she has come full circle,
Though now the starvation that threatens her frail frame
Is imposed not by outward circumstances
But by her own weakened will to sustain a stubborn life force
It is a fragile bond that holds her now to her bitter present
And soon, I think, she will drift off to a place I cannot fathom.
For it has been a long and arduous journey
And she is weary of the struggle.
Jumbled and distractedly jarred,
I awoke beside myself like a wraith,
a spectator to my primal confusion,
hamstrung by the goddess Chaos,
psychotic and frightfully broken.
Drifting through scrambled shrapnel,
a witness to my scrappy scrabble salads
chasing my fleeting thoughts.
I was an ineffectual phantom weeping
wounded windswept in the rain,
a helpless hapless harlequin of shadows
in perpetual refrain.
Months passed while doctors pondered me,
I compressed moments into kaleidoscopic disarray.
My immediacy overruled past and future; and
all spacial orientation collapsed. I watched my
decline like a desperate specter, never seeing
how I could exit my vertigo maze.
But as abrupt as it began, it inexplicably stopped.
I was engulfed by luminous morning,
A bystander to my maelstrom no longer,
I arose astonished in tearful release
to a world of deeper textures
and fevered passions,
to this world where I am no longer
beside myself.
Suits in the living room.
Basket of fruit near the kitchen.
The car's idling on the drive
During last meeting's decision.
Cheap cologne from the vendor.
Entertainment-level winks.
Push through this extra noise
To strengthen the customer base.
(I hate you right now
And don't need to be
Around you anymore.
"So meet by Six again tonight?")
(I relax with this wine,
It should be a cognac.
The Billboard reminds me of you.
"Spend the night here again. . .")
My membership is Platinum
The people here are big!
I lost my train of thought
And derailed down to a Pit.
A Chauffeur driven car.
For me does this make sense?
I find I'm tracking dirt then
And carrying recent pretense.
I look back on it and know
About as much as then;
It's eggshells thrown distractedly
Into Morning's lonely consequence.
I’ve seen the minds of my generation bested by their handheld mobile devices,
texting for a dopamine rush, tuning out the reality around them.
I’ve watched them, withdrawn from present company, looking for bars of microwave coverage, friending strangers, downloading angry birds,
internet junkies, living in the ether, looking for that server connection to fame gauged by the number of hits they receive,
who sit in restaurants with downturned faces aglow, oblivious to their dinner companions, to check who has Twittered® them in the last few minutes,
who drive distractedly, causing fatalities in order to update their Twaddle® followers with TMI about their state of mind on the road,
who walk into traffic, updating their relationship status or performing Binglehoo® searches for celebrity gossip or obituaries,
who envision themselves as divas, broadcasting narcissistic images of every party or event they’ve attended in the camera phone eye, imagining others care,
who live without discretion in the digital age, unknowingly or uncaringly giving up control over their destinies to follow the latest manufactured meme,
who look with disdain on anyone behind the curve of the latest cell phone product designed to track them through time, space and potentially subversive ideas,
who are GPSed at all times allowing local merchants to alert them to sales or law enforcement to track their movements,
who are trained to demand ever higher speed connection because they’re afraid to be, “so seven seconds ago,”
who fire up the Wiki at both ends eliminating the need for scholarly research or retention of thought,
who self-publish their diaries and essays as open blogs pretending that makes them journalistic writers,
who trust all their personal information to cloud networks they don’t begin to understand,
the notorious hotel...
monument to the greed of men,
it is a breathing stone-hewn titan -
looming over her, threatening pomposity,
selfishness threaded with egyptian cotton,
the cold stares of people from the upper leagues of life...
yet the young street girl enters anyway, defiant,
stilted and out of place in her cheap summer dress -
the breath of success sucks her in,
money-scented sussurations kissing her plebian cheekbones...
taken by the hand she glides up velvet stairs,
half-drowning as she soars past fish tanks bubbling to the ceilings,
past effervescent marble arches...
