All these Dot Stories are copyrighted to Munayem Mayenin
Radha
Radha was my Matilde! But since I am no poet she never got sonnets and songs of love and despairs from me! Yet, she always kissed me with her soul making me a song, making me a sonnet and let me live that sonnet, that song with her in little moments which are the only stamps I have got to show for my living of this life! I lived in only moments’ that would fall from her mouth like honey-drop, like April’s wet-leaf letting go a silver drop of water and I would be the space taking it in. I only have memories of a few moments scattered across the peninsula of despairs and desolation of a life spent in not being loved: a stone of Stonehenge, a rock without any moss growing over its deathly face.
One of those moments with Radha, I remember, we were standing outside The Lyric. Evening’s mouth was open and, the sky was loving enough to let silver flow in her open bloom. We stood beneath the bright yellow lights, smoking. She and I, standing next to each other, almost touching. I felt my being arched towards her and hers mine forming an arch of our souls connecting us while the white smoke rose upwards through the yellow canvas of lights that grew over us making us almost a bridge stuck on the ground that felt the seismic earthquakes that were breaking our hearts, raging.
Radha does not speak: Radha whispers velvet pearls, lilac clouds, purple Lunaria Annua, mint green tea smoke, rising. Radha flows out like water flow on a spring and she makes me the spring bed. In those moments I touched her back, just. She spoke of her being at the Frankfurt Book Fair earlier in the year. She said she was going to Switzerland for a week or two. I looked at her in that wonderful evening that must have a memory of how astonishingly radiant she looked but nothing will ever know how my eyes saw her for that image of her made my heart bled of millions of needle stitches numbers of which must not be revealed. Had I have the power that evening I would have created a new universe and taken her into it and become a bubble of our own bursting like imsillions of supernovas! She looked a light-wet young bride, a living song. I called her in my mind My Bride since that evening. But she has never been my bride for we were on different points of the grid; always singing from the wrong song sheet.
Today, I remember it since, somehow, The Lyric came back to my mind and I went back to those few short moments outside The Lyric, standing beside Radha, looking at my own heart outside taken the shape of her body. Those moments became my life-times and sustained me to be the rock, the dead rock with no moss over it or the mute bleeding Stonehenge stone burying myself and my dreams continuously and the cold cold cold knife of desert desolation chopping on making a fire of being left outside: unloved. But Radha is my stamp for I forever loved her and sung her; Radha, my Beautiful Bride!
Boston
It was a dream happening in reality. Bakerson was riding high, got a phd before his name, in love and planning to propose to Lisa, even bought a ring. No one can imagine Boston without the yellow cab and to him, Lisa and he was the yellow cab; one did not exist without the other. And yet here came the six month explosion that placed his head and heart in disarray.
The university offered him the chance to go to the Arctic Science Lab for six months and conduct a special project. This was a chance of a life time and yet he could not bear thinking he would have to stay apart from Lisa all that time, not propose, not get engaged, not get married and not do a whole lot of things!
Yet it was Lisa who pushed her to go and said: Six months will go like wind!
What do you know about the wind Liz! Bakerson talked to the face that he drew on ice with his finger, supposedly of Lisa. The wind blew hard howling through the emptiness that felt like invisible cold knives passing through his body as cold microwaves and it felt almost traveling in slow motion! Seconds seem like million years. He sat there and felt his mobile phone. It was the only thing that was his link to the world, to the universe, to Lisa and now it stopped working. The whole communication system collapsed in the extreme weather condition. Nothing was working. It will take a considerable time for help to arrive.
He looked at the phone again just in case miracles happened. This thing was the only thing that made sweetest of sounds when a Lisa’s text came or ring that made his heart jump out of its shell. He would feel he was not dead but now it seemed the whole universe had died and along with it he was dead only he became a ghost in this expressionless white cold bare barren landscape where he could only draw a face.
Only God knows, he spoke to the face, how long this will last. I will accept to die gladly millions a time, if someone came to tell me now that this phone was going to work, that it will ring again and, that I will have a way to know that I was still alive and not dead and I hear her ring this phone again!
