the eye within

The weekend loomed. 

I looked inward and saw 

a tired spirit

It ran on expired nitro

A sort of Death 

beckoned to me

singing of hope, sleep 

and solitude

This was not to be

My id and ego longed for silence 

and yet the clamour here  

shifted it's g-force

expanded exploded

colours, shapes, smells, feelings,

thoughts, sounds 

a light flash of words

a spiralling miasma 

of th'narcissistically 

love-negging tones 

of unconsciously handsome 

but toxic also-rans

in their graviton pants 

their newtonian life force 

defeated by the pedestrian power

of my humble lil thumb

on the mute & archive button

the only kill-switch 

that makes it right

their penumbra floating

beyond every line of sight

Step out and look into the sea 

a benediction of the blue waters

The pulse roared in crimson 

for an end to their drama

Blood demands blood. 

Do not gladiate 

in reactionary verbal violence 

to all the hatred. 

The submissive reinforcement 

is denied and rejected

A psychological solution

a pruning

a topping from below

Step out and be still

The sky Listens.

Anne V,  07.10.2023

Here's to Inktober 2023 (Weekend #1)

Qu’est-ce que le sens de la vie ?

La vie est dure

Qu’est-ce que le sens de la vie ? 

40 jours d'enfer

je ne peux pas l'accepter

Je ne veux pas de ces blocages

La vie est dure

Les politicians rendent impossible

Nous en avons besoin rapidement

Nous avons besoin covid vaincu avec des vaccins

Trop lente en Malaisie, j'ai mal à la tête

La vie est dure

après 40 jour 8% de la population vaccinée

Aller plus vite!!!

Nous devons reprende la vie! 

Qu’est-ce que le sens de la vie ? 

-Anne V

A Hymn to Mum and Dad

Is this a journal entry?

a lament, a hymnic soliloquy?

I feel the time ticking past sneakily

My pulse beats on stubbornly 

Ba-dup-dupt beats

1 year and 21 days after my dad's stopped

22 years 9 months 8 days after mum's sonic boom soul

bellowed her up and away from our hall and grounds

I see no reason to go on

everything in me is all hollowed out

and I am ready to be done

Take me now God. End this cataclysmic storm

I am not gonna off myself -please, You know this

Call the fates to do their snippy snip pwned

Except that I have this thing I created

In dad's bro's Alisha's and my name

And now it lives on like a human being

My firm's practice my sole reason for living

Which now has pivoted 

to also bear the name 

Of my sister from another mother

If I end wherefore does this being go?

It lives if I live

For awhile there 16 months actually

I felt the clocks of my life energy Sounding down

The march of the years electric with mum and dad

I could not stand stepping into the sunlight of impending tomorrows

Without them here clocking the days with me

It took 1 year of waiting for the clock to wind down

And then I realize

My parents are winding on the clock

Time-turning me to each sunrise

From where they stand on the other side of Eternity

Happy and at bliss together and they expect me to walk this path? 

How?

Why? 

I cannot.

I just can't 

Then I see their super golden faces 

deep in my REM's inflight all lit

They want me to step into the sunlight

Keep their DNA moving with my feet be fit

With my eyes- with my tears- with my love

With our joint karma

 and our destiny unwrit

So maybe I do not end within this calendar

Of becoming me, a Party of One knocking on heaven's door

Where behind Dad and Mum 

I see our family tree the multitudes roar-

You do not yet belong here-

When do you soar? 

