Believe: Noorulain, Tearz, Jennifer, Julie

Atonement

I carefully curved you in an arc,
your eyes and the wrinkle between them,
bathed you in India ink and rolled you thin,
sewed you into patterns, into poems.

Now, I dream of using the tip of my blunt needle
and my pinpricked thumb
to release you from this prison of my creation,
and let you diffuse away like jasmine scent

carried by our old city’s heavy-handed breezes.

Maybe I would find you then
on an indistinguishable road of this metropolis,
see you from afar and recognize
your eyes and the wrinkle between them,
the one I sewed and kissed and loved. But,
in the clamor of people and their voices,

will you hear me when I call your name?

I could just as easily lose you

in foreign faces on foreign shores,
if I unstitch each stitch
in rough canvases of old and new poems,
without form, without borders, without even origins.

I have nested too long in this land of polite distance
where I found you, at last.
I have forgotten
the city where mule carts roam the streets
and horse-drawn carriages swerve amidst cars,
the smells of recycled oil, street food,
the sight of naked children in monsoon rain,
old lessons and sweltering summers –
all lost in my penance of piecing you together
stitch by stitch.

Perhaps atonement lies in searching
for a way that takes me back
to the city in which we were born but not acquainted,
to pigeon cages and henna-covered virgin hands,
to you in your youth without the wrinkle
between your eyes,
to me in my youth without the grief
I have penned.

Now, I begin to unthread each word,
cut loose each suture,
so you can find your way home -
but remember
our childhoods we left behind
in the city of Ravi, of jasmines, of monsoons.

I will make my way back,
defenseless on air currents or in a stoic ocean liner,
traversing my fears over thousands of miles.
And then I will find you again
where I was meant to find you the first time – years ago –
amidst the pale pungency of smells and sights that we will relearn,
among native faces and rutted roads and littered rivers,
a chance meeting between two poets.

Milpitas, California

Noorulain Noor (photo provided)

* * *

Covenant

My thoughts collide, in the rec-yard of my mind’s prison

I really don’t speak at all, what you hear are the inmates screaming

These pages free-weights, forty-five plates

I’m really just exercising demons

And they think I changed my name to Tearz, because I cry across lines

Shit, I die across lines

My fonts change from cursive to gothic to wedding script then flat lined….

This wasn’t intended for entertainment

Personal scrolls and lost letters a most intimate recital

Passionate pages and piece ripped from my heart’s sacred Bible

My emotions have a way of taking control….

Because I played piano in the dark for months
just to hear my own notes echo off the walls of your soul

Your love was tone-deaf…no harmony, no melody

Your bass lines never changed….

My jazz music the soundtrack for relationships that started dysfunctional

And ended estranged

And all I ever had in this world was empty pages…

So I composed to the rain stopped,

Til’ all my pain stopped

Through the random beat of gun shots

I prayed this out on my knees every night before I went to sleep

That’s why I skipped church on Sunday’s

And testified in Coffee shops

These notebooks really hymnals full of songs for lonely lovers

Turn the lights out, watch these words take life

You’ll find my heart beats through the covers

And I lost faith back when life killed my dreams…..

Underneath these streetlights tears stream

Yet through it all, I still learned to write and dream….

Since way back when roses were read and violets were blue

Before my thoughts grew from seeds and mutated

And my poetry started to trouble you

I still bleed to give my emotions a voice and clear the smog from my skies powder blue

Until the clouds scream my name…

Until my girlfriend’s parents see that I’m more than just

“a phase she’s going through”

I learned to write and dream at the exact same time, transfer the images down my arm

This whole piece is the result of rapid hand movement

I learned to write with broken fingers, and to find comfort in the soulful lyrics

Of blues singers

My lifestyle is obsessive compulsive, lit candles with therapeutic rituals

My contents under pressure aerosol my thoughts

I only speak to exhale graffiti murals

For a world with no appreciation for art..

On the roof top drinking Easy Jesus, high as angels

We were, “down for whatever”

Until that shot gun ripped through his North Face coat

And all you saw was the blood and the feathers.

And it was I with the ripped shirt and the two pair of jeans

It was I who ain’t ate in three or four days

My hunger starved my nutritional dreams

And it was I with the sheets in the window

Frozen in alcoholic leans

So these pieces, my pages origami to form, waffle cones at night

Just to support my thirty-one “I” screams

And my lifestyle built to struggle and dream so my character streams

And…… my inner child?

My inner child was in the back of your class eating crayons

Just trying to add some color to his fantasies.

Rochester, New York

View "Covenant" as Spoken Word:

Rochester, New York

* * *

Motherchild

Today we bring you home from

hospitalhell bundled in blankets.

I turn off cartoons

put my toys away

make some dinner (just in case)

stand at the doorway, thin arms trembling

as you roll to your bedroom

in a medicated yellowwhite haze

and do not see my new salvation army shoes.

You call my name, so I help you in bed

brush the hair from your eyes

kiss your forehead.

I wonder who’s tucking my brother in tonight

who’s wiping his angry tears away

and you, sleeptites in your eyes,

don’t ask me where he is.

At four o’clock we change your diaper.

I empty the pee jug by your bed

and try not to splatter on my shoes.

I heat your food

feed it to you with a small spoon

wipe the dribble from your chin.

I heard a lullaby on the Saturday cartoons

so I sing it to you as you drift.

Do you hear me where you are?

Can you feel the warmth of my unformed breasts

as I tuck my body to your side,

holding my breath so it won’t wake you.

Do you sense my small hand on your stomach

pushing in

letting out

pushing in.

Tomorrow we will take you

back to the hospital

and when you can think no more,

they will ask for my consent

to end your pain,

and I may be haunted

by the flat tone_____________________________

Edina, Minnesota

Jennifer Wolfe (photo provided)

* * *

litany against the silence

– for Trayvon, Emmett, Tamir

I am barrel bound white silence stuffed in my mouth

(handkerchief of fear)

handkerchief of hesitation-what-if I

offend you what if I cause disruption clamor bilious

pain here I am

innocuous instead self-titled helpless — no

I’ll screech I’ll keen open my arms and leap too into

that ring of crash and furl with the little headlamp

of what I know each life is cloud-covered strange inopportune

and each breath of each is a revered gasp a glory half

formed from blood on the root and at the knees — wretched torn

away from touch to screen to scream to spectacle

under terraces of shun and shadow blinded by

sidestep misdirection frozen snow — melted only

by the underground smoldering coal of how we care

Lafayette, Colorado

Julie Ascarrunz (photo provided)

* * *

aaduna - a timeless exploration into words and images - is a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010. Visit us at www.aaduna.org where we put measurable actions to our words.

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Believe: Noorulain, Tearz, Jennifer, Julie - aaduna's NPM, Day 20

View "Covenant" as Spoken Word:

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