Ratios.

I wrote this for someone in New England who is beautiful but does not know that she is beautiful. I'm posting it now because everywhere they are people who are beautiful but do not know that they are beautiful.

Ratios. 

Perfect: I used that word once to talk about you
as if you were a doll with limbs made of plastic:
stiff and whimsical and subject to the niggardly
commands of the conscious- yet you, who thinks
as aggressively as any doll-house builder do not
construct your own set-pieces; instead you 
pirouette into one carefully constructed day to the 
next as you delicately 
stride
from bed to shower to wardrobe to mirror to desktop to
window to mirror to mirror to 
mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them 
all-
and the staid look on your face when the mirror gives no
answer 
because it can’t. Checkered skirt, sharp eyelashes, wary
jumper, almost heels. Perfect, you might think
for a moment before your eyes roll gently from self
to mirror
to self 
to mirror
to mirror
the self. What was
it that you were looking for if all it does is lead
you back to your skin? Meanwhile, the snow
stutters softly from above as if God had dandruff-
perfect- and it all gently glazes the spongy surface of the world like
flawless coconut icing on some sorry party cake- perfect- and the morning
bell rings impossibly on time like the last
breath you thought was your last- perfect- and somewhere in
America I use words to remind you of the little 
unreachables 
of perfection that both start and end with your perfectly
snow-pale skin, where somewhere in 
America and somewhere on
your thighs perfect ridges of red have formed themselves like
plastic scratches on a Barbie which we both think
are little but we both know
are big
because you are not plastic.

                                               At nighttime our feet 
skip on the icy brick pathways that lead from
the dorm-rooms to the library and we shiver
as the snowflakes bob in and out of our bodies 
like thoughts 
that seem funny but aren’t quite- they melt away
as soon as they stumble upon our skin. From our mouths
cloudy puffs of being flutter out- little butterflies affirming
out listless snowflake-filled minds, sperming out ice-clouds
from our mouths, our mouths, our mouths; birthing friendship.
Breath, visible, is laughter. I trip and swear and momentarily
skate
across a sudden ice-surface as you speak another ice-breath. We
arrive
at the library but dart towards the empty right-side, the science
classrooms. We hope
to examine the thought-skirmishes on your right thigh, to turn  
and change this hopeless world-spinning into centrifuge 
separation-
make apparent the light from the dark
                        the firmament from the void
                        the flesh from the plastic, the-
here we are as you talk 
about your family and I 
try my best to look you
in the eye so I 
can become
your eyes
even when
normally
I 
am 
so
vehemently 
against

staring 

at the soul-gates of another being- 
here we are as you talk;
God is still missing from the centrifuge 
of the endlessly turning world- your
axis
is your skin yet 
you trust it
not. The salads without dressing,
        the weighing scales,
        the taste of bile at the back of your
throat-
all for skin that 
       you
do
not 
      trust. 
All for flesh that you think is plastic
so
     you 
     cut. 
       
             Enough
talk because the bell cuts through the flesh
of our conversation. Enough 
talk because the world insists on
turning still 
and forcing us to revolve
with it. Enough
breathing, enough
snow, enough
life. I remember you saying 
that the ratios of your face are wrong;
that certain equilibriums do not exist between
your cheeks your lips your eyes your life…I remember the science
classrooms where parts of you were as mathematical as the architecture... I remember how
you keep thinking your flesh is plastic… You forget how 
inglorious the nature of these words is. The problem
with human thought, with the ratios of your face, with the
geometric structures that cut across your thighs, with the
statistical neatness with which your family decomposes;
the problem with our conception of perfect is how 
awkwardly it both exists and does not exist for us to
see. 
The ratios of your face which you think are broken are
the same miracles I wonder about as you laugh. The incorrect distance
from your cheek to your eye which you think is wrong is the same
lightyear which separates the stars from the planets. The curvature
of your stomach is the bending of a spacetime to accommodate 
the way the air must move to let your body occupy the space and time in which it
exists. 
The ratios you speak of spring from your own limitlessness, your own
perfect imperfections , imperfect perfections-
strange oddities and unfathomable beauties and yes. Yes, 
even the ridges across your right thigh are minute, red, 
gasping
grand-canyons of 
flesh,
of human, of breathing clay
flesh-
           never 
plastic;
            always 
worthy. 
             
