Countertransference and other poems.
Art by Mayur Deshpande on Unsplash.
Countertransference
In a pub/ the wind/ blowing the smoke of cigarettes alive dances through our aches/ it has been keeping off this dusty room for us/ or perhaps/ forgetting its grayness// she's high on alcohol/I pretend to be a therapist/I know loquacity would draw rain close to sand & nose will seek appetite of it//I offer her a sit/ as night offers sleep to weary little eyes/ her wrinkles dissolved into hiccups// [but why can't I become happy] she starts// [my bad memories are gone now/ but I am growing more into retentions] [I walk past the past on a summertime/ to reck of history] [I feel prettier at night/ freed from opinion of my bathroom mirror] why/ tell me/ [have I become a cyborg whose body never grows] I ponder for minutes/ what words do therapists put first to enter your heart with cintamani/ why/ when/ how/ a thick forest// how a gentle touch might conquer the knotty forest of our shared woes/ but there’s a poem tugging at her lips/ like a riddle in my heart I can’t quite grasp// this night is bipedal/ the air brims the weight of shared wounds/ & I have dedicated each of my mousiness to the daylight foliages//I begin to speak/ & the words are a prayer/ purifying the mouth chanting it// sometimes/ life is a cocoon/ & in it/ a cursory stirring/ to think we are separate/ but the truth is hidden in the fiber of each mind/ we're but unrelated species unaware of their familiar grief//
Grateful
“Dedicated to Agbekẹ ”
In every situation, be grateful, says my grandmother,
whose hands nurse life as tenderly as her silver-tipped hair.
Even at your worst—when you pierce through the elytron
of history, like historian cannibalizing pieces of the past
in a fragmentary form, stay grateful. Even when birds,
those heralds of beauty—blow over into the conceit of sea,
as if their serfs could ever bow to the silence of their absence.
Yesterday evening, I sifted through the sepia-toned of my father's
photo album, a child walking through the playground of wonder
& realized arithmetic sometimes fails miserably in counting the stars
swallowed by the abyss. With the first flip of the album,
fireflies posed in their secret smiles just beyond the leaflet of dusk
as if the morning's caress might blister the petals soft glow.
the second flip, heavy with faces adorned in the memento of old
British finery, their hair—tribute to the grace of black.
Trousers—oversized, as if networking the stories of three nights
before my generation. The next flip, about water & a sailor,
somebody asks, can you swim the water to the end? He says:
all my life, I’ve been swimming, but there seems to be no end
to my swimming out of grief. Talking about my grandfather, fearless,
yet knowing the gun’s hollow whisper, the bullets sing like old ghosts
looping in the net of his survival. Then the last flip, an old picture
of grandma that reminds me of the guest snatching the breath
of prayer from her heart. So little was I to understand the old
woman's farewell, “Goodbye son, goodbye”, & I couldn't do more
than weep like science that shaped her odd
& named her late. I rushed to her grave, “a vessel for the unending
dialogue we’d started ages ago. Grandma,” I called into the silence,
“in losing you, have I lost all my wings? Should I still be grateful?”.
About home.
“Dedicated to Agbekẹ ”
that day of all pious days I was only six
when I left home
with Grandma who said we'd be returning later
after a week
but I knew she weaves tales a lot
as she packed everything &
styled me
in such a way a stylish boy on TV might be dressed
by her British granny
hoping I grow up forgetting the haul of home
but these sharp memories of naivete
these familiar smells on my clothes
the soft nest of my bed
the touch of close grace
in this warmth
where I carve out
my harborage
had already grown
into me
& to them
I've much grown
no matter where the yellow buses take
my spirit
it is the tender pulse of home
I seek in every
nightmare for he who turns
from his nest
carries a sack heavy with what-ifs
& could-have-been-s
years after we both returned home
I to our old house
she to her maker
but the room is still filled
with memories of her
now i understand her plight
now i understand
her unspoken messages back then
about home
