Long Ground floor Poems
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There seems to be silence within the serene night,
yet those indoors have eternal cries of unspoken fright.
One man drowns in chocolate, shamefully eying his hips,
as the woman next door kisses the hundredth man’s lips.
Two floors below, one screams out in pain,
as fatal anger has won the game.
The killer, shadowed, makes no remark,
but watches the blood flow, immersed in his soul of eternal dark.
Three doors across, an elderly man sits, rejected and broke,
hiding his face with tendrils of smoke.
His trusty cigarettes always at the ready,
when his finances where never steady.
Another flight down, a woman drowns in her agony sip by sip,
her life seems to slip by like a commercial blip.
Yet all she can think
is that her marriage is on the brink.
Before she fades into the night of another day,
all she remembers is throwing her wedding ring away.
Traveling down to the ground floor,
the troubles seem to equal more.
A woman tosses about in her anxious bed,
while her worries do pirouettes in her head.
Try to let the past and present go,
but the future looms like a horror show.
Outside, in the darkness, a piercing light shines
as a moth flutters by, on the still air it climbs.
It seems this beacon, as bright as the sun,
new hope has just begun.
The moth bangs itself against the glass,
trying to reach glory at last.
Yet no matter how much its antennae bend,
or wings grow fragile and not able to mend,
it seems like the only thing to do
to deal with its feelings, old and new.
Until it steps back and looks at the light
realizing that harming itself won’t set anything right.
With the last of its strength, ending its plight,
the moth flies off into the night.
At this moment, the man decides to rid his house of fat-packed glory,
as the woman on the ground floor takes a deep breath, changing her story.
The killer at large turns himself in,
the end to his years of sin.
The woman pours the bottles of wine down the drain,
finally she can remember her name.
The elderly man exhales his last puff of smoke,
the grueling memories no longer prod and poke.
And the woman kissing her hundredth man
lets him go, heart no longer sinking in deadly quicksand.
The light of dawn finally breaks,
and the darkness of the mind no longer takes
away from the people’s lives
as the light of hope is now by their sides.
My first poetry reading on April 15, 2011 at Café Jolesch in Zittau
This evening I read the first five of my poems before an audience in the beautiful Art
Nouveau atmosphere of Café Jolesch under the direction of Karin Kayser and Rolf Monitor in
the context of the "Open Stage" for the 3rd Lusatian Culture Night. I waited for my first
appearance with a good Czech Svijani fresh draft beer. On the small stage were already
loudspeakers, microphones and musical instruments installed. From 8 pm on the room filled
with visitors. A live band playing rock music and blues and a young woman performed a
belly dance. All the tables were now occupied, and I cleared my place for some students,
listening to the sounds from the bar and watched the dance. There was much applause and
some young people shot photos with their cell phones. Then I was announced by Rolf
Monitor, stepped to the stage and read my five poems for the first time in public. It was
quiet in the room and all listened to me and when I had finished, came rapturous applause.
Rolf Monitor asked me if I could not read more of my poems, but I was only prepared to
read five. I promised to repeat my reading with more poems next time.
Note: The Lusatian Culture Night is a yearly event in April from 7 pm till midnight with
different performances, exhibits and other events. Café Jolesch is a pub in the so called
Hiller Villa.
The villa was built at end of the 19th Century. It was for decades the home of the Jewish
Hiller family. Gustav Hiller, an inventor from Großschönau, using the proceeds from his
first patent, a machine for manufacturing curtain strings, founded Zittau's Phänomenwerke.
They were known in GDR times as VEB Robur Works Zittau, in which bicycles of the brand
Phänomen, the Phänomobile and later the Robur truck were produced. During the Nazi rule,
Mrs. Hiller, could be bought off for an annual payment of 300,000 Reichsmark from
deportation. After the war the family moved into the West Zone. Today the Villa Hiller is
home for the Multicultural Center (MUK), a nonprofit organization. In 1993, the
granddaughters of Gustav Hiller, Mrs Anne Frommann and Mrs Claudia Siede-Hiller, now
living in Israel, donated the villa to the MUK. The ground floor houses the Café Jolesch.
John
Is 65 and a tall man
Dressed in a white suit and tie
With nice tennis shoes fuzzy socks
And some hair plopped on top.
Mary is 24 with blond hair and a smile so fun
Her sweetness tosses like sugar
Across the party of every room
She enters.
