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Medication Nation

and other poems

kaleeM rajA

Photography by Kevin Paul Stephens

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Contents

City of Gold.....page 4

Endless Wander.....page 5

The Reluctant Messiah.....page 6

The Waves.....page 8

The Wedding Cake.....page 9

In Fear of the Other.....page 11

The Screaming Trees.....page 13

Medication Nation....page 14

Thinking of You, The Autumn Near.....page 15

Flowers and Butterflies.....page 16

Complacency.....page 17

When Love Fails.....page 18

Nocturnal Thoughts of Anna of America Trapped in the Land of the Free.....page 19

9/11:9 Out of 11 Questions About 9/11 Remain Unanswered.....page 22

London.....page 23

You.....page 25

This, As It Stands.....page 27

City of Crucifixions.....page 29

Winter Rime.....page 30

The Potted Daffodils.....page 31

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City of Gold

Aug 11

As seconds slip into weeks,

And months melt into years,

Your streets of gold remain empty

Cutting through old buildings

Of shattered pains

And peeling paint.

In their husks,

Through hollow hallways

Pictures of landscapes and objects hang

And the wind howls through waking the dust.

Upon the No Man’s Land

Between the boy you once were

And the man you later became,

No armistice was declared to tame

The silent war without end.

Sometimes something appears to cast shadows

On the water in the well

But it’s only the reflection of someone not there.

Then spiders scurry across silver thread to wrap their prey.

Crows caw and tentacles crawl back into holes

And everything is still and silent once more...

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Endless Wander

We met

And I rested my hat,

Felt

Myself free

From the seemingly endless wander.

In the cells

Something seemed to stir,

Swell, some light

Stole upon the buds,

Some strength in the being

Of oneself, same self

Others found offence in.

You spoke

Of your own self horrors

And our crippling dullness

Dissolved.

Us, the two arms

On the one shipwrecked soul

Swimming out sluggishly

To the shore at last in sight.

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The Reluctant Messiah

You packed your self

In a shoe box of straw

And stowed it away

In the store room under the staircase.

Your extended family,

Your freak family of demons and djinns

Watched

As you tried on every suit

In your closet of Others;

- The blind flower,

- The orphan child,

- The glamorous socialite.

In your uneasiness,

The uneasiness of wearing stolen dentures,

You practised your smiles.

...There was a man come down

From a mountain, bearing a book

And a look of having lived many lives...

You thought you were a reluctant Messiah,

But it turned out

You were an eager martyr.

They nailed you to a tree

With the nine inch nails you dug out

Of your carpenter’s box of tools.

And with the matches you laid out

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In crosses, the pairs of matches

Converging in their centres, like cross-roads,

They set you on fire.

You watched their glancing faces dancing,

Dribbling like wax

Behind the peacock-blue flames.

In slowed motion you closed your eyes

And softly spoke their names,

Your benevolent countenance

Not flinching once

In the spitting, bark-splitting heat

Your shoebox heart

Was an orphan child roaming the Earth

Looking for the spring of its birth.

You were a shadow

Looking for a body to hinge itself to.

All the while you moved

Like a cloud of calm

Amongst the throngs,

The hem of your garment remained untouched,

No garlands adorned

Your proud, Minotaur neck,

Your zinc-pallor cheeks untroubled

By hot kisses and tearful embraces.

You came and you left

With neither a miracle nor a masterplan,

But you felt yourself the warden of the waters.

The fishes you didn’t multiply moved unthinking

But your quartz current knew where it was going.

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The Waves

The scratching scrawl

Torn across the page

Marked the fleeting.

This talk

Of orgasmic grief,

The waves welling

And then crashing

And dying away,

Let through again

The relief.

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1998

The Wedding Cake

It’s the aching moon.

It’s the drooling waterfall.

It’s the dancing the dark magic

In between the honeymoon petals

Confettied all over the bedroom floor.

It’s the incubation

Of the dust-pregnant summer heat

In this foreign land forced to play host

To the first week of our eternal bond.

With the cake I ate my words,

Surrounded by my jamboree of parents and uncles and aunts.

Your excited circle

Of school friends squirreling about you;

They, who since their school days,

Have been taken captive in much the same way;

Their stomachs bunted and burst on average

Once a year on a gruelling four year trail.

They lift and drop your blood-red veil

Sprinkled with pill-sized mirrors

And wrapped like a captain in gold braid.

They flicker and twitter,

Whisper, witter something coy

And then burst into blossoms of laughter,

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Wild cart-wheeling, Catherine-wheeling hysterics.

It is all a powder-painted blur

Of gaudy jewellery and strange, bawdy customs.

