Tonight again, to that dead space
where all the world’s untold greatness lies
beyond the grasp of its men
A realm of, at once, every branch never taken
unbirthed arts, undared ventures, unspoken loves
All the fruits that withered here on earth 
grow heavy in that place, pregnant and fit to burst

That place
That perfect place of ideals and ideas and concepts
Perfect in its evermorphing formless forms
Configurations that contort within the ether
Free from human flaws, untainted by nature
Boundless potential, unactualisable
The collective un-concrete unconscious
that never-was and never-will

That dead space of dreams and aborted lives
Tonight again, to that space

Up near the bridge, we played by the waters
Barefoot and careless, your sons and your daughters
We laughed and we giggled at hard times to come
We washed in the river and shone in the sun

Tall tales of a witch, we heard by those waters
So we went to go see, us sons and us daughters
We hid and we peeked behind ridges of stone
And watched the old hag come out from her home

She hobbled and limped and knelt at the waters
And we held our breaths, your sons and your daughters
Hiding in long grass and covered in mud
As she washed in the river and dried in the sun

Tall tales of a witch that day by the waters
Nothing to see for us sons and us daughters
We booed and we jeered and we howled at the crone
As she hobbled in silence and limped back to her home

Up near the bridge, we played by the waters
Barefoot and careless, your sons and your daughters
We laughed and we giggled at hard times to come
We washed in the river and shone in the sun

Tall tales of a witch, we balked by the waters
Brave in our youth, us sons and us daughters
We gathered up rocks to throw at her home
She opened her door and some hit the crone

We ran from the bridge, away from the waters
Cowardly children, your sons and your daughters
She washed in the river the blood that had run
As we laughed and we giggled at what we had done

We woke the next day to play by the waters
Barefoot and careless, us sons and us daughters
We came by the bridge to the sounds of her laughter
Not all of us there, and not ever hereafter

We shrieked and we screamed, our legs wouldn’t run
The debt had come due for what we had done
Two more by their necks, one son and one daughter
The hag held our siblings down under the water

Their bodies bobbed up and then down in the water
As payment for sins washed away with their slaughter
She hobbled and limped away to her home
And left us to cry at the cost of our stones

Up near the bridge, we’d played by the waters
Barefoot and careless, your sons and your daughters
We’d laughed and we’d giggled at hard times to come
And washed in the river and shone in the sun

I’ve learned this much at least
That you spend the entirety of your life becoming, perhaps – if you’re lucky, that is
But even so, with this particular period, or that one, clearly demarcated from the others, some of the growth is simply more than the rest; stands apart

Those moments or days, weeks, years
when you’re the molten steel in the crucible
the angry hot, liquid empty rage
and at the same time, the refashioning hammer

It takes time and craft and mastery
Self-mastery:
failures and failings both
and those fears faced openly

Chasing it all just to see if any of the new pieces fit
and when some do, you begin to beat away at the clumpen thing again
Patiently, lovingly, with dogged determination

And a thing takes shape.
A re-purposed thing.

As you can track the winds in the flight of birds, so too do I trace the hand of god in your movements
A maddeningly pure grace, simple and honest – made all the more enchanting by your very ignorance of it
Your total commitment to the task at hand, the dedication
as you go about your daily works,
springs forth vitality in your wake
Life, even, as obvious as that which shoots up
from watered soil
Radiant. Glowing.

Perhaps more men have stirred to honest prayer
by the likes of your kind
than by priest or sermon or the knowledge of certain death
whose words are dimmed in your light

Honest prayer:
supplications, enduring affirmations of joy

I don’t know if dissociation is the right word
but in recent years I’ve found myself 
revisiting old memories
and seeing my younger self
not as myself, oddly,
but more often as a child stranger
or a younger sibling

Old wounds then unfold and tear again in surprising ways,
catch me unawares in the most unsuspecting moments
A line from some old film seen countless times before takes on new life and cuts me fresh,
leaves me struggling not to weep for little me
Some inoffensive tweet or rediscovered forgotten detail looses old thoughts

And then the big brother in me wants to ball up his fists
and fight something, someone
How could they do that to him? To that trusting child? To me
How could she say that to him?
How could he let that boy think that?

Arman once ran out with a cricket bat to fight a neighbour
who too loudly argued with our mum on the street
and I had to pull him away
even as I, myself the hypocrite, kept a keen ear through the crowding aunties

I on the other hand once mused that the deaths of my parents would be sore days I could easily move on from
– a hurtful truth to admit –
but I would certainly have to die before all my siblings
or God help the world that dared remain in their absence

And that same familial, brotherly instinct
kicks in
when I see small me
Us with our wholly shared genetics 
and him without a big brother to protect him

And if only I could punch a hole through time
just to whisper none of those things were his fault

the ghosts of my forebears hide in my bones,
make them dense, live on in them
they steel me with their collective will
inherited

a hundred stern faces
of strangers
cold women, hard men of small stature and sharp features
some dark, some milk. blue and green eyes amid them.
horse men, mountain men, ganges men.
conquerors, kings and princes. titled lords and judges.

esteemed people of character and repute

the hundred – no, thousand – faces flicker in disgust
as they mount with every passing generation
their cumulated weight ever increasing, as did their machinations
agendas criss-crossing, too many voices at once vying for attention
each straitjacketing another and grinding the whole almost to a halt
frenzied static: a net movement of zero

inert but for their shared disappointments in how things turned out