              Recently the voices in my head have been getting louder,
telling me all sorts of things about how the snow ought to bury me
in its mercilessness. They mention also that my words bear no meaning,
my thoughts even less so. Assumedly, the ridges across your thigh
carry such spectres as well but, I messaged you before you went to bed
about coming out and having an adventure because tick-tock-tick-tock…tick…tock…tick-
the last bell of the day is going to ring soon and the voices and ridges
will assert themselves again with the bedtime silence, but check your Facebook
messages and come outside and let’s go skipping with your friends across
the century-old polished prep-school brick pathways that smell archaic because it’s

snowing outside and it’s lovely. 

Photo credit: cdn.paper4pc.com

Update, 4/23/2018, the poem found a home here: https://postscriptpublication.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/ratios/ thanks to a friend. 

Little Paris, Somewhere.

I wrote this for (another) friend's birthday. She is very special. Everything else about her can be inferred as necessary. 

***

Little Paris, Somewhere.

  I. 

When the poet first met her, again,
Cupid tried to strike him with an arrow.
It missed because the poet stared 
through her. Not at her. 

Yesterday it was,
'Get online loser.'
Tonight she says: quick
give me a description of Paris.

She always says such things.

He says: cold
like the pin-prick 
of morning after-skin. Warm
like the shiver of a hand
held soft; of lips kissed.

He always says such things.

He even calls her Honeybear,
Cupid be damned.


  II. 

He liked her because she read more books than him.

Her voice always made the sound of a page turned:
Crisp, clear, passionate; 
revelling in the present,
but always waiting for the next sentence.

As if a book could actually speak
like a person. 

As if the hours
she spent reading alone were not
just conversations with herself.

As if every syllable
was a night-whisper with 
the great American dead.

The poet doubted if she ever
truly talked to Fitzgerald because
he was a drunk too obsessed 
with one spirit. She'd get annoyed.

But then again, her drink of choice
is also an ungraspable green light.

Paris.


  III. 

When she put on her spectacles, 
the world became less clearer:
she could only see how far away she was
from where she was supposed to be. 
The sharper life's images were,
the surer she became of this. 

She had her substitutes for foreign oxygen:
novels, movies, songs, poems;
but they never quite breathed the same.
He tried to force the glasses off her.
Maybe then she could more barely
make out the thorny edges of sun-dried Acacias,
and more fuzzily the general sun-warmth
that he thought was the Kgalagadi soul.

She refused, but when she didn't,
she wore contact lenses. Real, 
or imagined, the thin sheet of 
dream glass pressed against her eyes
could never disappear. Her soul
was where it was: where it wasn't.
So still all she could see,
even when he smiled vivid,
was a place that wasn't Paris. 


  IV.

Somewhere. 

That is where she thought she was.
Here, an indescribable place. 
Indescribable because she saw it grey. He
instead saw dappled speckles, 
and rainbows flickering across every corner.
But he was of here and here alone, he felt 
the landscape's beauty in his bones. She
wondered why she should look at
sandy semi-desert instead of gravelled
culture. She wanted pathway upon pathways of
old Europe, lingering in modern cafés and bistros
like an affectionate aftertaste. He
was happy with spoonfuls of instant coffee with
translated copies of a country he would never see. 
To him, a French poet in English 
was just about the same as a 
French poet in French. 
He knew that wasn't true, of course.

But the point was to get across the idea of
a Little Paris in his Somewhere. Just as he had an 
idea of her in the movies she shared; where
she would awkwardly appear as bits and pieces 
of dialogue, sceneries, soundtracks and end-credits
injected into his laptop weekends atop his bed.
He knew her as old romance films on USBs.
It wasn't quite her, but he still liked the idea of it.

He liked ideas, and ideas alone
were more than enough for him.

To her, ideas were restless things 
to be beaten into submission.

And so she endlessly beat life's piñata
with a stick of dream,
and hoped to find a plane ticket 
amongst the false candies.

She's still swinging.


  V. 

He couldn't stop her and he didn't try.
At the very least, he admired her charm;
the zest and gusto of her swing. 

But she tired easily. And he didn't want
her to be tired. 