Her contagious smile has been erased
Behind her virus mask
Yet still gloriously escapes
Through her crinkled blue eyes
Her heaving cheek bones and that guttural ha! laugh.
Down the aisle they walk together
Between all the seated people
Mary steadying John by the arm
Whispering to his agitated face
With the palm of her hand and several Kleenexes
His heavy weight leaning
Into her strength and beauty.
John
Lives comfortably in a nice house
Enjoys retiree health care and a full pension
For his immediate family
Until he dies.
Mary
Has no health care
No 401(k) vacation or sick time
Makes $12.50/hour
And lives in a little ground floor apartment
In the middle of the city with a cat.
She can’t help herself
Happy anyway.
He staggers
She swaggers.
The two reach John’s mother
Up front
Cloaked in a beautiful blue dress
Surrounded by candles and photographs
Her hands clenched around a bouquet of flowers
A half smile
No longer blocked by a mask
As she lies asleep in her coffin.
Mary holds John up by the waist
His mask hinged to his jaw and ears
While he makes muffled squeals
And pokes his mother’s body.
Mary turns him around
Draws him back to his pew
Everyone sitting six feet apart
Crying
More for John than his mother.
Mary takes it in stride
For she cleans his behind after accidents
Lifts him up from sidewalks after he’s fallen
Feeds him food from a spoon
Wipes his chin
And when he screams at the top of his lungs
She tries to remind him
The old comfort of his forgotten name
John John
But that never works
Yet when she says it’s Mary Mary
He sometimes recognizes something
Far away
And can quiet for her
There is no Medicare reimbursement for this
She
Alone as an angel
Drives home for the night
In a beat up car
Her magic performed
Poorer
But richer
Than what any CEO could ever imagine in space.
Part 2 - The Great Fire of London, 1666
Just think of a town, put up with no plan,
where people build houses wherever they can.
The streets twist and dip, hugging ditches and streams,
and safety's a thing of which nobody dreams.
There aren't any rules, or best practices, codes,
regulations, fire stations, no hydrants or nodes.
The street where you live has no concrete, just clay,
and it's narrow, foul-smelling, and no light of day
can squeeze in. Your ground floor is brick-built and stout,
but your upstairs is flimsy and jetties right out,
almost touching your neighbour's. You thus form a tunnel
through which rats, cats and faeces can constantly funnel.
Well, come with me now to meet Thomas and Jane,
who live, work and worry in just such a lane:
it's always called "Pudding", which gives us a clue -
for baking is what all the people here do.
September the second, the year sixty-six,
and Old Mother Nature's been up to her tricks:
we haven't seen rain since the start of the war,
and timbers are shrinking, and drier than straw.
Tom's oven malfunctions. The house catches fire.
Our instinct, in peril? To try to get higher.
Tom, Jane, the children, and Sukie, the maid
(Sukie is thirteen, and very afraid)
climb out on the roof. Oh, the smoke and the heat!
The roof tiles are baking, and hurting our feet!
We've all got to jump to the roof to our left:
but don't glance below as you're leaping the cleft!
But Sukie can't do it. It's asking too much.
She'll be the first to be killed by the Dutch.
The signals aren't vaulting across her synapses.
She's lost from our sight when the storey collapses.
Four days blazed this greatest of all conflagrations,
engulfing some thousands of poor habitations
and scores of old churches, whether timber or stone.
The tally of people will never be known.
A square mile of ruin. A city destroyed.
A blackened and acrid and comfortless void.
Saint Paul's is a shell, its rubble still smoking.
But who is that gentleman, measuring, poking?
IF ever I had a country : LVIII - LIX
LVIII
IF ever I had a fantasy country
And if ever I were left to choose a country existing in reality
I'd certainly opt for a country not run by one who studied philosophy
For the simple reason you can blame any other kind of dope for sheer hypocrisy
For not having studied philosophy and pretending to be very democracy savvy
Especially when the victims* of the country's secret services can hit back at the ruling party
That is, if ever I were left to choose a non-hypocritical country existing in reality
And even if I never ever had no country (not) up to my fancy
Note : * It's a published fact that a French writer and literary anchor on French TV (whom I once met, in 1974, selling his self-published book in the streets of the Latin Quarter) never slept in the same bed for fourteen months for the late President François Mitterrand had ordered the secret services to snuff this son of an Admiral out. His " crime d'Etat " happened to be a manuscript he authored on the President's daughter whose mother was his mistress while in office. The " crime " however was expunged when the author in the presence of TV cameras burnt the manuscript at the portals of the Elysée Presidential Palace.