The only image that returns

In technicolour, high definition precision

Is the bridegroom making an incision

In the wedding cake and forcing it down his throat.

With the cake I ate my words.

I said

I wouldn’t

I shouldn’t

I couldn’t

I mustn’t

I won’t

I can’t

I shan’t…

Notwithstanding that every fibre of my soul forbade it,

Every sinew of the moon,

The river, the land made it

Happen in the happily-ever-after-end…

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In Fear of the Other

Smell of moshcate

About the wood.

Relief of late spring in every leafy nook.

Dew drops on blades

And vernal flowers speckle the weald.

You,

A little blue

With cold.

The children-

A hoop of holding hands,

Clinging about you,

Blue

With fear.

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Above you

A bird

Cocks its head.

The wiry

Claws

Clutching the branch,

Clamped with terror.

Beside it

A makeshift nest

Of bluish eggs,

A fragile hoop

Of woolly-blue domes.

Soon a chap arrives

In cobalt jumpsuit.

Cranks

And twiddles

And the engine

Splutters,

Flutters

Alive.

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The Screaming Trees

The walls of time are closing in;

But you’re privy to this,

And barely flinch.

You dream of the boy

Who wears the sunshine in his pores

As the wind winds through your sandy hair

And the sky stoops to press you against its breast.

The elements slip and slide for him

But they suit you down to the ground beneath your feet.

You slam the vault shutting out the traffic hum.

You go where he goes,

Seek out the bed in which he sleeps.

He hides out in a glowing alcove of leaves,

The tiny silk-weavers have spun him out

In silver thread.

The cocoon preserves him like a corpse.

Nothing comes of him.

No new life bursts from the shell.

You take of him what you can use

And in his deadness he offers everything.

It is a terrible rape of trust

But no judge nor God condemns you.

You slip through his under-wonderworld

And disappear into the shroud

Of the Monday morning metropolis crowd.

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Medication Nation

Depressed

Depress

Depross

Deproz

Eproz

Eproza

Eprozac

Eaprozac

Eatprozac

Eat prozac

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Thinking of You, the Autumn Near

You’ll think of me I hope

When you reap the wind

And slash the arms of corn flailing

And all is right with the world.

When the sun blinks

Through the frolic of flitting wings

And the town sleeps in the quilt of its own smoke,

You will think of me I hope.

When the claybeds suck at your gumboots

As you trudge home clutching your shotgun,

Your head I hope will burn with crimson autumn mugginess

And distant thoughts of me.

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Flowers and Butterflies

Oct 11

Your collection of dead butterflies showed your odd love of life.

Despite the inclement weather of your heart's strife,

You didn't see the soil thrown on the lowered casket,

You only saw the flowers in the wreaths and hanging baskets.

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Complacency

Jan 12

From the cocoon of complacency

Only strife and still-borns emerge.

The church organs drone a dirge

For the dead and those yet to die.

In the living years there is hope for change.

In hard times, everything wanes

And the moment comes to pass.

So people peal the bells and wake the congregation

For there is a great complacency come upon your nation.

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When Love Fails

Apr 10

At first the silent stars in the sky swirl together in the milk-white moonlight,

And fireflies flicker as early embraces linger in spellbound jasmine nights,

Something in the way you flowed into me was emphatically and ecstatically right,

In the deep, dark recess of my kissless, listless abyss,

You were a blazing scintilla of light.

Then came convolutions and revolutions and massive misconceptions,

Convulsions, revulsions, repulsions, rejections and dejections.

What was once devotion became a cimmerian, chimerian, god forsaken, spasmodic

damnation.

Then retribution and restitution, condemnation and absolution,

In the end all is potions and lotions, injections and crucifixions.

Till finally all is mere vanity, futile indulgence and infertile dust

And darkness that the hounds of hell run whimpering from.

This is what love does when it has done with you.

You’re broken and bleed till your ashen blue.

When love fails, other passions make do,

When hope fails, nothing can console you.

When the spirit is done, there is nothing to do

But bear the slings and arrows and take the fall that was due,

Gulp down the gut-rot and grapple the blues on the porch

Sitting hunchbacked

As the whip cracks

Watching love

Loot and shoot and burn your town down …

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Nocturnal Thoughts of Anna of America Trapped in the Land of the Free

Dec 09

growing up in chaperoned climes,

summertime,

in the jaws of stars and stripes,

there was bloodshed nonetheless.

you take from the past what you can mine

lumps of coal and diamonds as big as the ritz

are much the same.

it is still only your name you can ever lay claim to.

civil disobedience or allegiance to the flag,

it is still much the same.

if the folklore figures of our gnarled pasts

can't be heroes with axe in hand,

then they must at least be villains.

the neon full sign flickers over heartbreak hotel,

the crows turn gyres over bates motel.

beyond love there is only death and decay.

only the one that inflicts the pain can take it away.

play

because inertia is deadening

and no barren landscape can spring new life

laugh because silence is deafening.