The wind blew harder as the sun set. Bakerson smoked as he circled around the Lab’s desolate perimeter where he was nothing but a post script of a ghost bleeding in longing’s of love and separation!
Babushka Dreams
On Sandown beach the evening looked Shangri-La; wearing summer breeze fragrance. The sky was bare in the greyish darkness. Shanklin went beneath the moon lit waves of the weaving sea: writhing, seething, hungry sea; crying, breaking, aching, screaming in absolute disarray. He stood on the beach and saw the triangle between Brightstone, Ryde and Shanklin and wondered as to how he had acquired this vision.
He thought of his weird dream. The dream of heaven becoming a giant trapedium of 12 years and hell got deleted. Further, he heard that even god himself was not sure what exactly happened. He was not sure where the light was anymore and he sought to seek it only to realise that his limbs had fallen apart, even though hungry and thirsty, he could not eat or drink; nor could he sleep.
He further realised that he had just died. That’s the best news so far, he thought. The telephone rang and the angel said: Time’s up! Did he wake up or was he dead?
Dr Embasinga’s Lot
When Dr Embasinga opened his surgery at Belle Street no one could ever pronounce his name, not even his chosen people including the young receptionist, from Ironmonger Avenue by the Silk Pond. She spent a long time trying to learn his name, yet, only managed to confuse herself by associating it with the Base or Basin or Embassy (whether it was the cigarette brand or an embassy she was not sure anymore) or Sing Along!
People were polite to him, though shocked and discomforted inside for the fact that this gentleman, a G.P of some sort, surely, was sent in here to serve a all-white population where he did not fit in. They ended up naming him in the village as Dr Motivator. Did he know that he was nothing but a black man to the very people he was saving, helping and supporting with his best?
However, people never called him by his name, but only as the Doctor! Hello Doctor was his polite lot; hello Monkey was his rude lot and BB for his worst lot; Dr Embasinga’s lot. He did catch up with all this gradually but did he care: not really, for he had taken the Hippocratic Oath to save and protect life, and help pass its light on.
Did it hurt! Who was to ask Dr Embasinga who now was busy delivering someone’s baby for the ambulance had not turned up in time at his surgery and he was now all white in his white apron contrasting his reddened black hands that held a baby up to the white mother to whom the baby looked like the soul of Dr Embasinga; a red beautiful soul that was now crying, turning her eyes into a landscape of heaven which only Dr Embasinga could see, now.
The Purple Heart
‘How much do you love me?’ asks the Child.
‘Well, let me see….’ The mother replied and paused and then said: let me tell you a story.’’
‘Go on! Go on!’ sang the Child.
‘Once upon a time, she said, there was a Prince who loved this Princess who did not love him back. So to just make the Prince go away she said: ‘If you love me, go and get your mother’s heart for she knew the Prince could not possibly get that.’
The Prince ran to his mother and asked for her heart and the mother let him take it off her ribcage.
And then he ran and ran and ran….’
‘And then what? Then what….?’ Impatient child urged on mother to hurry on.
‘And then he hit a rock and fell and got badly hurt while his mother’s heart fell off his hand and was lying on the ground.
As he lay on the ground, bleeding, he heard someone speak: ‘Are you alright, my darling?’ but he could not see anyone.’’
‘Who was it? Who was it?’ The child danced on his mother’s lap.
‘Can you guess?’
‘Was it his mother’s Purple Heart?’
‘How did you know that it was his mother’s heart and that it was purple? My little Prince!’ She kissed him.
‘Because I know your heart is Purple, mum?’
‘How do you know that!’
‘When you kiss me you become a purple flower and I know your heart is purple.’
‘Okay then, back to the story, so the Prince got up and picked his mother’s Purple Heart and started running again to get to the Princess who then turned him away.’
‘Ooooohhh!’
‘So you now know how much mum loves you?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
‘As much as your Purple Heart!’
‘Don’t you go and give it to any Cruel Princess, will you?’
‘Oh, no! I won’t give your purple heart to anyone but the yellow bird.’
