Just felt like loving you today
when I had nothing to offer
from the trees in my garden
where they’ve taken my every flower.
Just felt like looking at you today
when the emptiness of things
filled my muscles and bones
which I’ve given up as offerings.
Just wanted to sit like you today
and breathe in the scent of the stars
that sometimes roam the earth
in firefly bodies.
Didn’t mean to wet my eyes today
at the things I saw,
how even the floor in my room
turned out to be the most beautiful.
At the mouth of two rivers.
These feet that have carried me
are not aware of the skies above.
There is an extra wink in the stars tonight.
As if mocking me.
Mocking this pain that is a flat line now,
infront of me that sometimes
takes the shape of a lone mallard.
There is no telling
what silence is made of.
But I know just this now.
What is beating inside me
is the sound
of my own two wings to fly.
in a place
we stole pebbles
to throw at the stars
I open a pouch of dew
to find another world
early in the morning
when dawn opens
its first flower
scents of infinite aeons
become one with one breath
silent tea
these graphic moments
smudged stars
if only we could
firefly
found you again
in the silence
in my rosary
new moon
same posture
on and off cushion
breathe with me
the scent
of this moment
it’s all rain
in this world
this silence
full of crickets –
Shakyamuni
monastery night
only the cherry blossoms
allowed to stay
blowing on my tea
hands gentle
around a tin cup
hoping I can sip the summer
and be with the falling leaves
feasting
on pine needles
I drink in the gathas ;
I’ve forgotten to beg for food
and the blossoms keep falling
so alone up here
I startle
hearing my own laugh
this attachment to solitude
is so good
how soon
the night sinks
behind the trees
as if the perfumed plums
is the land of the Buddhas
***Haiku Presence
Issue 56 (October 2016)***
Our paths crossed
just for a moment.
You were so big
in your little world.
I was the smallest.
Location : Karandulena Monastery, Sri Lanka
If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead,…
summer wind
the ins and outs
of a butterfly
Publication Credit : bottlerockets Issue #34, Feb 2016
from puddle
to puddle…
street lamps
The Heron’s Nest XVII.4 (12-15)
© Malintha Perera 2016
The mist is just right
to be fed into the mouths of the trees.
How many sentient beings must be hungry ?
Yet
there is a filled hollowness
in the depths of the mountain cliffs
and it’s the silence that moves
inside the incense smoke
that is insatiable
like a belly
deep in the three worlds.
© Malintha Perera 2016
flowers take up the space within me
to such an extent
so much so that when I walk along the path
i get
lost
inside the flat lands
touching so many wild flowers
i don’t mean to carry so much of their scent with me
I keep reminding myself that they are my
emptiness
that whispers so many teachings
that I can overlook the weeds that have grown within me
that this ache I feel
is nothing
compared to the fullness of things
© Malintha Perera 2016
The rain has gone.
It has pulled away my words along with it.
I’m left to dry on a chair
looking at nothing.
My hand has drawn nonsense
on the notebook
of mated lines and circles.
I have ruined many pages.
I have searched
for a nameless self.
© Malintha Perera 2016
freeing chains.
A bee’s wing.
Water tongues
lapping void.
The light is a formless spray
sprinkling on my face.
Making me squint.
Reminding me
to smile.
poem and image © Malintha Perera
Brushing
My brows
My palms
Closer
In a clasp
Walking
The woods
Just breathe
Image and poem © Malintha Perera 2016
it is the least I want
but
the perfect place I want it to be
the snakes have long faded
this flower in bloom is ready to burst in to thousands of petals
kundalini
rising
this matter of atoms
who would have thought
this existence
with cosmos
is just a crack
within a void
of a cell
inside where galaxies of jewels
shine
mirroring each other
a quilt of patched up colours
of planets and stars
the crown opens
we are one
© Malintha Perera 2016
To see a butterfly
taking off from an open flower.
You become it.
Neither the flower nor the butterfly.
You are that moment
that get released from both.
An invisible
spring
uncoiling.
A bubble
swelling
bursting.
It is unbearable.
So fleeting.
You cannot capture the feeling.
And then
………….you forget.
© Malintha Perera 2016
A bird song
Expands
To become a sheet
For me to crumple
And aim
© Malintha Perera 2016
So
When it was over
The ashes were toppled kingdoms
Only the scent of incense
Hung back
Like fresh ghosts
© Malintha Perera 2016
as I move
on to the tip of my nose
they surface with gills made of spoons
stirring the broth they live in
no wonder I can’t see the bottom
this neon identity
from surface to surface
a flamboyant centipede
my breath makes beads
nose tip against nose tip
staring at each other
facing so many
I put my hand against the facade
and distorts my own self
looking
in to me
Image and poem © Malintha Perera 2016
Dimming light is so close to me.
Inside it is darkening so many things.
I will be walking inside its garden with fireflies.
The mosquitoes
take the maximum out of me.
©Malintha Perera 2015
Japan Information and Culture Center (JICC) and the Japan-America Society of Washington DC (JASW) are pleased to announce the winners of our Autumn 2015
Weblinks:
http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/events/haiku-contest2015.html
http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/press-releases/press-release-haiku2015.html
paddy field…
the moving hands
of a scarecrow
-Malintha Perera
All is in one and one is in all…
Lee Jenkins, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, recently did a feature on NBA star Lamar Odom. Odom’s eccentric and sometimes questionable behavior has been well documented throughout his career, from his fame as a youth basketball star to his marriage to one of the Kardashians. He recently emerged from a drug and alcohol induced coma and is reported to be getting better by the day.