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there at the cusp of new turns

you can watch the stars burn

holes in the ink black of the night sky

on a warm 4th of july,

and i can say you are the big apple of my eye,

and you can say

it is so

it is more

than i could have asked for,

more than the moon itself.

it is be

so let it be

these pages that i riffle

are one sentence a head

of all that i say

all that i think

all that i do

my life in chapter and verse

from cradle to hearse

flows from my pen ;

the pen is my body all flesh and sinew wrought

the endless ink that flows from it all my waking thoughts.

out on the mean streets the pulp fiction magazines of garish colours

fade and gather mache on the drains.

hoary headed

aided and abetted by the years,

you will be wizzened

and withered like me.

and we shall smile

content.

our lot

was our lot

and our lot was plenty.

we were kings and reigned

during our fifteen minutes of fame.

we will say

we will make

banquets and bouquets

of every day that fate brings

because we know of hate and why the caged bird sings,

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we know of the plans of mice and men.

then smiles uncurled,

the tiny flowers of our minute life unfurled

shall lie with the soil

and not care a whit,

and we shall pass

as all things come to pass.

as all is mere leaves of grass.

let it be.

we'll be free....

NOTE : THIS POEM CONTAINS 25 REFERENCES TO AMERICAN CULTURE; CAN YOU SPOT THEM ALL?

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9/11:

9 Out of 11 Questions About 9/11 Remain Unanswered

Apr 12

The spectacle of political

Propaganda whores and the spittle of the

Rabid dogs of war, give rise to the

Spectre of global tyranny, another

Day in history that will live in

Infamy. Bin Laden. Knowledge laden with

Shame and dust sends war machines fuelled by

Blood lust trundling on undeterred driven by

The hated, riven by the hateful.

Mass hypnosis, 24 frames a second.

Those that lie with autocratic dogs

Wake with fascist fleas in a cell where the bells

Ring the death knell of all liberties.

“..We are as a people inherently and

Historically opposed to secret

Societies whose mistakes are buried, not

Headlined, whose dissenters are silenced

Not praised; no rumour is printed, no secret

Revealed. With your help, Man will be what

He was born to be; independent and free...”

Notes: I wrote the poem in 2 verses - the first containing 9 lines, the second 11 lines. All the lines in the poem alternate

between 9 and 11 syllables per line. As I don't normally write to rigid structures I thought it would be a good writing challenge

to do so. The poem is intended to raise certain issues rather than state my personal political views on the subject.

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May 08

London

London is the sermon

That no one will hear,

Nobody cares.

Time folds in on itself

Under the force of its own speed.

Remember the fall after your summer of love

And invincible life?

It was the hallowed streets of this town

That convoyed you through

Its every social shindig,

Every shimmering soiree.

It was the legendary landmarks

Of this glittering metropolis

That welcomed you at every corner

Of every street.

It was this city of flashing gold

That cut the cracks in your teeth,

That lit the tracks of your feet

Out of the shadowed town of your birth.

There you were,

Finally alive.

After twenty moribund years of inertia,

You burst into life,

The air heavy with magic spores.

You were fallow no more,

Sallow no more.

Flanked by family and friends convivial,

The past was immaterial.

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Your part was finally congenial

To your place.

You were misdisplaced,

Uninfutile, uninfertile,

Dedispossessed, disunrequited

Death undone and unblighted

After all.

All those people that abused you,

All those words that bruised you

Were no more.

This town didn’t care

For the ghosts of your derelict past.

It nestled you in its steel wings,

Asphalt beak and concrete claw

And gave you the wings

With which to flee.

You were wax and feather graced,

Aquiline and proud faced,

You were free.

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Oct 97

You

The passage walls

Are closing in…

How are you then?

Did you bury what you showed me?

I remember what you told me

Of your collection

Of pressed flowers

And stuffed birds,

And what they meant to you…

Did you make it?

Did you find him to share the baggage with?...

Look at you now,

Smiling and laughing,

The little boy I used to know

Behind the sagging mask…

How are your parents?

Did you forgive them?

You seem to have come to terms

With the work at hand…

Was it hard?

Is it hard still?...

I play back

The picture of you

In my head.