LIX
IF ever I had a phantasmagorical country
And if ever I were left to choose a country existing in reality
I'd certainly not opt for a country where the S.S. and the Police drug gang-rape and press-gang the mother of your infant son with impugnity
Nor opt for a so-called champion human rights country which hinders your every step and plunges you into solipsistic ignominy
Keeps you embroiled in litigation instituted managed and obstructed by near-sighted authority
While it siphons and floods your tiny ground-floor apartment with the precious toilet refuse of fourteen storeys of family
That is, if ever I were left to choose a country existing in reality
And even if I never ever had no country to fancy
© T. Wignesan - Paris, August 17, 2018
I am stumbling along the beaten down path and struggling to get out of the dark, there are some boulders in the way and I have to work up extra energy to roll them away. The earth wakes up from its midnight slumber grumbling about an extramarital affair while the sun, moon and the stars watches closely from over there; two newlyweds carrying a bundle on their head, moving from city to town without decent place to lay their head, and the music bellowing in the heavens kept their spirit alive. Daylight breaks with an explosion in the skies sending people running all over the street, and thick smoke bleeds from the clouds spreading a stagnant fume around the town while the universe stands on top of the Hill breathing fresh air, and I struggle to find my way around, but my instinct forces me to lay flat on the ground, and I saw the vision of how the avenue disappeared. There is an avenue beneath the ground floor where they smuggle merchandise into the town. They were naturally formed from an ancient avenue that once exist before an earthquake sinks it three hundred years ago. Everything is in tack and they have lights below the tracks they have place where you can sleep when you are traveling in the deep. The layers are so deep, you have to follow the water pipes and it will lead you straight into the open street. There are no caretakers down there just one long tunnel that leads you out of hell, you must pay a fee at the entrance, leave it in the box and ask no question, they are monitoring you from a screen that is embedded in my dreams. I have embarked on this trip of a lifetime to complete something’s on my bucket list, so give me the space so that I can accomplish it before it's too late; the merchants have gathered in the town to begin the negotiation, and there is a long line of them stuck below the ground so open the door across the street so that they can come out of the ground. Come let me show you the mystery of the avenue that was swallowed beneath the ground.
I.
they say
there exist languages without words
without syllables yet pronounced,
like the sharp clatter of fork and spoon and knife against each other
at dinners in our family.
a vase shattered to the floor last night
at an hour way past our bedtime.
sister and i know that only one room in the house is embellished with a vase
on the first floor with a vase
of red roses—
ravishing over the edge;
laden with sinister thorns under—
but we’re vigilant not to cast a glance at mom or dad.
just stare down at your food
and gulp down the curry of guilt and fright.
a vase shattered but we choose not to clean the floor.
the broken fragments of glass aren’t ours to sort.
instead, we slice the whetted tension with the clatter
of fork and spoon and knife.
II.
there exist languages without words
without alphabets yet comprehensible,
like the silence we were doused in
at dinner two weeks after granny vacated the premises
of the little room on the ground floor with baby pink walls and a turmeric aroma.
no clatter this time.
from my peripheral vision, i espy a tear trickle down mom’s cheek.
we sham it’s a raindrop lingering on her visage from the doleful stroll she took an hour back.
sister and i look at each other every time the spoon visits our mouths.
with furrowed eyebrows,
we gulp down the curry of remorse and despair.
dad’s eyes glare into zilch lifelessly
like granny’s face lying on the soft pillow in her turmeric room
before i had to ring up mom and break the news in words
after which words evaporated;
gulped down, refrained, pushed away.
bite in your tears because unlike the sky,
we were taught to sway our storms.
III.
in our household
there are no syllables, no alphabets, no words.
they say there exist languages without words
and ours is silence.
we could scream or lament or weep.
but instead, we gulp it down
in silence.
Title: My growing up (episode one)
I was born to a native parents
I guess my mum was a woman of substance
Papa is so good
I can't write too much about myself at the ages before I turned ten
I can still remember my great-grand-mother playing a double role
She was my mama and also my papa
We lived in two stairs board house in a small village
The ground floor have one room,a kitchen, two verandas.
