Gahks' NaPo Poems

Okay, so here's where I'll be throwing in my contributions to the NaPo madness.

#1: On the First Month Anniversary of the Japan Earthquake, 2011

In the vacancy of buildings bulldozed
by water made black with intent,
the end-of-school anthem sounds:

a distant cry to lost children.

#2 early in the morning

emerging from drunk-miasma
I awake to find the city seesawing
beneath me - my arms flounder
in an ocean of crystal blue sky
drowning in a vertical sea of glass
answered by no one and no thing
but the crush and roar of dawn traffic
groaning into life.

(meant to send this yesterday )

#3: Design

My design for living: you and me building a home
for each other inside each other. We’d furnish the rooms with sofas
purpled in cosy dreams, lamps that would glow like the promise
we’d make together, our bed red with mischief and laughter.
My doors would open to you, and our two cottages would unite
into a single mansion: you would be its columns, tall and proud,
I its gardens, full of magic and elegantly formed.
We’d rule over the universe, share in its mysteries,
keep our designs secret to the world.

And yet still we rummage in the detritus of our disparate lives,
the baggage acquired through multiple drawings of rooms unfinished,
landscapes unsculpted. You were designed for another, it seems,
housing your desires in her arms and her mouth. My house
is rotting grey and empty. Rain bleeds onto the bed.
Please, knock on my door. Say hello. Design a life for me again.

#4: Dance

Should we be dancing like this to time’s metronome, our lives held in ballroom hold,
our feet shuffling on the floor as if tomorrow were some blurred-out poster
hanging half-heartedly on the other side of the room? Should our hands be clasped together
in this immutable upright pose, our bodies waltzing with indecision
through present fears and past misgivings?
Should I be staring at your ballerina face to within an inch of your breath,
rehearsing for a performance with as yet no fixed date
and no one in the audience to play to?

We made up the rules ourselves, and yet we didn’t -
between us we conformed to a tango of stichomythic exchanges,
of cups of coffee made and not made, of declarations declared
and yet not: arpeggios conducted in a scale of disharmony.
Our bodies riffed on the same old gestures and tired anticipations,
acting like rivals not lovers, shuffling from resolution.

#5: Light


You seem to take me for a trick of the light,
but I am here beside you, trailing a slow current of breath
skywards. Morning is creeping up behind us. Now
let in the light: watch it fall across the floorboards, its fluency
unmatched by any shadow. Let it pour like water
across the bed, a stream whose thirst longs to be sated,
throwing the pebbles of our arms closer together. Let it billow
like a draught that evaporates the intensity of summer
with ease, catching us in its delicate grip. This is no mirage:
the birds are calling us to the other country that lies
beyond no ocean, but within reach of fingers or lips.
My eyes fall on yours, and I rediscover your face,
its corona playing shadow-music on the walls,
my mind intoxicated with the magic of light.

#6: night in antarctica

surrounded by white
and the rest is silence

#7: je veux savoir

pourquoi tu m’abandonnes parmi les cris de la nuit
pourquoi tu sors si soudain, disant rien de ta disparition
pourquoi tu veux me voir mais tu ne veux pas me voir
pourquoi tu me poursuis comme un fou
pourquoi tu risques tout pour cet objet distant
pourquoi tu me casses
pourquoi tu me chasses dans ce labyrinthe
pourquot tu m’appelles “voix de mystère“
pourquoi tu es ici encore?