Sometimes her laughter would burst into her
and she'd forget about ambition, forget about success.
Sometimes she would just bite into her own sweetness
like if a rose could smell itself. She loved her red,  
and was more intimate with her petals than her pulse.
Just as how she knew Paris better
than this Somewhere. 

He thought she was crazy.
But so did she.
And they argued about this because
She thought he was crazy. 
But so did he.

And so,
they disagreed about agreement
every day.

On a good day she would present a vicious smile,
the next paragraph in her never-ending thesis
that he doesn't intend to stop reading,
but somehow hasn't even started.
He never will. 

On a bad day... well, a bad day 
would lead to the end of a verse.


  VI. 

They would always eventually get over a bad day.

Coldness takes effort; warmth does not.
The knew this, but warmth often became
an uncomfortable singeing of their safety. 
They ran at the thought
of such possibilities like tiny girls
from tiny spiders. Neither wanted to put
that eight-legged flame into a jar, but 
somehow they both expected butterflies.

The ecosystem is such for good reason,
and that reason is balance. 
Spiders and butterflies both constitute 
that effortless, life-affirming warmth.

They dance around that truth as it is a bonfire.
Sometimes they even look bright at it. But never,
never do they touch that little Paris, that little flame;
their little flame, their little Paris. 
Because that love is meaningless meaning,
and neither of them wants to be, or feel, wrong.
Even if they'd be wrong together.

Their hands never meet in that fire.
Their souls never burn in night's ecstasy.
And they are almost never born,
until tomorrow, when they smile once again,
and dance. 


Come online loser.

***

(Special thanks to Rishi for the lovely cover image :D Also, this was originally posted here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1140352/little-paris-somewhere/)

Spring Cleaning.

Another unused Public Speaking Tournament Speech.

N.B: It's somewhat, well pretty much, entirely fictional (I guess, I think, I know). To be honest, I'm not entirely sure which parts are true or not. Therefore- please don't ask.

        SPRING CLEANING.

Spring cleaning is adding and deleting with extra deleting. You remove rubbish, you add a bookcase. You remove one set of bed-sheets, you add another. But Spring doesn't exist in Botswana, so it is early December when I am cleaning my room. What do I find under my bed?

-old chip packets of various and once tasty flavours

-a dirty old plate with shriveled up chicken bones

-a few books I should have read

-a few books I should not have read

- an uneaten chocolate bar, melted of course. It's hot.

-a 2nd Place Public Speaking medal from last year's tournament.

-a barbie doll, I have no idea what that's doing here.

-a couple of teeth, with splotches of dried blood and gum, that I had to get removed in order to get my braces.

- a few more books I should read

- a few more books that I should not read

and finally...

-two unsent love letters to someone we don't need to talk about

So, as I begin to toss whatever I don't need into a big, black, industrial-class bin bag I think about how we're constantly adding and deleting things in our lives. We delete old clothes and we add the freshest kicks to our wardrobe. We delete ex-girlfriends (and/or boyfriends) and we add more books that we haven't read yet... But in this process of adding and deleting... do we remain the same person? Am I who I was yesterday? Does the mere act of Spring Cleaning change who I am forever?

As I am cleaning my room I also check my Facebook- his father has messaged me through my his [my friend's] account... Of course I freeze. He had told me that if I don't receive a message a few hours after his operation... I should assume that he is dead. 

One whole day had passed since he had last said goodbye. One whole day where I occasionally bomb his inbox with messages like 'Oi. Wake up!' or 'Dude, what the hell are you still doing?' One whole day in which my mother tells me that my Aunt in Canada is getting one of her breasts removed. One whole day in which I don't tell my mother that my friend was getting his head opened up for the exact same reason. One whole day in which when I woke up and did not see a message from him, the first thing that popped up in my head is that "mornings...are carcinogenic."

So one whole day, where my friend is both dead and alive in my mind.

His father tells me that's he's fine. That's he's alive. That's he's lost all of his memory as a result of the operation.

Oh.

So... Spring Cleaning... 

When we delete things, memories, people, parties, girls, boys, adventures, school grades , I love you's, I hate  you's, movies, songs, books and even friends...  

And when in place of these we add things, memories, people, parties, girls, boys, adventures, school grades, I love you's, I hate  you's, movies, songs, books, and even friends ... 

Do we still remain the same people we were yesterday?

I ask myself this as I tell him my name.