Let go, let flow

Keep Dancing

lakisarah — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 12:59:00 GMT

And all I could do was dance.

Because you clearly weren't

trying to get to my heart through romance.

And that's just the pace

that we take between love and a race

to obtain the somewhere we thought we found

underground

the nowhere of it all that place

in meadows where we said we would meet.

I know I'll arrive and you'll be gone.

There won't be a song

you can sing that will make my heart rephrase the melody

that takes too long

no one needs to wait so long

to find out if nothing is real in the end.

Wait a little longer to be shown with my own

eyes and ears

that tears

only come when things are gone.

NY Mix Tape

lakisarah — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:40:00 GMT

How does the past re-make the present?

Big, solid, I-haven't-seen-you-for-three-years-but-I-still-care-about-you

hugs

Catch me in the sun

On a train waiting for you

Bobbing your head to Afro-Brazilian beats

Your body knows its home

Doesn't need your head

to tell it what to do

but you still talk

in circles to justify

your presence in

this city

and absence from

your country

And we meet on street corners

Past the latino man selling fruit

Lil Wayne blaring from stores

in the heart of the Bronx

Past snakes on the shoulders of men

and through the park.

You still wear funky hats

and drink tequila-lime-soda,

still aspire to write.

And me? I still can't stay more than a day.

What I wish Mama had told me

lakisarah — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 16:06:00 GMT

I wish she had told me

that I'd probably fall in love at the wrong time,

and in the wrong place.

I wish she would have told me that love is as love does

and it isn't as easy as it looks.

In Disney movies

the princess never gets her heart broken

She never has to ask the Beast, Aladdin or John Smith

Where he has been

and if he's been using a condom or not

and if he'll still be there

when she wakes up or if he'll be gone

before the sun peaks over the horizon

or before it sets into the ocean.

So I wish my mama had told me that it is possible,

if you are strong enough and

independent enough, if you are

confident enough and

brave enough

to end up alone

and on your own.

I wish she had told me

that you may be tempted to

turn the volume up on the music

or take another shot

or drive without a destination.

You might be tempted to slow the quickly

beating pace of your already fragile heart.

I wish mama had told me that there is a raging fire of truth

that echoes into your bones, a chill that

sneaks up your spine when

passion, inspiration and action blend together.

I wish she would have told me that

you learn from experience and, like you first learned to walk

it gets easier with time.

Instead she taught me everything by example.

To take my vitamins and drink water. To cry and speak my mind.

Without telling me a thing, she taught me how to watch the full moon

rise

into the night sky.

Gravity

lakisarah — Sat, 2 Jul 2011 16:05:00 GMT

I fear with nothing anchoring me

that i might float away.

I fear that gravity's pull on me

fails to keep me another day.

I fear the silence echoing in my head

that demands me not to stay.

Balloons and feathers flying in the wind
swept somewhere beyond the grass.

So tie me to a string, or around your wrist

to a place where if i float away, I know I will be missed.

lost or found

lakisarah — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:01:00 GMT

i lost the beginning

unless i left it in India, in a little notebook

with mountains

i thought it was the beginning

of something

but its lost

Naked

lakisarah — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:18:00 GMT

Isn't it great when your boobs float?

She sat next to me

our bodies

exposed

comfortably

our robes loosely worn

it didn't matter if they fell

bodies

young and old with visible

signs of age

one breast or two

some hair or more

thin and supple

we bathed and lounged

and were reminded that

bodies are what we are

born with

there is no cookie cutter that

could contain our goddess-like

hips

mama said we all have the same

things

we never closed doors

she sat next to me

how I came out of her

would always amaze me

only faded stretch-marks told me it was true

Korean Spa, Christmas Eve, 2010

Gone too long

lakisarah — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 01:23:00 GMT

I've ben gone too long.

Forgotten how to spend money

blindly

forgotten how long to put it in the oven

where we keep the lids

the best way to get there

how to drive without

fear

the pace of life here

I can't eat the portions

digest the food

I've forgotten the contents that go into small talk

and conversations devoid of meaning

I can't overlook the label of

where it was made or shipped from

I don't know how many layers

to wear in the cold and

the fake heat

makes my nose

unable to smell

the gingerbread.

Mango Tree

lakisarah — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 01:21:00 GMT

She said she felt complete

there

beneath

the mango tree

But I felt complete neither

here nor

there

neither with you or

without you

A Thanksgiving Thank You

lakisarah — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 22:23:00 GMT

Thank You For…

Asking me what I thought,

Inviting,

Waiting,

Listening,

Laughing,

Being vulnerable,

Allowing me to be vulnerable.