Maybe the clock alarm keeps calling  at 6pm 

dad's word- breluteadinnerupper- 

to insist on survival - a resolute foraging for food

and then my REM dreams klaxon out

Dad and mum sounding me onward 

where my life force needs to be

it is not yet time to think of an ending 

orchestrated inexorably by Father Time

With the finality of the Angel of Death 

I keep on not keeping on yet keeping on

Furball assassins of the long sleep- on guard 

and 2x a day demanding I be their guard too

- quis custodiet ipsos custodies- in this meowfdom

The dawn beckons and I have an A7 chord to strum

The music starts again to faintly hum 

That is what mum and dad would have wanted

With them be all the glory

Amen

-Anne V

Matthew 5:4

Blessed are they who grieve

For they shalt be comforted

Matthew 5:4

Destino

destiny and fate

grinds everything without end

the hourglass of one's vanities

lasts 15 minutes

and a century goes by

in the blink of an eye

earthly ashes to stardust

A light breeze brings a sense

There is a world alongside

Believing it makes it so

The spirits immortal

shine down aglow

-Anne V

Death

Grief comes for me

One gets broken

Literally

There are no words

A systolic shutdown

The experience

Death however

Is not feared

I welcome it

Because o you

Marvellous humans

Who loved me sans reason

Reside

Beyond the pale

In the Ever After

Will your heavenly universe

This paradise of silence

Ever allow me In

That's the Thing : that which is unsaid

Musings at sunrise & sunset

Many things unsaid but the thoughts remain
The skies while travelling hither & thither with Dad
When you travel with elder loved ones
They're the reason, and that's the thing:
Patience is the currency of Love

Away from home: follow the light

Enroute from home to somewhere: the skies they speak to us

Far from home: an awakening that the sea cures everything

The way home: you can sense it in the clouds and the skies

At home: Dad and I go cloud-gazing on a lovely morning

Bless
The sky-gazers united and
The cloud appreciation society
Of Dad, Bro, and, I
Will always be in session
Wherever Dad is, there we are
Together or apart
The skies and the clouds unite us



Anne V (2012 till to-date)

Climbing Out is the Best Thing We Ever Did (a song for Mimi)

Fight back and obliterate the brainless masses. 

They can fool only some of the people 

some of the time and not all of us all of the time. 

Their schadenfreudical screams from the twilight zone

they reach us somehow faintly but never poison us with their fakery

and clusterfucked bluster. 

Behold we live amidst the sunlit ranks now.  

Climb out climb out and join us, reach for the skies. 

Those masses, they never deserved you anyway. 

Hugs. 

A Submarine of Cauliflower Gas

a monster response
to quadruple the effect
and triple the reaction
to what Newton
ever envisioned

a submarine
of calculated reactions
cauliflower blasts

of gaseous emissions
so gently Holistic 

that it smokes out
the purple people eaters
hidden behind
hollow doors slamming

all creakily cryptic

the monster cramming

a mash of purple jamming

a bash of people eaters

the squid-ink hash

of the methane-gassed

zombie brainbangers

holding dhobi hangers

ptsd-ing the young

into aging men and women
escaping in old datsuns

seeking their respite in 

sun, sea, sand and

cauliflower wind

can they ever macArthur

the turmoils within

a tribute to Dirk and Douglas

and those who've left 

their towels behind

many salmony light-years away

Y'know wha' I mean?

Anne V (25.10.2019)

Between the Spaces Unknown

The face skin

It caves in doesn't it

On the inside

arrhythmically struck

thoughts hit tearducts

hopes never subside

This is loss then

The feeling of glass shards

In all our tomorrows and when

a scalpel of skin 

a line draws itself

the heart is the sand

this is it then

dark feeling of necessity 

eyes that screech

between what we want

and what shan't

be the deciding breach

15 kilometres of space

the strings extend 

see the hearts reach

thoughts sown in trips

only alone when alone

be infinite take the hits

from skin to bone

a cocoon splits

the rain sets the tone

between the time-spaces

the moments unknown

ad astra ad continuum

Anne V

22.10.2019

Bump (a song for mum)

head bump
because
I said so

God of the End of Things
do you see me
standing here
 
all carbon burnt
no mercy
down to the bone

just chunks
of petrified
Wood

no hints
of a rewrite
only the stillness

Waiting,
a wraith of time
holds fast

Smiling,
dead in the lime
Brown eyes
That beckon

Lights dim
spaghetti monster
gets eaten

No lightning crash
i will not rhyme
any happy words
with flash

but see here
I'll give this a
John Wick-ish gash
and an existential smash

all blackest red
and moon ink

see me here
all mariana personified
deep in the trenches

The mendacity
of second dimensional hope
The fluttering candle lopes

Like a jackal in hunger
yet awaiting
the hippopotamus
bump off

the third dimensional
reality cliff
awaits us all

freefall into the rainbows
a tomorrow of stars
in a windless eternity

of dimples and
head bumps

starry
and brightly blue

my mum
she gleams
I see you


Anne V (2019)