Blue Rickshaw
Outside his university gate, gateway to the universe, he stood like a glistening statue in summer sun, penniless he may be that day, but his eyes had bigger dreams and wider spread of a power of lights than mythical gods in Olympus; waiting for a rickshaw to get to the newspaper office where he worked part time but could he possibly imagine a blue one coming by! No, they would be red, green or orange with cinema advertising bill board colours.
Yet he had no money today to pay for the ride; five miles to walk otherwise. He had to go to work. He thought getting the fare from Ajay from the newspaper office. The rickshaw, not a blue one, came and he got on and rode to the office.
Wait here, please. I am coming back. It took a while to walk to the office and back with the two takas borrowed from Ajay; but the rickshaw puller had already left. What a dilemma for he was now forever in debt to him! He had owed nothing to anyone till that point yet now he did and did for the long haul since he would never be able to pay it back! He kicked himself and now, all these years later, being kicked at by life itself, this image of a blue rickshaw and the 2 taka-debt got tangled up. He needed to remember that rickshaw, that rickshaw puller, that 2-taka-debt to bring him to the image of the blue rickshaw!
On the beach of Isle of Wight he walked smelling curries for bigger dreams and wider spread of a power of lights than mythical gods in Olympus had been eaten and erased away by the unflinching waves of hot and hostile sea of time. Now, he worked at a restaurant serving curries and often received tips from the smelly wallets of drunk or sunk people, yet that two-taka debt to the rickshaw puller was still as fresh as a cut in his palm for that debt now connected him to this blue rickshaw. This blue rickshaw image that became his eternal boat where all his bigger dreams and wider spread of a power of lights than mythical gods in Olympus gathered like smiles of a happy day! He picked a pebble, looked at it and then looking at the horizon over the sea he skimmed the stone and watched how it made a line of waving arcs and he imagined the blue rickshaw now taking a mythical ride over the wavy line of these arcs.
Emmaphire
He dug this round hole in the corner of the garden. Dark soil lifted the lid of earth and a fragrance opened her inner heart’s radiance which he inhaled as he dug. Gardening is like treasure hunting; one might find finds that find connections to ages of the garden: Iron Age, Ice Age, Stone Age, Roman Age; all hidden beneath the earth and, as they are silked out of the earth they ring bells of dancing time if one knows how to just receive.
Out of this circle of earth came a round stone like an explorer’s watch, golden brown, a small heart shaped pebble, almost like a ring and a white-grey dead snail shell, shining. He froze in time for these things now glowed in his palm and he remembered the cover of a book he had read. He felt as if the book had come to life on his palm.
This watch, this ring-heart and this grey white beautiful snail shell spoke silence in exposition. He placed them on the grass like emeralds placed on a glistening green magic carpet. Then he planted two grape vines in the circle of earth and watered them. Wet in water, sun and the silk of his affectionate eyes the vines stood as the face of life.
They might one day produce emerald grapes; but for now he picked this watch, this ring and this snail shell and he said to himself: How about that! He held these items between his palms as the emmaphire stones of the universe as though without them his heart will fail to beat.
In Dreams
Stuck in the tube, between stations, under the ground, obviously, middle of nowhere which must be near somewhere in some relation, we sit still inhaling exhausted air and dehydrated space; fuming but no smoke rises in colours or sounds. Suddenly the announcement speakers made a noise nicely waking everyone up and like everyone else with hopeful eyes I look to the public speaking system for any news of movement. Disappointed we sigh and settle back.
Good morning everyone. As I was coming to work this morning I found this book on the bus and I opened it. Man! I do not read much, but this seems to be a poetry book and it is full of good stuff! Listen to this:
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
I am not going to read the whole poem though, the best bit is:
Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry `We are ripe, reap us!’ and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills.
This is good stuff! I hope I did not bore you to death with this poem! Hope to run along soon! Good day!
Train gets started a few minutes later. We are relieved and everyone resettled back to their seats and goes back to the silent jungle-tree mood.
As I got off the train I saw this woman in her mid thirties talking to the driver at his window.
Thank you for reading this! I loved your reading!
The driver has poked out his head by then and he was all flushed up now.
