https://www.facebook.com/lmanimekalai/posts/10152539458742645
AN ENGLISH POEM BY JEENA MARY CHACKO : "STALKING A POET"( For Aimee Herman)
Stalking a Poet(For Aimee Herman)
Stealthily I get inside her skull-
a tedious process, she leaves no maps
legends disintegrate upon touch
I track her scent-
In the raw free verses she sheds-
scrapping samples
bagging tagging - her verbs and iambs;
cells arranged assonance-wise-
I test, taste, navigate,
her dark alleys, dead-ends
Through unclimbable fences, I peer,
piecing together jigsawed sights
thirsting for one glimpse of the whole
(not the tail, not the trunkthe whole darn elephant!)
Scars on her shoulder blades, flight dissolved-
breathes swollen with fireflies
she breaks open her body-
bi-polar ends of her axis
cloning herself over and over-
a composition of mountains
unfolding-
a haemorrhaging story.
I wept over her autopsied corpses,
labyrinths losing into each other.
studied her dissociations,
heavier than secrets and dying stars;
bedless lakes,
I swum in her until my eyes wrinkled
hunting-
the language of her shut doors and open wounds,
the enjambment of her silence
each a thorn, a tear - untrammelled.
WE RELEASE THE COLLECTION OF ENGLISH POEMS BY JEENA MARY CHACKO WITH THE PAINTINGS OF SURENDRAN NAIR ON NONEMBER 1, 2015
https://www.facebook.com/lmanimekalai/posts/10152539445897645
"Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life." C Warnke
From Meherin Roshanara
Do not love writers like her
People with starlight in their eyes and trinkets on their feet. People who are difficult to love.
https://campusdiaries.com/stories/do-not-love-writers-like-her
Lakshmi from University of California Davis
14th Jan 2014
Do not love writers like her, you can have no secrets. Even your whispered nothings will become a character narrative, the blur of resemblances melting and morphing into an eerie picture of you; she will carry you by the multiple into all her stories. Do spare yourself the misfortune of sharing yourself with her. It is sickening how she can see meanings in your half-hearted shadows, in your gait, in your crow-feet. She will toss you about with great disregard when she writes, using you as muse, chewing you and spitting you out when unnecessary. By a happy misfortune, if a writer takes interest in you, you are forced to linger in sentences that bind you to paper: imprisoned in punishing scribbles.
Remember she can write you. Remember always that she has the haunting capacity to memorize you and all your mistakes. She will not be discreet, she will not overlook you. Your presence is as formidable to her as her own breath. She will exhale you brackishly as disgusting sea-water from her clogged lungs. Her attention is sharp enough to slice your heartbeats in one swift spearing of emotion. She can reduce you or deduce you, reason you or betray you. She can make you anything. She will take you as a lie into her story, a cynical backdrop, a tricky dialogue, a violation.
Do not wrong a writer. Do not cheat on her or abandon her. She is aware of your dismissal, and she will split her wrists to write with blood if you steal her pens. She is made by words, remember, and she will flow in them. One cannot take the songs of the soul away from itself. She will immortalize your shame for the world to see.
Therefore, simply do not wrong her. There is nothing more terrifying than her pain, nothing more deep than her loss. It might sound musical to you, or even sound like vacuous silence sometimes. But don’t think that her love is insubstantial. If you visit her words closely, they will burn you like no fire has. She can move you from ecstasy to anxiety, temptation to tears. She can be more grievous than mirrors, more unforgiving than the Saharan sun.
If you spare her that privilege, wait for her dangerous mercy.
It will convince and console in the most extraordinary of ways, even death then, will feel like making love.
Do not love writers like her.
No, I cannot give you abstractions. I cannot give you heart-stopping kisses, undying love nor searing passions. I cannot give you a forever.
But what I can offer you are simple, true and real – this moment, this buttery coffee, this promise of sparkling wit, our togetherness resonating the dance of stars, this inherent sense of each other, this understanding of the passing of time, changing of dreams, of stories hiding in the eye-creases, shoulder-shrugs and yawns. I give you this moment of silence, the answers within a gaze, small empathies, indulgences, a fresh towel, a careful listening, mad ideas, this cane-chair, this chuckle at your neat, curious jokes that no one gets but me, this adoration of your smell - a heady mix of bay leaves and peanut butter. I give you my gratitude, that special chicken soup you make that I am crazy about, the fuzz on our shared blanket, your shoulder becoming a boat that holds me, the calm inside all turbulence, our insane, cackling laughter which startles the neighbour's cat, the comfortable little habits and routines that fit us like smooth three-pin plugs into life’s socket. This music, this tangible day-to-day grind, this madness. I offer you the solace of small things. How is love more real than all this? I want to breakdown this forever-ness and have it, one bite at a time.
- Jeena Mary Chacko \ Mikimbizii
Photo: Maria Vasil'kova
Leena Manimekalai liked this.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Swarna Lata
4 hrs ·
“Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads, a woman who feels too much, a woman who writes...
Don’t fall in love with an educated, magical, delusional, crazy woman. Don’t fall in love with a woman who thinks, who knows what she knows and also knows how to fly; a woman sure of herself.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who laughs or cries making love, knows how to turn her spirit into flesh; let alone one that loves poetry (these are the most dangerous), or spends half an hour contemplating a painting and isn't able to live without music.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is interested in politics and is rebellious and feel a huge horror from injustice. One who does not like to watch television at all. Or a woman who is beautiful no matter the features of her face or her body.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is intense, entertaining, lucid and irreverent. Don’t wish to fall in love with a woman like that. Because when you fall in love with a woman like that, whether she stays with you or not, whether she loves you or not, from a woman like that, you never come back.”
