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 🙂
the sky has become a crumpled sheet
the letters fall
near my feet
the mist is torn
to strips
my fingers itch
to lace through its whiteness
savour the withdrawal
dripping memories
emptying their wells
I want to find myself
the meaning
when I have mixed all colours
drawn something
I cannot interpret
like the letter
that has got caught
on to my dress
my hands tremble
I cannot remove it
it’s glinting at me like a sequin
I’m going to sew it
right there
it will be my patch
of peace
on these washed-out threads
widened
thinning the starch
making a veil
a see through void
like the mist
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
I would reach out for the towel after your bath
and you would be gone
in that moment
I would pretend to search for you under the bed
and inside the cupboard
and you would laugh
when I look inside my jewellery box
shaking the curtain
we would exchange this kiss
through the lace
and you would laugh even more
with its tickle
and I would tell you
“don’t ever grow up”
but you would continue
to play with my make up
and
play house
with your dolls
……….some moments are frozen
you cannot move them
out of their times
but they can move you
©Malintha Perera 2015
those moments
when even the water disappears
dragging us through the cracks
your mind falls apart
wood piece by wood piece
to sawdust
even the tears desert us when we want
that moistness
at those moments
let the body be the body
formations be formations
and use even those few moments
to go beyond drought
so that you will not return
as a passenger
to tread any waters again
©Malintha Perera 2015
Nearby, a small boy
was playing naked
on the sun-spit brown floor
as if he was the ocean
and the ground was the golden shore.
He was digging the earth
with a newly scraped coconut shell
and suddenly dashed off with a giggle
no…. not through that door
but rather jumped over low walls
that my mind was building upon.
He reached the tree
no … not through the guardstones
that I was in awe of
but rather climbed over the platform
clumsily
and then beckoned me
with his dirty small
hands, he even had a runny nose.
At that instance….
he was taller than the tree
and I was just another
stone
among the soil he had just unearthed
trying desperately to cover myself
even though
I had my clothes on.
©Malintha Perera 2015
this is supposed to be a call
from your future
and I’m you
you’re me
despite my lack of clothes
and no make up
I’m supposed to tell you
that I’m the last human on earth
where you sucked
out of its life
and in that haze
we got into each one’s belly
isn’t it great
do you feel proud
it’s a good thing
you don’t believe in life after death
I’m sure you would not want to
to be born again
amidst your spitted out bones
so when you are about to enjoy
your next lavish dish just remember me
this small boy from the concert
(and the debris of classmates)
we are your bulimia
and you are us
Tra la la la..
bon appetit !
c.r. Malintha Perer 2015
Watch them sink
between the ripples
Do you remember how
we used to trample their foam
when they were frothing
helpless on the shore ?
We watched them hanging on
to our sand castles
knocking them down
as they went
and we laughed
as they were dragged back
“They are just being themselves”, you said
What’s so different now ?
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
words
can never be traced
their curves
will lead you to many doors
down corridors
painted portraits
ancestors with wide brimmed hats
and long mustaches
their eyes will swallow your
true meaning
it will be like crushing yourself
when you refuse to look into their eyes
brushing aside
looking through the spaces
words
really don’t mean what they say
forgive them
and don’t be afraid to erase
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
Always in our search
for an audience
Down roads
dragging along a stretched out note
So many like us
we meet and part
The notes remain untouched
And when the time comes
at the river
and it’s time to sink the instruments
We will look at them
and would want to play so badly
the final chords
But they would sound hollow
and would sink
very quickly
And we will go much quicker
A stone crafted by moss.
©Malintha Perera 2015
it’s at times like these
I see the
adult in you
just as
when you stop feeding on my nipple
and look at me
to see if you are hurting me
just as
you lick my face, grabbing me
with your small hands
murmuring how much you adore
my taste
I want to drive this image
deep into my soul cells
carry it to my next life
so that if I meet you someday
I would know
that it’s you
my son
c.r. Malintha Perer 2015
For my two sons 🙂 with love
I wanted to hold it between my fingers
span its life,
a map
and see the landmarks
blinking in the sky.
The sky side stepped.
The empty pockets
that I had left
unfilled
inside each room
I had roamed
and poked at my eyes
despite the net.
I wasn’t the spinneret
this time
to add an invisible mesh
on top
and be the acting spider.
I was the victim
between the threads
caught
at last
by my own
prey.
It was either tear
the web down and be stung by the phantom spider
or copy paste the emptiness
to my i pad
under lessons learned.
c.r. Malintha Perera 2015
Dedicated to Malintha Perera
and written in response to her sublime Poem,
“The words are reading me”
Love it before
you learn to read
and pick the words –
just a handful, no doubt,
for some selfish purpose
or to drive a point home,
out of a thing, more vast
than you or a mere multitude,
bigger than the oceans
and the sky combined, otherwise
how can you call it Holy and Divine!
Before scheming through, love it with an open mind!
All of you Christians, Muslims, Jews
Hindus and Buddhists too –
anyone with a Scripture,
that they so love to call
both Holy and Divine,
do love it with an open mind!
Then the world should have been
as grand as the Elysian plains
but now, see how all the great religions
of peace and harmony are spread
across the world through chaos and bloodshed,
preaching peace…
View original post 59 more words
