The Soul Sheik

The Sky and the Sea
Never coalesce like milk and tea
Lover to both
Ethereal heaven and vehement broth

I am the Wind.

The air is humid, and I’m sweating profusely as the warm air hints of rain. A cat stealthily undulating on the branch of our santol tree across my window pane, recently trimmed to accommodate more sunshine. The afternoon sun is out, yet the sky is ashen gray and the clouds spread too thinly, like an inarticulate watered-down stroke of watercolor made by pre-schooler. My consciousness swimming in the heat and the sweat, as the heat of the sun bounces off the concrete. I have abandoned flirting with happiness and all it’s promises. I turn to beauty and irony, the irony of beauty. Beauty is subject to the experience and totality of it’s beholder. That is my definition, and cannot help but see beauty in melancholy, beauty in the otherwise mundane and inexplicable suffering. I see beauty because I’m alive!

Despite the years of defeaning silence, the horrors of violence, the mangled bodies and the blood and the gore, staring death through the barrel of a rifle, a child’s last breath and a mother’s incomprehensible overflowing. Horrors I dared not speak nor utter a syllable, instead grounded them down to their simplest constitution(wordless and pure), my most basic truths to fill-in my blanks and spaces suspended between my two eternities.

When I was younger, I happened upon a narrative, “Scarred people are beautiful.” Here it is:

MAN SPEAKS:

I think I know what you mean, Lord, I’ve met people like that…
and knowing them gives me courage.
The great people are those who continue to love with their scars…
I like scarred people, Lord – They are beautiful..

Regardless of our ironies and insecurities and other ignorable facts of who we are as a people. WE ARE BEAUTIFUL.

I wasn’t planning to post, I just wanted to read poetry and rest my listing mind. I found Dine Racoma’s "Poems from the heart". I was engaged… then I read her poems… then about Joseph Michael… then… the damn dam broke! I can’t contain the wells of my eyes. My fingers became restless once more.  Take time to visit http://poemsfromtheheart.wordpress.com 

I cannot help but cry
I cannot help but burn
Sorrow knows no border
Succumbs to a hearts murmur

I found my soulmate thirteen years ago. It is only after all these times, the marriage..the children..the bills and the daily drudgeries we call life, that I realized. Why. Why, I have always been in a state of limbo. Why when I drink iced-tea, eat steak, loiter in malls, even watch a movie, take a swim, cook, bake, go to restaurants, my heart feels and remembers, the colors and the scents of my mate. Buses and terminal scenes in movies, always … makes me cry and cringe a sorrowful delight. Listening to Jesse Cook’s Breathing below surface, gives me tachycardic spasms from three to four in the morning, when I am most forlorn and lost. My throat dried and my mind reduced to that of a three year old, looking for his mommy. Why. Why I did not end up with my soulmate. Through all shyness and disbelief, faith and love, the cacophonies of cheeries and the drearies of the years, I’m here staring and my monitor staring back. And it’s five. My day ends, and theirs begin. I drift to the bed, tired, sore and spent.

Love is love. We are our parent’s love incarnate, born to bear, to weather and endure, to testify and to be, to discover and know itself. We have within ourselves the universe encapsulated. All that is outside is also within us. The turmoil and the peace, the beauty and the gross, the goodness and the wickedness that inhabit this world, inhabits us as well. We are who we are not. The dualities that rips this universe also rips us. Mini-blackholes survey the endless expanse of our minds and hearts, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. It’s been discovered that within the center of our galaxy, the Milkyway, there’s no milk, but a super black hole, drawing everything towards it, suns, solar systems and yes even black holes, that gets caught in its path, thereby giving the galaxy its eerie swirling countenance. We have observe the similitude of the biggest and the smallest our minds can conceive. The process of creation and destruction we rouse, with the simplest decision, the slightest action and faintest memories. "Should I stay or should I go?" "Damned if I stay, damned if I go." Linger in the void and the inert or the majestic beauty of a maelstrom? "I’d rather be magnificent and blinding than torpid and safe." says he who is not.

We are tragic, because we love. Tragic? We are beings that frown on tragedies, but secretly bleed savoring it’s bitter sweetness. Though we dislike tragedies in our own lives. A death in the family. Getting fired from a job. A doctor’s diagnosis. An accident. Infidelity. When we were defrauded. The list goes on and on. We associate tragedies with loss. Why does it move us so? We empathize on other people’s tragedies. We cannot help to look away when we see one unfolding before our very eyes. We look into our lives, with bookmarks on events we deemed tragic. Although we mark events that are remarkable and special and some even miraculous, we cannot help but count only the tragic events. Luminaries on the field of science emphasize the triumphs of our species. Writers, poets, the media, Hollywood, and yes, even Bollywood, thrive on tragedies.

I’m not an expert, I’m just like you, as they say.."We’re on the same boat.." I’m a father of three, a husband and a friend. All my life, I have always considered myself to be a poet. A poet with no words. A dreamer, a dreaming poet! For a long time, I have struggle with my words. The computer keyboard keys are worn, but of all the keys, none of them are smoother or shinier than my backspace and delete keys. Isn’t that just tragic? I have thoroughly enjoyed other people’s words, their songs, their stories, and I even enjoy their lies. My life is like any other life, I blend well and I am wretched for it. I’m a poet with no words, I suffer for my words. I have for a long time struggled to reign the wild horses in my mind. Put into words the color of my joys. Compose the song of my life. Paint into canvass the wretchedness and flood it with my misery. If I were to try stone sculpting, it would be a heap of Piccasso pieces of rubble. My teacher would cry and breakdown for the love of his art. Isn’t that tragic? I am tragic, have always been. My cup is filled, and must let flow, no matter how twisted or demented. When I chatted with an old friend. I mentioned to him about the wild horses. He told me I should be a cowboy to tame them. I forgot to tell him about the crap the wild horses leave. So I thought, I should be a cowboy and a good shit handler at the same time. And out of the blue, I begin to think about the riches of this world and how none of it is mine. And how I was not moved to rupture when my children were born. This world is many things. How could I have even thought of bringing them here? They’re such angels, so pure, so delightful. I can only think what this world will do to them. "Angels get their wings clipped here". I thought, it is tragic! I feel a profound sadness, realizing what I have done, because angels belong in heaven. Though I revel in the miseries of this world, surviving one way or another, This world is not for them. “There’s a hole in the sky!… for Christ sake!” I’d rather be the one who burns when the sun reaches in and scorch the earth.

Tragedy I classify into three,..garden-variety melancholy, damning kind, and my favorite, the loving type. I’m sure you out there have your own label. Then, to each his own! Of the three I only possess two kinds, and the damning one is not it. But in love, I am damned. Damned for an endless string of eternities. 

It’s late at night
Adrift in a sea of memories
Though faded with the passing of time
an old flame’s ember glow oh so slightly
Whispers passion of lost love
On a gentle breeze while I lie still and at ease

It’s late at night
I take the moonlight ride
starlight paves the way of the soul
The heart beats to the distant hum of a lover’s breath
Crossing the sea, an ember of the old flame to soothe and warm
A soul’s weary journey home