Back from Home

The air and the cold is unfamiliar

upon my return.

The sameness of the houses

and the dull colours

remind me of my first trip to England.

The bike takes turns slowly and awkwardly

in my hands.

For a brief moment I wonder what side
I should ride on.

My face hurts with the cold,

All is dark and sharp and angular.

There has been no gradual fade from warm to cold,

from soft, muggy air to harsh and clear.

Only a jarring change.

(I prefer in-betweens, and slow fades

like how Christian Spain fades into

what used to be Muslim Spain and then to

Morocco, across the sea)

I try to remember Colombo,

the stickiness of sweat

 - between my fingers - in
a film across my face. Rain -
thunderous,
soporific thrum,
rustling impacts on wet,
glistening leaves,
saturated earth...
The trip home (home?) 

feels like a blur of memories

even when I was there I

had trouble grasping onto things

events happening so fast, so chaotic, so

without control

that I couldn't get a grip,

couldn't take a photograph
in my mind, put
things into any logical order or

into neat boxes
of wrong and right.
Ammi and Appa  are to the right of me, to

the left of me, below me and above
me, I try now to remember
moments of communication, 
common ground.

The conversations we had, the three of us
sitting in a solemn circle on the balcony,
(Appa tells me to be careful when I enter
because the parrots are feeding)
in the growing dark,
me slapping away mosquitoes, real and
imagined with one of appa's handkerchiefs
that I took off a rack

Appa tells me

how he had been brought down to Ragama

as a child

How his family came from Malaysia

the travels of his grand uncle

[censored]

ammi talks of how she and appa met, how her parents reacted, at first,
how they ended up in the same office,
just out of law college,

[censored]

Ammi is so apprehensive

about my impending

departure

About me being a ghost

That there is almost nothing that I can say

to help

Only inanities

Often I feel as if I have nothing to share
or maybe no time to share

no space for it in my head or theirs

The Colombo  lifestyle beckons seductively,

colours to see,

smells

to smell, not like 

this icy

city

(although, this early winter morning

in the Hague as I head to work, steam 

or smoke

rises slowly

from a building,

and the light is soft  

there is a spare, gentle beauty 

in the skeletons of trees

and the delicate sun.

Smell of manure slowly makes its way

through the cold, still air)

Insidious?

so many people, so poor, so
at beck and call, doormen who open doors,  people to

pack one's grocery bags, push one's elevator buttons  

drivers to drive....

(I remember looking at the way I was dressed, and looking at the way A was dressed,
how new my clothes were, how tattered his clothes were)

....cooks to cook.

The nostaligia and

displacement

(or at least the burning

edge of it)

will last only a few days

After which I will

re-submerge

into routine

back to the quotidian

out of the flow

of the jar and judder and sideways leap of

creative life

No warp no woof no deviation 

No colour no spark that does not fade

over the day

the teeth in the wind will drive away
all memory

of heat and dust
and moisture

(I

know

that some of this is man-

-made handmade by me the hand

maid of my own

dark mate) 
Its funny how I am two different men

in Colombo and The Hague

Back home my brain

is a storm

of multi-coloured sand

in my mouth and in the trees

the road and

in the sound of bees

here it is  

is a merry-go-round

faded grey

Is neither me?

Perhaps one place

throws into sharp relief the other.

Makes the cold keener on this side, thickens
the smoke and dust

on the other.

Trundling routine  vs chaos. Deafening silence vs cacophony.
Middle-class

mundane-
ity vs grotesque
disparity...

Perhaps
I’m just painting

two straw men

Perhaps being a stranger

in both places make me blind

to the gentle, pleasing

in-betweens 

(and oh the sky is beautiful

It reminds of those fleeting

moments at the edge of consciousness

drunk with music, alcohol, or emotion)

Perhaps instead of a dirge I need a love song

(I started reading Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return

to the Native Land and

was taken aback by his bitterness

did not feel like reading on)

Maybe be
like Frank McCourt who

could laugh

about his Limerick childhood

where his baby brother had to drink, instead of milk,

for lack of money, sugar water

given by a friendly barman.

Dip beneath the veil, feel

the face of everyday 

Enough Gemini.

Time to return,

Sagittarius.

Time to feel

the roundness of cobblestones. 
(A man in front whistles while

dragging a bag through sleet)

Through the hoof

on every cleat.

Road

An old woman

with unruly graying hair cradles

a bundle of wood,
long and twisted.

Telephone poles lie abandoned,
covered in weeds.

Boy swinginging a stick, a

worn towel wrapped
around his thin shoulders

like a shawl. A

little girl with a flowered skirt

pauses as she heads into a temple,

gazes at our bus.

Roof-tiles
in the old-fashioned

arched style,
troughs and peaks of

asymmetrical
aging curves.

The roads begin to wind
as we climb. Steep
side lanes
cut into the hillside and
disappear
into the trees.

Old man in white,
jowls bunched under moustache.

Half-made earthen steps
weave along the road

stony, wild.

Two dogs wrestle in the grass.

Roadside stalls
on the kadugannawa climb
have dangling
harsh bright
florescent lights.

The hillside falls away
below
The bus ahead is crowded, 
passengers struggling for
space and grip, I
feel uncomfortable, watching them
from our comfy seats.

Curtains are neatly tied
in the window
of a wooden shack.

Old poster fading on a tree trunk,

bright signs

stuck in paddy fields.

A tree like a crouching witch

with branches
like gnarled hands.

Bundles of rope
trussed neatly
in a row in a shop verandah.

Squad of orderly milk cans 

in the back of a truck.
Black dog 

resting his snout on cement floor.

In the back of a lorry, a 

boy sits
on crates of empties,

hands clasping the necks

of two bottles

Unhusked corn in piles.

A Jackfruit tree emerges

from the thatched roof

of a small hut

(glimpse of trunk
within).

Someone has used sticks and branches

to weigh down the tagaram roof

of a stall.

Jackfruit split

with ripeness, or a heavy fall,

innards barely visible.

Old fertilizer bags lie abandoned.

Men sitting on tree trunks
on the back of a
truck, one young

and talkative, another

old with white hair.

A child peeks

over the seat of a motorbike.

Vehicle graveyard,
out front a trailer lies tractor-
less, filled
with rusted junk.

Round scar
of a fallen limb on the bole of a tree

We eat at a place called Saruketha (fertile
paddy field)

I like the name,
although the devilled
cuttlefish is bland,

“mee kiri kamu!” (lets eat
buffalo curd!) on a sign

“Bulath vitak!” (betel leaf
bunches!)
on another.

Schoolgirls in pigtails.
Graying hair of a
man on a bicycle.   

A bed on the verandah of a

wattle and daub house

has a red sheet.

Fragments of a poster on a tree.

A tuk tuk driver leans back, foot near handle,

texting on his mobile.

White chest hair on a middle aged man,
his sarong tied high
on his belly.

Breadfruit leaves
turn yellow
on the ground.

House near the rail-tracks, walls
discolored
by time and dirt.

A bamboo grove,
young leaves spiky
and wild.

Old leaves
gather in clumps
on corrugated roofs.

Fuselage of an old van

near a garage. An

old woman

re-ties her waist-cloth.

watching the road.

Idle whip of a cow’s tail.
A thatched roof on stilts protects
an orderly pile of bricks,
there must be a kiln nearby. A
stray dog watches
the buses go by,
Drying clothes weigh a line into an awkward curve
Houses painted a fading lime green
and dusty pink.

A man sits by a pile of unhusked corn, his

blackened pot
ready for customers.

Another pot,
covered.

smoke rising.