Picking me up, dropping me off and making sure I made it on-time.

The couch, the bed, the blanket and the drawer so I felt as if I had a home.

Holding my arm as we walked down the road, you might have thought I propped you up, but in fact the weight of your words held me up.

Writing me a postcard, even if you never sent it,

Writing me a letter, even if it arrived six months late.

The email,

The music, and the car ride,

The advice, even if I never took it,

Telling me the truth I needed to hear, even if you sugar-coated it a bit.

Challenging me to ask why,

Calling me a gem,

Telling me I had a good soul,

Calling me a grandma,

Explaining it to me,

Sending me your thesis,

Your rap,

Your essay.

Engaging with my imagination.

Connecting me to them.

Quoting me back to myself,

Inspiring me,

Confiding in me,

Dreaming with me.

Changing Clothes

lakisarah — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 17:02:00 GMT

I used to change clothes

in Heathrow airport.

I don't cry in airports, I wait until the movie begins.

Sterile white floors with no history of movement

scraped into their surfaces. I easily forget where I am

who I am when I look down.

The lights make me forget when the sun should arrive.

Coming and going and going and coming

They said, to not see the sun rise and set, to travel faster

than time is unnatural.

I hoped: no one ask me if I am going or coming

where I reside

where I live

where my home is

in borderlands, can I read you a poem

maybe if I hand you a business card with a poem on it

it will satisfy your desire to place me.

Place me next to your rich relatives or your cousin who also lives

outside.

I can tell you what I wear in each country.

I can tell you I have three bank accounts.

That I haven't lived in the same city for more than 9 months.

In the absence of claiming a place I use ignorance as my advantage.

All dressed up in the clothes washed by your wife.

She said: You'll be back, won't you?

I made no promises.

Leftover Weight

lakisarah — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 22:31:00 GMT

Do you feel lighter?

Heavy in a different sense.

Heavy because I have seen too much.

I’ve seen her pregnant on the roadside and not wanting to bear her own weight.

I didn’t guess, she told me.

And I’ve heard of how she had to wait until nightfall to relieve herself.

I’ve tasted the sweet made with love because I kept you company and eased the burden of loneliness just for a while.

I felt tears overflowing in my eyes when I left you, and I saw your concern for my health.

I saw her breaking rocks with a baby on her back.

Bent beneath the fodder I saw a face as the car drove past her.

And I recognized the paradox, like Paul Theroux said, that India’s poor were its wealth.

The world’s wealth rests on their backs.

Fairness is a word we use as kids and gradually as we get older we grab it by the neck and violently cut it from our vocabulary.

We’ve learned that nothing is fair and that there are no explanations, even when you most desire them.

But you look like you are from here, what about her?

She looks like she could be from any village here.

Translate Me

lakisarah — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:00:00 GMT

Translate me

and take me

into that other world of

your language and

cadence

the melody that

waits to create the pictures

of the impressions so gracefully

painted and captured by

blinks of memory

of roads obliterated

take me and let me wade my feet into

your stream

the water that empties into the

endlessness

Transcreate me

don’t just take me word for word

allow me to see the way

your heart unfolds

the taste of fruit in the midday heat

cutting rice by the roadside

the gentle whittling away

at the center of the matter

Transcend me

beyond

the dam

that has stopped the flow of water

and thoughts held stagnant for progress

too long

the rain that has caused landslides

of rock, water and emotion

flooded with what is lost and

can never be recovered.

Aloe Vera & Mint

lakisarah — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 22:28:00 GMT

My hands held the smell of mint

The aloe looked like the weeds around it were choking it

Some had half rotted, unseen by sunshine

Caught in the wet shade of protection taking over

I wanted to free them.

Aloe, I want to free you. I haven’t done enough

My hands have scratched at the dirt,

My fingernails have the satisfied feeling of fresh earth below them,

My legs forgotten by my brain, that only wanted to save the aloe

Harvesting mint is more pleasant, but doesn’t the aloe need me?