I can't still remember the store(stair case) at the right side of the ground floor
I used to hang over the store window to look at what was happening to my neighbors
The top floor have one big space we used to call 'PALA'
There were about twelve twisted and damaged steps from the ground floor to the top floor
I enjoyed running up and down the stairs as a little stubborn boy
Uncle Muctarru was gallant and will beat any man that crossed his path
He was fun of dogs
He used to keep dogs as pet
We had over ten dogs, making us the family with the highest number of dogs in the village
I can still remember when uncle used to order his dogs to do things like humans
Young Michael was stubborn
He will keep granny shouting his name all day long
I grew up with the mentality of girls being the one to stay home while boys go out to play
My sister was always at home doing all the odds while I spend half of my days in friends verandas playing 'Stopper' or spend my time in the beach or bush setting traps for birds
Granny latie will shout my name all day long
Due to me being premature while in the village, let me take you through half way of my school days
The name of my school is:
Rural Educational Community School
I started my primary education there till class five
I wasn't too bright in class but will always make it to the next level
I can still remember when I was asked to repeat a class due to my bad hand writing.............
Friday Night Check-ins
The days have been calm and collected.
The guests have been happy, content.
The weekday staff scurry out from the hotel
To avoid the upcoming event.
Weekend receptionists tremble
As the Friday night check-ins approach,
Fearing the tsunami of wrinklies
On their three-day excursions-by-coach.
The first vehicle’s brakes squeal their warning
As its door opens up with a sigh.
The girl at the desk and her male teammate
Watch the porchway with dread in their eyes.
The first wrinkly disembarks backwards,
Reaching up to be handed her Zimmer.
The scowl on her face giving more than a hint
Of the litany of protests within her.
Slowly the vehicle disgorges
Its fifty malcontent arrivals.
The front desk staff offer a brief heartfelt prayer
For their sanity, composure, survival.
Like an unerring wave of displeasure
The wrinklies shuffle in through the door,
Shoving aside anyone heading out –
They’ve made this manoeuvre before.
The party’s predominantly female,
Determined and far from benign.
Apart from one chap, in windcheater and cap
Looking hen-pecked and toeing the line.
They descend on reception like locusts,
Complaining, demanding and cackling.
The staff at the desk have nowhere to hide
From the surge of objections they’re tackling.
Ground floor room! No steps! Wheelchair access!
Why no lift? Single occupant! Porter!
The tottery old girl with the big Zimmer frame
Demands a young man to escort her.
The onslaught is tough and relentless
As the wrinklies press home their attack.
Then, deftly dealt-with, the tidal wave thins
As they head to their rooms to unpack.
Pleased with the way things were handled,
The reception-staff think they’ve survived.
But outside the lobby, brakes hissing with glee,
Another full coach has arrived…
If I am not sick with pareidolia,
I couldn’t notice‘The Scream’ by
Edvard Munch on my neighbour’s door,
created by the light coming from
the ground floor.
Not even the pit on the footpath,
where a stone was placed on a split-leaf
from one side the man’s face was screaming,
and from the other, the woman’s body
wanted to be touched.
Sometimes,
I go to apophenia with a wavy motion.
So I don’t see the difference
between the megalodon and
an ordinary shark.
Sometimes,
I look at a sheet of paper, a canvas, a wall,
a sidewalk, a tree…
I sing, draw, read, write
to myself…
And I feel anamorphosis coming
into me,
without any drink or smoke,
my brain is mixed with action, music,
the movie,feelings….
I’m anole, I’m alone, I’m alone,
Psychosis.
When with the people there is warmth or nothing at all,
I want to see either everyone or no one,
Either do something,or do nothing,
sometimes I talk to shadows, sometimes-
I lose them.
Sometimes I catch thoughts
as if I am acone-shaped snail
or busy ant,
if I can’t get one on his feet,
I can be useful for them in any other way…
or to be violet or chamomile,
that knows it will be withered or
faded,
but it will fill the eyes and the heart
of the beloved girl with delight.
My schizophrenia has several frames of
freedom limiting,
but that’s also my drawing,
in myself,
as adissociative identity disorder
of Billy Milligan,
and maybe I should think like Nino, Mariam, Ani, Tamar, Katie,
Natia, Tiko, Ia, Salome.
But I may stay with the same body,
the same Nika,
as you have known me before.
Don’t be afraid, girl,
I love you!
You will be protected by me, with me,
now and forever.
and you’ll get relief with me,
which you think to be freedom,
but it will be the beginning of those
duties,
about the dream, this poem ends with.