RIP

The mother of someone close to me and my family passed away last Friday at the village. The old lady finally succumbed to cancer of the liver. I saw her several times in the past 5 months and the last being two weeks ago. She was weak, jaundiced and her abdomen literally ballooned symptomatic of liver schirosis. When I saw her then, there was anxiety all about her. When I asked her if she was in pain, she said it was something she had learned to get use to. She said she wasn't eating well. She spoke of not having much time left and said she felt it.

Last Friday afternoon, she died. I visited on Saturday evening only to find that the family had already buried her that morning. All her children were there. It was raining heavily when I arrived at the family's house and I was soaking wet. The atmosphere was still sombre and people spoke in hushed tones. An old lady from the adjacent bilek sang something akin to a eulogy while I sat at the bamboo veranda talking to the son's. I was told relations from four villages nearby congregated there the night before and most have left leaving now just the immediate family.

"They will be back later tonight and it won't be this quiet", the eldest son said.

Looking beyond the silences
The figures dance around me,
As the rain drummed on the zinc roof and dripped on the bamboo floor.

With their slow,
evading footsteps
I hear the falling rains
Of yesteryear's mourning song...going arid on my dry brows.

There...she is judged
And there she lies
In the land of dead rivers...
Dead suns...
Deadened darkness over her rooftop,
Over her barren head...
Over her land
Where she crawls to walk
And there she will be at peace
The peace of the dead...

Good

Good. Like...good what?

Good. Good this and good that and good morning. Good sex. Good intentions...

And you know, after a while, the word starts to look and sound a little strange, doesn't it? It looks like it's too long. Has too many "o's" in it. Any word that has too many of the same letters in it looks strange as far as I am concern. And it starts looking like maybe you really should purse your lips together like a fish and say, "good" rhymes with "lewd."

"Ghud" Sounds like the sound something makes when it hits the ground.

"Ghud"

Okay, I so don't know where I'm going with this. All I know is that some people out there think of the scale of "good" when they see the word. Good? What's better than good? And what's better than better-than-good?

As a child and teenager, even now, I was never good enough, and I will never be good enough. Nothing is ever good enough for me. There's always room for improvement, even if I rise to be the shining apotheosis of the paragon of animals. Yeah, got this line from a book I read the other day.

Others would talk about good, and its eternal opposite which is, bad. But what's good, and what's bad, and just who the fuck is the final authority on what comprises the two? And who has the right to pin either of those words on my shirt and make me wear it?

Why do I sometimes believe that I am such a bad person? When did it begin? People who pretend to like me come up to me and tell me I'm not bad, that I'm very, very good. Fantastic, even.

Nice.

Who are they to say I'm good? Who am I to say I'm bad? I am...me. that's it.

Look at it. Ghud.

Gooooood. Good news. Good living. Good fun.

Just good.

Good. Good. Gooooood. Good good good goodgoodgoodgoodgood.

Funny, right? No?

Goooooooooooooooooooooooood.

Wet

It was a wet, cold and miserable and this morning I have found it impossible to shrug off the weather's influence. I have, however, discovered something pretty cool and that it takes a lot to get a raindrop to roll downhill.

Outside a fine drizzle

has coloured the grass.

A vivid green and

as raindrops fall

on drooping leaves

they don't roll downhill

but sit perfectly still

or cling to the underside

in defiance of gravity

until a breeze blows by

and a heavy tear

turns pendulous and falls...


I'm just glad I am inside, warm.