Ode to the sun

lakisarah — Thu, 7 Oct 2010 22:26:00 GMT

Ode to that vast ball of fire that continues to rise and set each day. Ode to its qualities to light and burn. To take and give. That power that is eternal. The candle that never goes out and the inexhaustible light bulb – someone tried to replicate you. Amidst clouds and winter they made you a copy of what you are and put you up in a museum. I went and saw you, but you weren’t the same stuck in one place. It was your movement – so smooth and dependable, that most moved me.

i am

lakisarah — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:39:00 GMT

A beautiful soul, I've been told.

A real gem.

More than you bargained for,

but not quite what you wanted. I am

searching for meaning amidst false promises and half-truths.

Where do you get your inspiration?

lakisarah — Thu, 2 Sep 2010 03:24:00 GMT

It is brought to me by a ten-year old girl in the village when she continues to bring me her English book and asks me to teach her. As her mother makes rotis she sits and reads by candle-light or fading lamp light with unwavering patience, commitment and persistence.

It comes through in the light in the 15-year old girl’s eyes as they beam with a confidence that exceeds anything I could possibly dream of in the way she speaks of freedom with strength in her voice, unafraid of being heard.

I find it in the seven-year-old feminist girl I met on the train. Though at first I thought her constant chatter was a symptom of insecurity, I soon realized she had so much bubbling within her, she couldn’t help but let it out.

If it is important to you, there is no choice but to persist.

The Slow Process of Return

lakisarah — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:22:00 GMT

To be here, again, in a place I belong and don’t belong. To see the thoughts come to fruition beyond the stages of inception. To be in a space of supposed love, but feel incomplete, and strange. Get out of the road. I’ve walked this road so many times, but each time I walk it, it takes a new form depending on the space inside my heart, or is it my head. I leap towards the thought of going, and leaving. The slow process of return. Beyond the glow I once had. If I had known then, what I know now, would I have left at all? Each time I return, I become stranger. Less able to exist between contrasts and borderlands, less able to be content within the boundaries of my skull. More easily, I begin to see all the contradictions within me. An awareness of it all spinning continuously. Now I want to go back. Back to become more detached. Back to see if anything has stood the test of time and water.

Chasing the Monsoon

lakisarah — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 03:27:00 GMT

I’m chasing the monsoon. I think it’s what I want, and I pursue it as if my life depended on it. I’m chasing some intangible thought that isn’t yet grab-able in my native tongue. I am chasing the monsoon, because the rains give way to a full moon. Where are you moon? I haven’t seen you for days. I’m tied to the tide. Moon, I miss your smile – I haven’t seen that in a good long while. Chasing the monsoon, my face is wet with tears and sweat and I doubt I’ll ever reach the moon.

And now the journey leaves me angry. It’s not a fierce anger, it’s not a violent anger, it’s a passive anger that seeps in through damp clothes that you are not sure if they are damp or just cold. To touch cold and to try on a wet t-shirt that would never dry.

It moves slowly at first as if you’ll run towards it. It moves slowly so you can catch up to it.

Caught like a lump in my throat or water brimming at the edge of my eyes.

The sky opens and the monsoon begins.

Interpreting Silence

lakisarah — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 02:35:00 GMT

I am translating your silence. Your absence of presence makes me doubt your intentions, the extra emotions that you forgot to mention. Waiting on me as I waited on you. I'm unable to interpret your silence, only mine.

My silence is a protection and armor from disappointment and a detachment from pleasure and pain. A Buddhist practice. My silence is holding back, it is fearful and thoughtful, yet expectant because it believes in positive interactions, yet my silence is laced with cynicism. It is witty and blunt and difficult to stomach, even if you know what to expect.

It doesn't taste right to me, it is truthful or is it truthful? It is realistic, but secretly hopeful.

My silence is not a symptom of lack of thought. It hasn't expressed the moments you've entered my dreams, it hasn't expressed the feelings beyond my guard let down. It hasn't told you that sitting at a four-sided table only occupied by three - you were the one I thought of. It hasn't told you what I want.

My silence is the tip of the smile, an iceberg below of thoughts and emotions, not yet expressed. My silence is waiting for your silence to break.

Love Wrap

lakisarah — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:20:00 GMT

Love wrapped me in its arms as soon as I stepped off the plane. Love cooked and love cleaned. Love asked for help and told me it was ok. Love supported and gave and listened. Love sent me to where I wanted to go. Love picked me up and slept in the same bed. Love pushed me and challenged me. Love told me what it expected. Love called and asked me what I thought. Love waited, love told me what to do. Love didn't judge me when I followed my heart. Love watched as I flew. Love gently placed a blanket on me. Love asked and I responded.