Wow! Thank you, he said and he looked at her with great disbelief in his eyes.
I must have your name!
James Marshall, yours?
Melanie Miles. I loved your voice which apparently I have been hearing as you read this poem for the last ten years in my dreams if I may share this impossible with you and, she paused for a second, and, startled again, and this book is mine that I had left on the bust last night!
Goodness me! The driver almost choked. Recovering he said: And I have been seeing you in my dreams all my life!
(The quote is from Harvest Moon: Ted Hughes)
Katherine’s Baby
Katherine disappeared like electricity does at night blackouts times at middle of wars. I was left hung like an imaginary bridge between the banks of Atlantic. I was hung there forever. Luckily, I realised that there was the ocean beneath me and the sky above so I replicated myself both in the water and the sky.
The only problem was both the sky and the ocean was Katherine! Did she know that! No, she stayed wrapped up in whatever it was her life threw at her, away, disconnected and dissolved. I carried the can with all the worms coming out and still counted words and remembered her last anonymous gift, a bloody poster, a damn great one at that, of some kind she designed for me! That is the only physical thing I had of her where there was this ring and the watch over the spread of God knows what!
A poster! But then, years later her poster was all over the Broadway. A musical coming up and it was her who was to perform there! I disbanded my hung-up den and bought a one way ticket to go and see Katherine but the Broadway was as hollow as my dreams for Katherine was not there anymore. Someone told me kindly with an American kind of benevolence that she had left to live in New Hampshire!
You mean, Hampshire!
Oh, yes, yes. I heard she was going to have a baby!
A baby!
Yes, a baby, that comes out of a lady’s tummy you know! A bay bee!
I took my leave before inciting this guy’s sense of irritation further. And now Katherine has this baby for me to resolve like her blackout, a blackhole eating me away! Whose baby is it! Whose baby Katherine! Where are you?
i
In the shower we walk on the bridge where the shadows of the sky clouds interact with the black pitch and the lights and a grey works out over the space where our conversation forms a sonar canopy.
I look at her and feel my heart failing! I do not know how to look at her for each time I do I feel my heart is breaking! Oh, this woman! The core of this universe and how she cuts the red meat of my heart that has gone on a lunatic mixer of all colours!
Look! She exclaims suddenly stopping. She sat down on the pavement and minutely looked at something on the ground. The shower has stopped. I sat down in front of her.
Two of us now sitting like two hillocks facing each other forming a small valley between us; our breathes were reaching each other.
What is it? I ask and she showed me something on the road. A shower drop made a lower case of letter i on the road which was now a patchwork of dark wet spots and dry grey-white dust. And here before us is a little wet moist black line and this little dot over it.
This is us! Can you see it! She took a photo of it and I just stamped it in my soul!
Weeks later she sent me a painting of that road where two hills fall to form a little letter i
Ifa’s M
Ifa has sent me an M from Nigeria a land of black pearls and brilliant spread of beautiful earth singing so many a diverse songs at the same time and her M is doing that to me as I speak. A cowrie shell! An Mbuum! Ifa’s M!
Why did she leave in the first place! Why won’t she come home! Why won’t she let me come and bring her home! No, she is a dreamer: loving you but won’t let you love her; if this is designed to drive you to absolute lunacy, then hers is the most successful strategy of the greatest of wars!
I try to imagine this river is coming from the Ifa Mountain carrying her ring and watch and I keep a look out, scanning the silver pearl waves on the ever changing roof of the current humming the sea in high tide like my heart humming Ifa.
Do I find the ring? Do I find the watch? No, instead a 2P coin lands on the steps like a brown kiss on my palm. I keep it like the core of the earth, if I ever find home or if Ifa ever comes home, to give it to her!
Ifa’s M is still eating away my heart as I walk back carrying empty Sahara inside being wet silently while my heart is nothing but the steam blocking and choking the lid of the kettle of my throat and my eyes now is a monsoon sky’s blur.
Carley’s Birthday Party
Sally said to Millie to tell Shelly to call Kelly to ask her mother Molly whether Jilly could come with Polly, her cousin to go to Carley’s Birthday party at the Salsberge Theatre Crop’s Café.