At the table,

Barely big enough to rest the elbows

Upon the surface with any comfort,

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Saying those words

Which seem to have been made for you

To use-

Your signature tune-

A sad, forlorn refrain:

“I was scared.

And I didn’t know what to do…”

I heard the message,

And you grew in my eyes.

Anger and easy answers

Would have been understandable

But you found your own way

Which was all the more admirable…

Do you still think of me,

I wonder?...

I am not with you now

But I remember

And though I can’t help you,

I carry a piece of you

With me always…

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Oct 05

This, As It Stands

So this life.

This cell of skin,

Peppered with indelible reminders

Of where you’ve been

And of all your sins;

Your acts of vitriol

Which sought retribution and validation

But bought about none.

This barren scape of dissipation.

This grit-teethed, bit-champed volition

Ablaze with all those years of longing,

Those long-lost, love-lorn years of silence.

This life infiltrated with the arsenic of cynicism,

Filled with the deadening clop

Of the trotters

Of belligerent pigs.

This fetal, fatal careen into chaos,

Your trajectory into soot and soil.

This mill-stone.

This stonewall. This subterfuge.

This vice den you made your play pen

Of pernicious intent you gainsay

And yet make your own, call your home.

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This web of visceral gossamer fine

You flattened with a brick.

Kicking against your fears, you tear yourself

Grating against the grain.

This slumber that was once anodyne

Now claws you in your sleep.

This scrambling for gods and heroes you crave

To stave off any further descent

Into seething resentment and quaking rage.

This life of obsequious fools and phony piety

And hypocritical paragons of propriety

Drives you to distraction and destruction and death.

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City of Crucifixions

Feb 10

Did I need to shout to be heard?

There on my knees, at your feet.

As the asphalt picks at the stubbed-in gum,

You strip me bare

Stand me in the town square

And pretend I’m not there.

I am damp-drenched, gut-wrenched

Gasping, grizzled and gnarled.

Drunk blind on grape and grain,

Sunk in the gut-rot gulped.

As the hunger burrows into organs,

The laughing well-fed bulks hulk past,

The retail therapy generation

Pass by their facebook friends

Without a flickr

Of recognition.

This is a city of crucifixions.

Nobody whispers the words

That could have

Sparked every star in the sky

Like a swarm of startled fireflies.

Everybody joins hands to contact the living.

In the gulf between taking and giving,

Everybody suffers in silence

Together alone

Forgetting again

They

Are the source of the pain.

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Winter Rime

Dec 09

These were the 12 months that kept company

With the sun and the bells

Now do ring

As you fix your wreaths of holly

And watch the world weary through frosted panes.

These winter winds that slice through me

Don’t dampen my warmth for you

The magi’s starry journey seems now a distant dream

As the hordes throng through the shopping malls

Clutching love expressed in unneeded gifts

We let the children play

White mischief in snow and the sledge ride to simple ecstasy

While wiser folk temper their souls

Kneading good-will into the stuffing.

This hoary-headed season gives reason to remember a philanthropist

And god in swaddling and stable-safe

Brings forth all our hearts as we recoil from cold and drudgery

And as the doorway lets in sounds of silent nights

Into our homes sparkling with tinsel and lights

and smelling of pine and excitement,

We join hands and later lock arms

To remember old acquaintances forgot

As all the clocks and popped corks

In japes and jest,

Bring to rest the past

And ring in the new year…

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The Potted Daffodils

Mar 12

My sister gave my mother potted daffodils this year

With the Mother’s Day card that we all surreptitiously signed.

“They’re beautiful”, she said wiping a tear, “You’re all very kind”.

Wishful rumours notwithstanding,

The tumour had grown malignant.

Indignant

My brother dug a new hole in the ground

For the daffodils and other bulbs and tubers he found

In the shed nestled in faded packets of untroubled pockets.

I spent an hour kneeling by them snapping

Photo after photo of the blazing marigold trumpets

Almost as if they would wither if I stopped.

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Later when the mother’s day cake we had devoured had settled,

I went for a walk by the brook and copse where the speckled

Mistle thrush warble

In the frondescence away from the fluorescent city jangle and hum,

Past the glum

Boarded building where the hat factory once stood

Where my sister had worked as a girl

Just as my mother had done before her.

As the sun sunk and the dusk fused

The sky with bruised-

Peach ruddiness,

The dull bells pealed at the parish church.

A flock of students from the nearby university fluttered by.

And in the churchyard, where the serried gravestones lie,

Flailing in the gills of the evening wind,

In star-splayed petals and flame-yellow frills

Were the bobbing heads of yet more daffodils.