A Different Kind of Narcissus (the kind that is Eternal)

I see you
I see through you
And I know you
Your shiny brown eyes
Through and through

Glossy two-way (it feels)
mirrors, no, no, they are lasers
inscribed in memory
of your face reflected lovingly
Gleaming back at  me

A thousand billion notes
chromatically they fling out
contrapuntal richochets
broken shards shimmy
Eyes of pearl tears and yearning
Video calls and FaceTime
Zero-sum meaning
Are those glances cast down
a carnival djinny-clown
A beautiful rictus
The denial licks us
the loss of self kicks us

You only want
what you see
You only love
who you used to be
and that makes me
insecure everywhere else

Time-keeper of my soul
Are you still in time
to see the rest of us
Standing here waiting
Loving you
Because of what you are
In spite of what
you and I have become
through the years

The Demigods of Circadia
universe Interrupted
Can you not see
the destruction
of the dusk
feel the utter lunacy
continuing adjacent
of smashed clock-hands
ground to a fine metal powder
intra-dimensional separation
inter-localities ignored
from dawn to dusk
in an endless loop
through decades
and suddenly
kilometers so far apart
they might as well
be light-years

Deity Terminus
Sordid self-absorbed
Oxygen-breathers
Can't grind things down
Into cosmic sand
That blows through
Eternity and beyond
Time-wasters
of mindless hopes
Vanquishers
of time and space
So beloved
most pungently
rafflesiacal
of blooms
O maniacal montage

O beloved Timekeeper
(and Madman with Daughter)
in our midst
Narcissus flowers three
This was a story
of filial piety
spanning the
dusk and dawn
of two centuries
And now

Angelus Terminus
You loom
over us all
A stopwatch
Most Jugular
In our midst
It will all end
when you do
the arterial jump
that binds
infinite combinations
of a calm peace

And then, silence



-Anne V (2019)

Nonsense Rhymes #113

The stars they stare down at me

As I decide to walk down the alley

It is a shortcut to the car park

I hear the footsteps approaching

A long shadow floats
Dressed all in black
I am sure I have melted into the night
I cannot be seen
Just as the footsteps come upon me
I turn around

and give a bloodcurdling yowl
And the shadow falls down

with a howl

I hear his ankles crack

I frightened him
Dressed all in black

What a sight
I am the vampire

That has melted into the night


Anne V (2019)

The Street Urchin

Found this piece in an old journal which I have been shredding. Saved this one during the final annihilation. 

The Street Urchin

There was a little bright red flower growing by the embankment on the side of the road. Its petals quivered gently in the dusty wind. Its stalk bent delicately yet it held on there. Giving a pop of cheerful colour to everyone passing by.

Then. 

The huge wheels of a trailer went over the embankment throwing up bits of kerb and crushing the green green grass…turning it all to mush. Killing a biker. Raising up dust. And when the trailer’s wheels passed, the flower still stood. 

It was a little flower of no particular consequence, no great pedigree. But it survived. Tall. Proud. Alive.

It danced in the wind. 

Commiserating. 

Offering beauty to pedestrians, passers-by and paramedics. A requiem for dead bikers. 

The idea that one could survive all odds, except one. 

The dust cleared. The wind stuttered.

The flower shivered.

Nothing moved for a bit. 

Then a small little hand with grubby fingernails reached out and plucked the flower. Tucked it behind a little ear. Bleeding knees. Dirty toes. Runny nose. Smiling face. 

Beautiful red flower.

The Angel of Death. 

Sometimes he is a sleepy trucker. Sometimes he is the winds that blow. And sometimes...

He is a 5 year old street urchin.