- Martha Rivera-Garrido
AN ENGLISH POEM BY JEENA MARY CHACKO : "STALKING A POET"( For Aimee Herman)
Stalking a Poet(For Aimee Herman)
Stealthily I get inside her skull-
a tedious process, she leaves no maps
legends disintegrate upon touch
I track her scent-
In the raw free verses she sheds-
scrapping samples
bagging tagging - her verbs and iambs;
cells arranged assonance-wise-
I test, taste, navigate,
her dark alleys, dead-ends
Through unclimbable fences, I peer,
piecing together jigsawed sights
thirsting for one glimpse of the whole
(not the tail, not the trunkthe whole darn elephant!)
Scars on her shoulder blades, flight dissolved-
breathes swollen with fireflies
she breaks open her body-
bi-polar ends of her axis
cloning herself over and over-
a composition of mountains
unfolding-
a haemorrhaging story.
I wept over her autopsied corpses,
labyrinths losing into each other.
studied her dissociations,
heavier than secrets and dying stars;
bedless lakes,
I swum in her until my eyes wrinkled
hunting-
the language of her shut doors and open wounds,
the enjambment of her silence
each a thorn, a tear - untrammelled.
WE RELEASE THE COLLECTION OF ENGLISH POEMS BY JEENA MARY CHACKO WITH THE PAINTINGS OF SURENDRAN NAIR ON NONEMBER 1, 2015
https://www.facebook.com/lmanimekalai/posts/10152539445897645
"Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life." C Warnke
From Meherin Roshanara
Do not love writers like her
People with starlight in their eyes and trinkets on their feet. People who are difficult to love.
https://campusdiaries.com/stories/do-not-love-writers-like-her
Lakshmi from University of California Davis
14th Jan 2014
Do not love writers like her, you can have no secrets. Even your whispered nothings will become a character narrative, the blur of resemblances melting and morphing into an eerie picture of you; she will carry you by the multiple into all her stories. Do spare yourself the misfortune of sharing yourself with her. It is sickening how she can see meanings in your half-hearted shadows, in your gait, in your crow-feet. She will toss you about with great disregard when she writes, using you as muse, chewing you and spitting you out when unnecessary. By a happy misfortune, if a writer takes interest in you, you are forced to linger in sentences that bind you to paper: imprisoned in punishing scribbles.
Remember she can write you. Remember always that she has the haunting capacity to memorize you and all your mistakes. She will not be discreet, she will not overlook you. Your presence is as formidable to her as her own breath. She will exhale you brackishly as disgusting sea-water from her clogged lungs. Her attention is sharp enough to slice your heartbeats in one swift spearing of emotion. She can reduce you or deduce you, reason you or betray you. She can make you anything. She will take you as a lie into her story, a cynical backdrop, a tricky dialogue, a violation.
Do not wrong a writer. Do not cheat on her or abandon her. She is aware of your dismissal, and she will split her wrists to write with blood if you steal her pens. She is made by words, remember, and she will flow in them. One cannot take the songs of the soul away from itself. She will immortalize your shame for the world to see.
Therefore, simply do not wrong her. There is nothing more terrifying than her pain, nothing more deep than her loss. It might sound musical to you, or even sound like vacuous silence sometimes. But don’t think that her love is insubstantial. If you visit her words closely, they will burn you like no fire has. She can move you from ecstasy to anxiety, temptation to tears. She can be more grievous than mirrors, more unforgiving than the Saharan sun.
If you spare her that privilege, wait for her dangerous mercy.
It will convince and console in the most extraordinary of ways, even death then, will feel like making love.
Do not love writers like her.
Leena Manimekalai liked this.
No, I cannot give you abstractions. I cannot give you heart-stopping kisses, undying love nor searing passions. I cannot give you a forever.
But what I can offer you are simple, true and real – this moment, this buttery coffee, this promise of sparkling wit, our togetherness resonating the dance of stars, this inherent sense of each other, this understanding of the passing of time, changing of dreams, of stories hiding in the eye-creases, shoulder-shrugs and yawns. I give you this moment of silence, the answers within a gaze, small empathies, indulgences, a fresh towel, a careful listening, mad ideas, this cane-chair, this chuckle at your neat, curious jokes that no one gets but me, this adoration of your smell - a heady mix of bay leaves and peanut butter. I give you my gratitude, that special chicken soup you make that I am crazy about, the fuzz on our shared blanket, your shoulder becoming a boat that holds me, the calm inside all turbulence, our insane, cackling laughter which startles the neighbour's cat, the comfortable little habits and routines that fit us like smooth three-pin plugs into life’s socket. This music, this tangible day-to-day grind, this madness. I offer you the solace of small things. How is love more real than all this? I want to breakdown this forever-ness and have it, one bite at a time.
- Jeena Mary Chacko \ Mikimbizii
Photo: Maria Vasil'kova
Leena Manimekalai liked this.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Swarna Lata
4 hrs ·
“Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads, a woman who feels too much, a woman who writes...
Don’t fall in love with an educated, magical, delusional, crazy woman. Don’t fall in love with a woman who thinks, who knows what she knows and also knows how to fly; a woman sure of herself.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who laughs or cries making love, knows how to turn her spirit into flesh; let alone one that loves poetry (these are the most dangerous), or spends half an hour contemplating a painting and isn't able to live without music.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is interested in politics and is rebellious and feel a huge horror from injustice. One who does not like to watch television at all. Or a woman who is beautiful no matter the features of her face or her body.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is intense, entertaining, lucid and irreverent. Don’t wish to fall in love with a woman like that. Because when you fall in love with a woman like that, whether she stays with you or not, whether she loves you or not, from a woman like that, you never come back.”
- Martha Rivera-Garrido