the rich flit by her, swan-like, with noses tilted heaven-ward
emitting the subtle reek of idle hedonism...
breathless, restive, she perches in a gilt chair,
bitten fingernails tapping ivory tablecloth,
waiters descend like falcons swooping in for the kill -
'tea or coffee, madam, scones with devonshire cream madam,
your soul on a silver platter madam...'
who is this madam, she muses,
checking her reflection in the silver teapot,
who is this woman wearing my skin,
a pretender to the crown of the landed -
distracted, melancholy, she crumbles her fruit cake,
swallows the strawberry sorbet in icy gulps...
distractedly she notes the taste of gunmetal -
her cappuccino is sprinkled with gold dust...
caged in by gilded illusion her lungs labour,
claustrophobia gripes though the roofs soar up to touch God's soles...
she is not welcome here,
she feels doomed, somehow, unworthy -
a goldfish floundering with the sharks...
jumping to her feet she flees, kitten heels clattering on mosaic floors -
out the door, panting, flushed,
into air that smells of exhaust, of seaspray and sweat and natural things
relieved she slows, straightens her spine, sniffs the wind -
a smile flirts with her lips as she strolls away into the anonymous night,
the little lamb who escaped from the slaughterhouse
The wise man fixed me with a bright blue eye
And looked at me so deep within.
It was as bright as stars and blue as sky
And so my story shall begin…
When gazing so distractedly from through
The haze, I looked and I did see
The prophet standing there. Before I knew,
These words, so wise, he said to me:
"You live your life so deaf and blind;
It only brings you misery.
Listen to me and free your mind
And then your life shall, too, be free."
I was knocked down and struck upon the ground
But now is time to stand up fast.
I tell my saviour-god that I have found
An answer to my prayers at last.
A bird in a button-down shirt and a vest
joined me for coffee, and sadly confessed,
pecking distractedly at a cinnamon roll,
his manner affectingly droll.
What he said, as I sat on my park bench,
was (and I quote), "if you pardon my French",
(he then carefully searched for a term),
and said, "how I do despise worm."
When I'm preparing my garden
for the drama of planting
a multicultural communion
lovely above
and interdependently rooted below,
inside human voices
sound pre-occupied with unremediated mediocrity,
unreality,
what does not richly nurture
what cannot deeply re-nature.
Non-violent communication,
like poetry,
and planting,
is about HOW co-relational win/win messages
therapeutically happen,
metaphorically co-arise consciousness.
Compassionate communication theory,
and love experience,
are about WHY co-relational win/win messages
are healthy-wealth optimizing,
and happen, and do not happen,
enough in each win/lose suffering
competitive
egocentric day
on anthrocentric mis-cultured,
capital-infested,
distractedly inhumane
unreal Earth.
Whether our analysis is driven by compassionate communication
gesture,
behavioral structure,
bilaterally supportive mindfulness,
or win/win bicameral game theory
or healthy/pathological custodial systems
regenerative opportunity/degenerative risk-avoidance analysis,
or co-relational left/right
ego/eco-recentering intervention technologies,
We all,
from west to east,
from north to south,
from left to right,
from day to night,
from green to ultra-violet,
from explicate to implicate,
from flower to root,
want to improve political and personal nutritional relationships,
opportunities for growing win/win robust consensus
consciousness,
and minimize toxic and high-risk absence of co-relational
therapeutic
supportive intent.
We all want to grow mindfulness
of intra- and inter-personal healthy communication
pasts,
futures,
nondually present here with now.
Politically incorrect zero-sum competitive communication,
win/lose egocentric miscommunication,
and anthrocentric excommunication
cause global ill-being
Just as politically correct win/win EarthCentric communication
effects and affects
healthy well-being.
Whether in my real world garden
of cooperative intent,
or on my unreal gridiron
of competitive grand delusions.