Anne V

Mercenary for Hire

Ah the horrors of an empty appointment book
A mercenary for hire has not job security
One goeth where the money taketh thee

And thus ended this prose

For there is no poetry in the hustle

Of a daily existence

-Anne V

The Pot of Seven Colours

We stand here on the brink
The very edge of the rainbow
Peering into the pot of seven colours
It contains no leprechaun's gold
But a starlight diorama of bliss
of her best most-dimpled smiles
And his brightly gregarious guffaws
I want to leap merrily and freely
Into the lightning starburst 

Collect all their astral glitter dust
And free them all from the ties that bind
I hesitate daily...because to do so
Would be to bring
the angel winds of silence
Into his life once more

I seek to try again, another year

Anne the Obscure

Prose That Goes Nowhere (After 5.00am)

The silence gets to me first
The lack of anyone else breathing
The sound of my own thoughts
Loudly comes the clanging in my head
Then I realize that this is the life I chose.

Complaints of sleep deprivation
and lack of time to do the necessary
Causes one to lose the custody
Of that which is precious
One's daddy dearest gone eccentric
The remaining parental unit left
and one's sole companion
Surrendered to the BU three
Of brother, sister in law & lil niece

Death is the next adventure
Maybe it comes too soon
Maybe it come not at all
Maybe it lives in my snot
As I finish another 3 hour session
of tears and transcriptions.

Hugging my coffee cup
It is the only thing
in this empty apartment
That shares its warmth with me
Damn cats think I am being eaten
by crows and alligators
When the tears spring out at 3am.

Maybe if I superglue
all five of them together
And recite some furball incantations
They will turn into the affectionate dog
I always wanted and could not have
But whither
the five kitteh furballs goeth
If I do that?

Do I get them back after the spell?
Will the local council
confiscate my cat-dog then?
No dogs in apartments, hey.
Maybe there is a spell
To make him shape-shift
Between 1 big dog and
5 itteh bitteh kittehs...

Random segueway
What in the hell am I writing here?
Snap out of this shit, eh?
Get thy act together dumbass
And go get one's father back
[R2D2 beeps. Lightsaber clicks.]
Lightning zap

*drops mike*

Anne the Obscure

Metamorphosis

I wonder if the metamorphosis from
caterpillar to butterfly is painful.
It seems the metamorphosis
from a person with family
to a person with no one to call one's own
It is ghastly.

I never wanted to get married
I never wanted the 2.5 kids and the house
with the picket fence
But I thought that my dad and I
We would always be a team.
Ever since mum died in 1999
Dad and I, we have been a team
Each other's family

And now
My dad is staying with my brother
And I am alone in this apartment
Well
I guess my brother deserves
to have my dad for a bit

Anne V

Excerpt of an old Love ode...all wrapped in Chocolate Raves

I remember your laser-like glistening smile
The nonchalant whistle, those piercing brown eyes
That stared at me under Bellamy Hill's evening light

You glared at her and proclaimed her my abuser
Threatened to sic the Gurkhas on her if she kept talking
You knew her evil right away, you saw me before I saw myself

I will bathe myself in dark dark chocolate
I will find you in the deepening hours of the night

We'd eat salty caramel chocolate and bump the briny bits

I see you lick these hard chocolate nips
And taste my dark rummy super toffee chocolatey love
All over your pouty prickly peppery pineapple lips.

-Anne V

The Flame of Our Universe (and the Story of Us)

Sitting here amidst the clutter...
Books and papers, albums of memory
I see an ant crawling along the wall
Following it I see a line, a crack
And then I know where this leads...
These fissures came at the end of 2004
Not only a tsunami that changed us
It was the beginning of the end of days

The windmilling shift in our lives...
Began when you flew away without me
To find the world at your fingertips
And fantastical ideas to towel-whip
Acolytes who laugh at dirty coffee mugs...
And deny the truth before their eyes
They hate the same things as anyone else
A decade will soon bring boon to bane

While I stayed behind to honour and keep
The utopia of our joint memories...
You know this - but do they all know
Have you made it clear to them
What binds us? Yellow ribbons and rosaries?

The litany of light-years dividing our lives?