Jenkins sums up his superb feature about the enigmatic Odom by saying: ‘Strip away the size and the handle, the addictions and the demons, and you are left with the sweetest of souls.’
The sweetest of souls. How beautiful. Tender. Peaceful. Content. Loving.
When all of the baggage has been stripped away, the personal story dropped, isn’t this sweet soul at everyone’s core?
Yes.
Unravel a ball of yarn in search of its center and all you find is emptiness. Likewise, when you unravel…
View original post 50 more words
In the aftermath of the Paris massacre, there has been much public consternation, accompanied by ubiquitous expressions of solidarity. Some have argued that there is deep hypocrisy in lamenting French deaths while ignoring equally gruesome loss of life in other parts of the globe, as in Kenya, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Mexico, Palestine, or the United States, where African Americans and other etnic minorities are the victims of pervasive institutional violence and prejudice.
Others observe that our exclusive preoccupation with human suffering is an expression of speciesism, and that the human proclivity for violence cannot be curbed until we stop the animal holocaust that deprives billions of non-human animals of their freedom and lives every single year.
While acknowledging that it is true that most humans tend to care more deeply for those whom we consider “our own”, it is neither fair nor helpful to criticize harshly the concern or solidarity of…
View original post 47 more words
You may be silent
But your thoughts are amplified
Rings
That call me
To pick up
I’m listening
My mind is a space
Where you make shapes
You are mindless
In an awareness
Where I am
The time
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
In this hermitage
where the roofs cling to the moss
The vines
are extensions of myself
that cover the depth
of a moving spring
Loneliness is bent
washing her feet
and it’s the moon she sips
inside her cupped hands
The connection breaks
I’m out in the open
There is no hermitage
I search
for myself.
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
Nursing this stillness maturing inside me
It’s an ache so raw, almost like a blistered sheet
knotted up and made into small buds
confined to their limited spaces
and all I want
is to breathe without an anchor
To canoe without oars
Just floating and then to
sink
this coma
in the very rivers it gave birth to
And to be back
among the chaotic leaves
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
It wasn’t a rose.
Just a wild flower among the spiky leaves.
But still
its wide petals were uncountable
with so many tiny insects living inside them
and for me
it was the flower that the Thathagatha
have smiled and touched
branding all flowers,
marking their depths,
saving them.
The grass has grown around the stones.
It’s like a marshy land now with only creatures
that come out without being seen.
The only sign that they are there is the sway of the wild leaves
here and there
or an occasional sound calling out to each other.
Maybe it’s a warning that I’m watching them.
If only they know that I still know the path exists underneath,
that it’s familiar like the lines on my palms. Every curve,
every nudge.
This is beauty.
This space to share it with so many
and just let it be, a haven for unbound forms.
Where they go in and out of so many closed doors.
A bird calls out among the trees
and so many answer.
I hold my breath and listen, beginning to walk
among the sounds and sink
between each stop
when they breathe.
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
The day would be a daze for me
And I will be the smoke
Wafting aimlessly
Brushing you
I don’t want to linger
Smother you
And watch you gasp
Against my breath
It’s difficult to take a shape
My heart seeps between
Stilled leaves
I cannot carry your scent
Nor mark you with mine
Let me rest
Under roots
Don’t mistake me for the mist
And come close
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
If I say I want to dust away the stars
From the sky
And make clusters of pillows
Will your eyes be the same
Looking into mine ?
And if I tell you that it’s not the green
I see
In the leaves
And that they draw me in
When I go too close
Will you continue to smile
Without wavering ?
I may seem like a dislodged space
Between two shapes
And the frills you see
Are not my own
The print is made of thrusting oceans
That have refused to go back
In search of shores
What of my hair ?
It may seem too tame
Inside a knot
But you never see me
Alone by myself
When I free it from confined frames
How they tumble down
And wrap the mountains
You will not find me then
There will be no trace of me
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
I will walk into it
The door firmly shut behind me
Enter the moonlight
The only thing
That will be with me.
I will not hear any noise
Only the sound of my breath
How the thoughts skip
And it will be me
Too tired
And broken
To weep
Deep.
However much I wash
The spaces
Would cling on to my skin
The words never stays
They would slip away
Unglued
Unplugged
Twisted
Strings.
The flowers fail to see me
I am a blank
An unsigned space
And when they touch
It’s them I hurt
Their petals will shrivel
Falling
Infront of me.
It will always be me then
Alone in this opaque shell
A yolk
At the center
Naked
I don’t want to break.
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
Buddhist Poetry Quarterly Magazine (Binara Poya Issue), 27 Sept 2015
Read on line :
http://issuu.com/buddhistpoetry/docs/bp_sept_2015_issue
Download :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jj1glt1oxongixr/bp%20sept%202015%20issue.pdf?dl=0
: If I’m a butterfly, I’ll be a foolish one, not to hide but to bask in the shining sun! To sleep, any tree will do and any with flowers will be my favorite ones.
: I would love to walk on all four as all of them would provide me what I look for during a walk, solitude. But if I must make a list of preference for seven days of a week with only one option per day it will be ABCDABA. It is because the…
View original post 347 more words
The questions for my nominator (for the Liebster Award) Amit Rahman. Of course anyone is welcome to answer 🙂