No returned as an answer which relayed in a long line of Oh! No! So! Go! Till it reached Sally who then rallied it to Carley who was expecting all the guests.
No, that’s not right and she decided to go and knock on Kelly’s mother’s door which was ajar. She came out, smiled and invited Carley in! Carley collapsed in her rage and could not say anything like what she was planning to say; since Molly had just nipped all her extra unnecessary thorns and pruned her into a new plant!
People should be like that; she thought as she came outside the house, they get the best plant out of a disarrayed bush simply by being so disarmingly warm and human!
Okay auntie! She managed to say as she came out of the house for she agreed that they are having Carley’s party at Kelly’s mum’s who would do it for her since it was her 20th.
Liz’s Moonscape-head
This urge became Liz. She now held the university library microphone as the librarian left for the loo and started talking: Attention all boys in year Your Chance is Naught! This is Liz. Why won’t you leave me alone when you know I am not alone! If you do not believe me I have Dr Matthews, the Vice Chancellor, here, to validate it!
Everyone was stunned, strung up, open mouthed but Liz was standing dead, disarrayed and red next to the real body of Dr Matthews, smiling: That’s right, leave this young woman alone, boys! She is with me!’ Liz looked at him thinking in a blank, moonscape-head: Holly Cow!
Dr Matthews suddenly realised the implication of what he had just said and felt embarrassed, red and promptly said: Indeed it is a great April fool’s day venture from Liz! However, I mean it boys: leave her alone. Saying this he left, smiling; leaving Liz standing there, a red statue while her friends were knitted at their seats, glued in silence.
Palace Park Hotel
‘’Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop
In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage
In the morning they wore each other’s face’’
This was written on sand brown paper that he found as he climbed up the spiralling stair-case of the tube. He would have walked passed it had it not been for the handwriting that was so wonderful that forced him to stop and pick it up. He read the quotes as he reached for the outside world: fresh air and sun’s duo welcome.
He does not read much but this is poetry, surely, even he knows that. As he walks towards his road he reads these lines and tries to think who could have written this poem which is not his or hers and why would they? He tried to imagine whether it is a man or a woman copying? Who did they copy it for? Was he in love with this woman and borrowed a poet! Why did he not give this note to her? Or did he? And then why and how did she leave it here in such a manner! Beautiful lines these are even he can say that!
Excuse me! He looks up. This young woman in a smart suit walking towards him; he stopped and said: Yes, how can I help?
I am looking for Palace Park Hotel.
Palace Park Hotel is on Park Avenue which is about five minutes walk from here.
He offered her direction, precise and accurate, for he works in this area, after a short pause he suddenly asks: Do you read poetry?
Poetry! In fact, I do! Why?
He does not answer but offers her the piece of paper and says: May be, you should have this!
He walks off and the young lady stands there reading the note.
Thank you. She looks at his back: I am going to work a Palace Park Hotel! As she walks off she wonders whether he had heard her!
Munsamin
It was a pain that my best friend was in love with Munsamin and was going nowhere with her but making my life a misery for years since I had hardly any choice but to listen to his Munsamin saga! Thison and thatforth Munsamin. Isstick or thisstock Munsamin! I spent too much in paracetamols in those years!
Years later, after nothing had happened between the poor sod and her, I stood in a professional gathering and heard: I read your book.
I turned round and it was Munsamin. You do still remember me? She added quickly. You bet, I thought, but said: Of course, I do! How are you? It felt like someone had entered my head, heard what I thought and then wrote about them. How does that happen? Sorry, you’ve lost me? I said. I meant your writing, she clarified. Oh! I see! I said but I was thinking about the countless days and nights my poor friend was living in cloud-sunk soul thinking about her. I wondered whether she ever wonder about him or he her.
All these Dot Stories are copyrighted to Munayem Mayenin
Copyrights @ Munayem Mayenin, London, United Kingdom 2008-09
Imsonium Books
where life sings in the notes of pages of the Niuley Pleasance book of life.
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