Poet and short story writer Shirani Rajapakse from Sri Lanka writes seven poems on karma, dhamma, and friendship among other subjects.
We turn around in circles
like wheels of a car or
the moving blades
of a fan as they spin
in the same place.
The car moves forwards
or backwards as the driver desires
on its turning wheels.
The speed controlled, the
journey mapped out.
Yet it is all the same. All turning, all
moving, all
going someplace; it’s
never ending.
We are the same.
We don’t care to question or
think about the reason why
we are here, lest it
make us wonder why we
do things the way
we do, as it would lead
to destruction
as surely as night turns to
day and day to night.
We prefer
to wait, loitering on the fringes
of ignorance.
Awareness and knowledge
makes us understand blind faiths
that go wrong.
All those paths winding in knots,
shrouded in words
invented to conform,
rather than in a straight line for
all to see.
This would not do as it makes us
think of our stupidity and
thinking is a madness
we cannot endure.
We turn our heads away
enjoying the fruits of existence
forcing forgetfulness upon ourselves,
turning into
puppets of Prophets.
And to think we
were born with a brain
and the powers to reason.
Sometimes what you leave out
is what makes the pulao taste
better, but I’m not telling you
what it is. That’s
my secret.
You don’t let me in
on moments in your life when
I think I need to be there.
You’ve forgotten I exist like
the kettle I once left on the fire.
It sang away the water
then cried out for the heat
coursing through and
would have been toast, except
the gas ran out faster.
The kettle lived to see
another day.
Sometimes you
wander through rooms like
a ghost seeking answers left
in spaces in a previous life.
It’s those missing pieces
that are so hauntingly
beautiful, you once said.
It gives you reason
to wonder and imagine the
thousand and one possibilities of
what it must have been. Like my
pulao you love
so much, but I will not reveal
and you are too proud to probe.
You smile and return to that
other place I’ve still
not found the road to enter
the pathway blocked by
unseen fences pushing me back
shutting me out.
Don’t fail me now
when I’m in need of company
in this solitary state
bound by invisible chains
I can’t untangle. Unable to move
out of this place that’s home, office,
sanctuary, prison
depending on how you see it.
Don’t leave a note on the door
hastily scribbled on torn note
paper, or stuffed into
the letterbox
hoping I’d check. Words that feel
as cold as the touch of a ghost creeping
under the door even on a sunny day.
A hasty SMS sent out when you
feel like it, “hw r u 2de?”
not expecting
an answer, just a
question in politeness,
and you’re away.
“b c, b c, b c”
is all I get when I (thank you
for reaching out and)
ask how you’ve
been. Then silence.
I pace the corridor in
the night, there’s
solace in the quiet
dark. None to question
no need for answers that
don’t make
sense, the endless
chatter of teeth banging
against each other like
windows you forgot
to shut they
cried themselves
almost to death as the
wild winds guffawed
thrashing them this way
and that for hours.
Who answers to the gloom?
Is there anyone out
there?
If we write our stories and hide
them in
little bundles of paper
will you find them
someday?
Or will you throw them
away? Will I be just another
forgotten face
a word hastily erased from a piece
of old notepaper?
The night brings no answers
merely questions, more questions
and feet weary of going up
and down, up
and down along the
corridor wearing out
the soles of slippers.
There is nothing
to gain. Nothing. Only loss
encompasses all.
Our lives are filled
with memories
of yesterdays.
Of old things
and past dreams
that weigh us to the earth.
We stumble along like everyone else
our feet advancing ahead, forever
moving forward.
Yet our minds
are held back by the chains
of time we forgot to tear asunder.
We do not know the way
to break free and won’t let ourselves
be guided. We drift along
like little drops of water
that travel in one direction.
All together.
Never alone.
We live like that.
Yet once in a while we meet
those that choose to forge ahead.
Alone.
Happy.
Content.
Like the little raindrop that chose
to sit on the branch and survey
the world around.
How perfectly delightful to watch
the world go by and
remain unaffected.
There’s a picture in my mind
of white lotus blooming in a lake
turning its face to the orange sun
sending fingers to caress.
But I can’t give it to you.
Photographs in my mind,
crystal clear, clicked one
after the other capture
lotus as they are, bending
with the breeze dashing through
leaves sending
shivers on the water.
They cannot be shared
on Instagram or any social network.
The power to transfer or print
photographs of the mind
yet to be invented.
The lotus rises out of the mud
pristine, like thoughts I
sometimes have yet
find hard to hold onto.
My mind’s in too much of a hurry
these days, photographing
the world around, saving images
for a future that’s already come
and gone. My mind moves places
like a hummingbird fluttering
this way and that in a garden
full of blooms, unable to gain
satisfaction amidst
such abundance.
Gleaming white chaitya in
the distance beckons
through branches of a tree
as ancient as the land,
and further away
storks take flight in formations
copied jealously by pilots
gliding below powder puff clouds
meandering in a bright blue sky.?
White all around; people
walking to temple dressed in
shades of white.?
My mind hovers
high above trees, soaring with birds,
clicking it all.
There’s a library of photographs,
but no one can see. ? ?
No one
can destroy something beautiful or
pure, like music and
truth.
It can be lost and wait
hidden inside old trunks in storehouses,
covered under the sands of time,
or buried deep within?
the folds of memory.?
But nothing can make it disappear.
Men may go to war?
to destroy that which is beautiful,?
or kill to prevent the truth from?
shining through.
Yet none can deny it forever.
Not even the Gods?
or their appointed handymen crying out?
their wares, or their self-appointed
Prophets with the urge to control
at whatever cost, proclaiming
decrees on all.
Truth emerges when?
people who seek it clear the way.
Their collective yearnings
bring out that which cannot?
be destroyed.
And truth triumphs once again.
(Shirani Rajapakse is a Sri Lankan poet and short story writer. Her publications include the award-winning Chant of a Million Women?and I Exist. Therefore I Am. Rajapakse’s work also appears in Dove Tales, Buddhist Poetry, Litro, Silver Birch, The Write-In, Linnet’s Wings, Deep Water, Mascara, Moving Worlds, Berfrois, Counterpunch, About Place, Cyclamens & Swords, Asian Signature, Earthen Lamp, New Verse News, Voices Israel, Flash Fiction International and more.)