Realizations with Gabor, Rizwan, Tan, Pérez-Lozano: aaduna's NPM: Day 28

Love Poem No. 92:

Navigating Being

Am I

crazy for you or just

crazy,

writing these quixotic fantasies about a life together—

or is it just my life in general that I’ve finally grown

into the deep or out of it, sinking up or flying down,

do the semantics matter

when we’re just pieces of matter flying trillions of miles

through empty space grasping

breathing spinning

loving b

cause none of the rest of it matters

we’re so scared of powerful things: death, taxes,

mothers-in-law,

finding new space rings on Mars, Venus, where have you

really gone, what have you really done

with all this information

are we learning or just growing up?

growing out of your skin sinking into new

voids

Can there be a difference made in these lives,

the shivering wretch at the end of a graffitied subway tunnel,

the Middle Eastern man drumming his heart out, drumming to breathe,

drumming and praying and crying out for—

the hushed sound a mother makes to her baby boy

the whispers of sheets around closed lovers

and you hear it in the wind come autumn or the

ripening spring,

earth sighing

closing and opening, a delicate mimosa with one foul touch

moving back in on itself

Genova, GE, Italy

Diana Andreea Gabor (photo provided)

* * *

Father Tongue

My father in Karachi; his Urdu

expands like the widest sea;

Words roll from his tongue--- like chuna, like katha ---

words that we have not heard in years,

he stretches himself like the seagulls circling Hawk’s Bay,

he is constantly on the go: at Netty Jetty, Nursery or Nazimabad,

He polishes old jokes in Clifton, eats golgappay

outside Dayaram Jethmal College,

He sucks bits of ice at Agha Juice; cool slices of mango,

sooth his gums, his mouth moves differently in Karachi,

Urdu, chaste Urdu, his mother’s Urdu

rolls from his Punjabi tongue,

He smokes the city like a cigar,

with the verve of a man half his age,

my father in Karachi;

My father in Lahore sometimes takes refuge

in his starched white shirts and his Zeitgeist suits,

His mother’s Urdu does a quick somersault

in his mouth and crouches, instead he speaks,

textbook Urdu using out of turn

phrases and rare figures of speech,

he makes Punjabis feel really Punjabi and really coarse,

But when retired bureaucrats exchange jokes

in chuckling Punjabi at Gymkhana Club,

he often misses the punchline,

He is deep like the Ravi but lost in translation;

Something about the city, the smell of gasoline

mingled with the smell of sweet peas,

makes him speak his mother’s Urdu again,

the womanish lilt returns to his lips;

My father in Lahore sheds his Zeitgeist suits,

in the evening; He eats chikkar cholay and

tells us its keecher not chikkar,

My father in Lahore slices contaminants

of Punjabi from his children’s tongues;

My father in Kuala Lumpur speaks,

a variety of English which tries to become Urdu,

Urdu words dance on the tip of his tongue;

They grow from the arc of his jawbone,

from the space between his teeth;

He constantly gets lost in the city;

He finds Pakistani tea-shops where the tea

is never as warm, or as fragrant as in Lahore;

He counsels tea boys on life, on marriage;

He talks to strangers with a degree

of intimacy they find uncomfortable;

He befriends Malay men on the metro;

He converses with South Indian taxi drivers;

He spends more time with the Nepalese security guard

than with me, my mother complains;

So he draws himself within himself;

His mother’s Urdu dries on his tongue,

He watches snakes circling in the grass,

He watches cats climbing the hot walls at noon,

He sees men with sun-tanned, sea-exposed

skins, men with bleached hair;

Men who know the sharpness of the sea;

Another city murmurs beneath his skin, momentarily;

Another city grows from the smell of sea-salt;

An old taste moves on his tongue;

An exiled language tumbles into his mouth,

but he pushes it back,

back into the fluorescent sea, its melancholic black

waves, back into its jagged cliffs

and wide rocks.

Eindhoven, Netherlands

Rakhshan Rizwan (photo provided)

* * *

The Seeker

Am I the artist I so idealised

It seems I’m way too banal, gee, for that

Am I the pacifist I glorified

My mind’s as calm as ever-ready cats

I’m no reformer, just a patronage

Am I the lover sensationalised

No, not the lights that lead the centre stage

O, Know-it-all, O, who the hell am I

Am I the loyalist I so believed

Too free to settle, too old to be sad

Am I the entertainer well-received

I’m too reserved, way too withdrawn for that

I’m no reformer, just a patronage

Am I the lover sensationalised

No, not the lights that lead the centre stage…

O, Know-it-all, O, who the hell am I

I ain’t the bright old spark immortalised

Not cutthroat Kim, no competitive Jim

Am I the thinker I personified

I’m way too filled with feelings to the brim

Am I the lover sensationalised

O, Know-it-all, O, who the hell am I

Selangor, Malaysia

Sze-Leng Tan (photo provided)

* * *

Spanish Signals

Every time I hear someone speaking in Spanish,

my ears perk up

like a dog that hears a frequency

no one else can.

I’m drawn to their words,

my instincts homing in on what’s familiar.

If I can, I’ll make a trivial comment,

so they can see I’m here,

so they know, “Aquí estoy, amigos.

Soy como ustedes.”¹

I’ve gotten used to the reaction -

the sudden widening of eyes,

the hesitant, polite smile as they

try to figure me out:

Am I a fellow mexicana?

Or an americana who speaks

their native language

surprisingly well?

My fair skin and ambiguous features

don’t give them any clues

so I’m always left wondering

which label they’ve chosen for me

long after we’ve parted ways.

1. “Here I am, friends. I am like you.”

Houston, Texas

Eloísa Pérez-Lozano (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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Realizations with Gabor, Rizwan, Tan, Pérez-Lozano: aaduna's NPM: Day 28

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