When you stop remembering us...
I see I will become the keeper of stories

And if i haven't already made the shift

Maybe I soon will morph into Nanny Poppins
The professional mollycoddler of dreams

Parachuteless skydiver resident handwringer

Well screw that...
I never signed on the dotted line

I never gave you permission to age
Nor promised you an eternity without me

Anne V

Schooled

Feeling anonymous and yet not so unknown
I stare pseudo-balefully at the screen. Not again!
Incessant hay fever attacks strip away at my patience
FaceTime moments behind faceless micron masks take their toll

They demand cavernous coronary-causing rate reductions
Not knowing how much work goes into every gorgeous submission
Ensuring accuracy, perfection and absolute precision

In a Lecterian moment of dramatis imaginae I scream for blood
I dream of yelling at supersonic volumes into the night sky
Sandblasting their pleading eyeballs into tiny shards of submission

Lightly grilling their ocular liquids with red auras of my rage
Colouring the shades of my lethal declaration of nays
Thus they slither away.

Eyeless, discountless, schooled
Schooled.

...
...
...

Until I feel guilty and cave in.

Rate reduction approved.

...
...
...

So, who was schooled again?



Anne V

The Mirage of Happy Land

Behind the flouncy flippancy
(and the fried friendliness)
lies thoughts about Death
If you must know
I never got over yours

and I never ever will get over his
Is there any rule that I should?

(and thank the Gods of poetry and verse

that he does not read blogs)

Behind the rhymes and verses
Is a hope, a lightness of being
At the truth of the impermanence of things
One grows weary of the outward happy land
with all this secretly internalized grieving

How many years does one do this? When does it end?
Soon there will come a time
When we won't waste a single rhyme

Must I be the only one with this fever
The sole witness left standing
An emotional spectator to these shifts
Paradigmal, central, mental, unfathomable
spinning unending

Did you see the clouds flashing?
How long do we play for?
Can it be forever?

Immortality is when I need to try no more
And deep into the night air
I shall banish all fear all sorrow all me
I step out and vanish softly
into the eternal inter-space of existence

Remember that you knew me
And that we had a moment
Memories of sun-browned days

during the laughter
and the happy days
Listen for the rain
and the shiny silver
lightning strike

And just like the words
my favourite poet echoed
I am in the thousand winds that blow

We will live forever


-Anne V


NB: the phrase *...thousand winds that blow...* is from Mary Elizabeth Frye's poem, Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep

Hello again poetry peeps and my dear followers

I have been missing for half a year as life got in the way...the thing is, I have been writing and journaling with no time to put things online. I just scribble whenever I have time lol. Well here are 3 drafts I worked on in recent months, just shared them earlier here for you to contemplate and muse on. I will post more poems when I feel like sharing verse and rhyme, aiming to be more regular!!!

I also share here, my favorite poem "A Life" by Sylvia Plath.

 Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,

This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.

Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.

At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy

As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.

Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.

A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly

With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.

The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.

Black Dragons in the mist

So this is the truth then behind the silence
A balaclava on a dragon
And mist in my bones
That is what happened
Through these sudden changes in fate
Crystal seers notwithstanding

They spoke their truth 

And then their crystals shattered

So whose truth do I speak? 

I know not. 

Leave me be.

I search for black dragons in the mist 

-Anne V

A seaworthy memorare (Of ocean-sprays and jigsaws)

As I sat facing the open sea, 

alone always alone
Waves crashing earnestly on the beach 

in surround sound
I felt your warm briny soul 

reach out to me tingling
Arising from vapours 

in the midnight sea breezes
A smoky caress from a shooting star 

falling in the water
Do you see the self-critique 

peeling away from my vulcanized heart?
Sheets of black blood 

flowing through the ocean sprays?
Unfinished. Alone. Raw. 

