Interlude (51)

Including this as Part 59.1, perhaps a sort of status of things, as we wind down towards the last few poems in this series. The countdown begins: 2 more poems, 2 more interludes… then who knows!!

Part 59.1

It is the futility of negotiation: I, like
a dancer with two left feet and then
one more to trip over, bringing the
last fifty years crashing down with me,
haggling with the universe, making
for it an instalment plan — after all,
the universe must have more
reparations to pay than the average
sinner. Instead, it sits smug, quoting
my own poems back to me. You can’t
win against an audacious universe.
But you can’t lose to it either. It won’t
let you. Its burdens are too large
already or its algorithms too stubborn.
But what is the price of an ordinary
life with its ordinary complaints? The
universe is a canny accountant, it
bills me for golden sunsets in Kusadasi,
in Dambulla, for fireflies in Kuala
Selangor, for rain – warm and light,
falling like pongamia flowers, a carpet
of white at dawn…and for poetry.
Hence the loud recitation. Hiding
behind the clouds. Throwing my lines
back at my face. I make up some more.
I have more angst. I have less to lose.
My forever is still a finite thing. It sits
like a parrot on a purple jacaranda
tree spitting out bitter seeds. I blame
the moon. It is the worst arbiter. Next
time, I think, I must lobby with the
wind. Can we not reach a settlement?
Can it not honour its dues. Ordinary
dues? But all we have is a stalemate.
Everything still. The moon frozen in the
doorway. Me, clutching at nothingness,
this moment stretched on treetops and
stars, the light neither here nor there,
a poem sprawled on the pavement
and a whole fucking universe, like a
fishmonger in the market, blithely
trading a lifetime of colourlessness
for a wedge of blistered yellow sky.