Paths in the Private Country

The memory in need
Is the implacable enemy of the creed,
Waits and watches its foe

The all-clawing frenzy on tip-toe;
Quiescent in the instant's repose
The thud of flurried gnawing years evoke.

The poet in his solitary moments, spoke
Those whispered words, memory's secret ear yoke.
His wares, his scares, ailments and balms

Suddenly at the oasis of his thirst, awoke
Transilluminating the hard wad of his private notes,
Clutching at the infant's murmurous innocence

The clear innocuous dogma of cries;
While his immodestly preened notes of travesty
Hark back; and the first poem playfully struck

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poem by T. Wignesan
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Is the Exile a traditional unsimplified Chinese Pictogram hanging on an unrolled-up Bamboo Scroll on the Wall

first
left downstroke
start from the top
plane out
let the long anchor tip roof-line curve sharply upwards
at the stern down-end
pile it in stuffed in the centre
leave the bottom open
that's where the studded boot rightly fits

Over billowing transmuted waters
the haze lifts
now and then
winds amber green waft and skim
with the late light caught shimmering
no albatross circles the mast
guilt is pure guilt without wanton arrows
there are no signs of land
but the proffered hand
the Wanderer knows no words of his own

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poem by T. Wignesan
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Night in the Eyes, Invading

I do not know if this is true what I see:
I see in some dim, distant, desolate rock-hold
gathering peoples, driven as though by common fear.
A low mournful humming drifts with the breeze
of manhood tread, and eyeless turban-headed
in the lambent darkness, fire-fly brands moving.
This symphonious humming fills my heart
with deep remorse I cannot quite understand.
In a winding never-ending line they keep coming:
mesmerically drawn as in a living dream.
They do not speak but it seems they are in
common bondage bound and move to words of order.

Someone is dying or some great catastrophe
has befallen these earthen men - for they do not speak!

So many seem to come, but only a few are here.
Yet they keep coming and around
a little rock are gathered cross-legged, naked
scalded knees jagged out, a cluster of brown skinny men.

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poem by T. Wignesan
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Feet, feet that walked away with the toes

Heavy the hoods of the eyes
that laboured the scan of horizons
Heavy the course of the thoughts
that sat unstirred on the sill of the stare

Heavy this ancient bottomed nose
sitting in judgment over this meat
Endlessly shunting the frenzied workers
now sniff-drunk and steam-bellowed in the street

This the scull careered through rutted scars
the primeval hair bushed in pathways
Where long tribes with long lances
prod the undergrowth for signs of lost bones

These the ears that heard the wake of worlds
wandering in the ever irretraceable tread
Ears though that admit the silent secrets
ever still and hospitable to the panicky refrain

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poem by T. Wignesan
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He who creates re-creates himself

for René Passeron

You may not grow old too soon
if
Things you have known will come back to you again
No revision nor recall need put them back in place

Time was when you knew the time
the place the face
Even the scarce women in prized moments gone in pain

Who would care nor what would it matter
in which life upon what water
you have trailed your fingers
upon waves of papers

Let your mind brush
some canvas in a rush
Left your mark
upon some bark

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poem by T. Wignesan
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Siluroid

I am the prize catch
I live in an artificial lake
fed by a nappe phréatique
I was put there to keep
lesser fish: carp
from taking up too much space
I live to be caught
and caught again
and be let loose as rain
I protest only to attract attention
Twenty minutes to make things look good
for the fresh-water sportsman

I know now well how to play the game

My almost fanless tail
A slithering mermaid mass from my puffed-up head
where overcoat-button eyes
sunk on either side
of my gaping gasping mouth

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poem by T. Wignesan
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Radically Chinese

one
stroke
a point
leftstroke bent
hooked
two
a cover man

man enter eight borders to cover ice

table receptacle
knife strength
wrap spoon basket
box ten to divine
seal
cliff
private
also mouth enclosure
earth
scholar follow

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Way out over Copland's Appalachian Springs

We dragged the slopes to our feet.
On the summit, we burnt our clothes
for wood and there shuffled our feet
in the hush of the falling snow.

We had come out of the scuffed grass.

With one look back in unbelief
exhuming the long trek
the silent keen
puffing through blubbery fingers.
We pulled the hoofed trail through
the trapdoor of our unchained links
foisting for new heights.

Beyond the Appalachian Mountains
the hanging fern on pine dripped snow
on moles burrowing in gashed hollows.

We paused. In that doubtful moment

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poem by T. Wignesan
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Notre terre qui est à Votre taille

Notre terre qui est à Votre taille
Forgive us please our enormous bilious hubris
The quasar-lit heavens smile only down upon us
For Our Master he presideth over the Universe

Our Architect-Father he beds down in the blackest holes
Our temple bells and lodges' knell toll only for Thee
While Thou slips from one parallel universe to another
Yeah, notre terre qui est à Votre taille

The muezzin's cry reaches far into the darkest cloud
From turret to galactic turret resounds the prophetic call
Colliding antennae make a murky Baghdad morass
The fallout heralds the bigcrunchy messianic massage

Our Master who art the shine on the Brahmin's head
Which knows no limbs feet chest nor shivering loins
Forgive us our cowering at the spewing Purusha mouth
For Thine is the thunder exploding forever and ever

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Embryo

You who sexless heard the pounding of the sex
nerves conditioned to the tune
through all the slushy push of distending flesh
in the ooze slime of semen vaginal fluid

Your eyes turned inward
heart brimming to the flush
fed by your central runaway generator
though
your frail limbs were hardly sketched
in the clasp of a Reichian curve
through all the terrifying pounding

More terrifying still
Now YOU see the crook of the aborting metal
the surgeon's staff
dig into your behind
puncturing
the gossamer sack of your promised dream world

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poem by T. Wignesan
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