The seas wash it all away, 

all that self-hate
This dusty universe 

that contains all the souls of the dead
Ocean-sprays that shoot their antidote 

in my eyes and nose
Death and rebirth by salty water 

is the next adventure is it not?
Why don't you have it in the seas, 

your coming of age, 

your pre mid-life crisis?
The final and the first Amen 

to a life spent blowing jets of hope
Into the dry dirtily demanding land-winds 

that heed you not
Here it comes, 

Neptune's jagged emerald sword 

crashes over your head
A memorare, 

a jigsaw that drums out 

the mermaid soul you were born to have

Anne V

An Invisible Flash In the Night (a silent prayer behind the Light)

An Invisible Flash In the Night (a silent prayer behind the Light)

Far from the maddening crowd
the future stands smiling
And yet I shiver and crouch
in these cold pressing shadows
Do I deserve any time in the sun?
Will the robin red breast
come a-calling if I sing?

Far from the beckoning gestures
my brother and sister give
in word and deed
Calling me to be all I can be
for everyone's sake -
every life for itself
the path is drawn
I stand here
and as they keep striding on
further and further ahead
on their brick road
Will that road rise up to greet me
if I start running towards them three?

Far from the silvery hairs
gleaming on my father's jawline
I think of what I am meant to be
if I am no longer his keeper
Apart from being the spare to the heir
and everyone's
optimistic dancing bear
Will the lady of the skies
answer my longing stares
at her morning face

The very idea
of a universe without
my father's face, faith and hope in it
Makes my brain shiver
and shriek screams
that cannot be heard by human ears
Who are you to ask me to think
of a future without him,
you Judas of my home?
Have you seen
the paths we have trod on together,
have you seen
his faith in me?

No one else has that.

Far from the shrinking daylight
the fading past
throws me a bloodily frayed rope
A black hunting shadow
sounds a throaty barking
as it sends a final lasso calling
Do I deserve
to escape its gallow-like bellows
as they thrill me with shivers?
Will my feet
answer with quicksilver speed
and protect me
from its unforgiven pull?

No else can do that.

Answer me o Angel of Salahin,
Saul and Michael.
And Gabriel, one hopes.
I have tried to be all I can be
within the boxes you set
and the lines you draw
Must I try again and again
despite secretly aiming
for the centre of the earth?
Will thy wings lift me up
into the heavenly winds or
scatter my smithereens
on the rocks?

Tell me.



Anne V (9 September 2014)
(Excerpts from The Cavern)

Pumpkin Murder

O Pumpkin
I don't want to carve you
No I don't

I want to boil you
Roast you
Eat you

Fry you with herbs
Saute you
Not design art on you

I want to bludgeon you
With my cleaver
Nothing else really

No smiling face and beady eyes
No grinning teeth for you
Only my chomping jaws

Happy Halloween

Anne V  (backdated to the date I wrote this, the eve of All Hallow's Eve, 2014)

Haiku Hotness

Hope thunders
Diagonal lightning strikes
No more talk

Anne V (thoughts of Diwali)

Fifteen Years the bell tolled my thoughts

I think of you in the sunlight
I think of you in the dark
I think of you with love
And my heart overflows

I think of you in my silence
I think of you when dad smiles
I think of you when the music plays
And my heart overflows

I think of you in the mist
I think of you in the winds
I think of you with grief
And my soul hums a requiem

I think of you in my happiness
I think of you through the pain
I think of you when it all gets too hard
And my soul lightly trembles

I think of you and the missing answers
I think of you and your dimples
I don't need to hear you say it
You loved me and my soul knows it.


Anne V (in memory of mum, RIP)

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - on Immortality

Sorry I have been missing for a month and then some. I will visit you all in turn to see what's been happening with your blogs!

For the record, I have been writing every day but I haven't had the time to type up any poems from my journal. My father has been under the weather with a bad case of the flu, then bad pertussis from said flu, then bronchitis, and then we found that his flu meds were clashing with his heart meds.  He was in hospital for half a month and he is home now and finally recovering. A slow yet steady convalescence. 

Dad's illness made me consider our (im)mortality all over again, and if you'd like to ponder along silently with me, here is an excerpt from the Upanishad. I feel it has such poignant meaning, that whatever your faith or belief system, we are indeed stardust. 

On Immortality 

"From delusion lead me to truth,
From darkness lead me to light,
From death lead me to immortality."

- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad -