stone paper scissors

 

sometimes in the darkest days

I forget who I am, that we are

each of us, over a million years old

in the warm endless cocoon

of planning and civilization

the dire thread of survival

of our children, in this reality

is a matter of mere practicalness

sometimes wombs must be dissolved

and tombs must be burned

lines must be blurred

new genders must be resolved

to present the blank canvas

to a beleagured species on the brink

so we may each of us

still hanging on by the thread

be creative about life and living

instead of turning on each other

the land of earth fire on its nemesis

the lands of wind water

its all very meta

because once the brahmastra is used

the spell, it breaks

and of course, if the brahmastra is death

in an instant, of an entire specie

the only spell remaining, is fear

sclera

 

their reflection like the light

grew pale and dark

as the wind and the drought

leached water off their living breath

and it rained, as if it was once more

tomorrow never comes

inside of her, that silly wench

that opened her legs

and dropped out a new generation

but she was the earth

and the earth was she

when they killed her they killed

their own future

and the void, it opened again

deckchairs everyone

the meaning of it all

was it so simple

as the swallow opened

in the middle of our world

my eyes staring out the sockets

into the void, we all sat around

in our haunches, unable to speak

as it swallowed up our world

and the best of us

and the rest of us

and there is no we

just I, ugly and clinging

did I shuffle backward

on my haunches

staring staring

at them go

I did 

push some in myself

I do feel the hands

in the small of my back

my people, mia famiglia

pushing, pushing

at least my child, not

my child, oh whats the difference

its so beautiful

we're all staring staring

at nothing at all

staring right back at us

mirror mirror

was I ever here after all

The Certificatrix

 @circa 2010, credits to Veenaaponavan 

Thomas A. Anderson is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night, an organism-studying-for-certification as Neo. Neo has always questioned his technical knowledge but the truth is far beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by the certifications, when he is contacted by Morpheus, a legendary certification dumps creator who has taken the same certification innumerable number of times. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most techies have failed and their minds imprisoned within an artificial reality known as the Certificatrix. As a rebel against the certifications, Neo must confront the certification, a super powerful computer program devoted to failing him and the entire techie population.   Morpheus & Trinity have found Neo in his cubicle playing Minesweeper, even when there is only 2 days left for him to clear the certification. They begin to sensitize Neo about the hideousness of the thing that is the Certificatrix.   Trinity: My name's Trinity. Neo: *The* Trinity? Who cracked the Java certification exam? Trinity: That was a long time ago. Neo: Jesus... Trinity: I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're studying for it. I know because I was once doing the same thing. And when I took the exam, I was told I didn’t pass. I was looking for the dumps. It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did. (But not the answer) Neo: What is the Certificatrix? Trinity: The exam is out there, Neo, and it's looking for you, and it will fail you. Neo: I thought this certification wasn't real Morpheus: Your job makes it real Neo: If you're killed trying to take the certification, you get demoted here? Morpheus: The job cannot live without the promotion Neo: What is the Certificatrix? Morpheus: Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Certificatrix is. You have to attempt it for yourself. Neo: But why do I have to take the certification? Morpheus: Throughout our technical jobs, we have been dependent on certifications to prove how adept we are at taking irrelevant certifications. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. Neo: How is certification useful to me? Morpheus: To deny the certification is to deny the very thing that makes us techies. Neo: Will you help me with the certification? Morpheus: Remember... all I'm offering is the certification. Nothing more. Neo: Is it possible to pass? Morpheus: What is "pass"? How do you define "pass"?   Neo begins his training. Morpheus: How did I pass the certification? Neo: You... you're too fast. Morpheus: Do you believe that my attendance or dress code has anything to do with my brains in this place? Do you think that's a certification you're taking now? Neo: But I know Java. Morpheus: [eyeing him, hand on chin] Show me. Morpheus humiliates Neo with his superior debugging skills and Neo admits defeat. Neo: Am I certified? Morpheus: Far from it. Morpheus exits and meets Trinity in the hallway. Trinity: What's he doing? Morpheus: He's beginning to study.   Neo approaches Tank to brush up his skills. Tank: So what do you need? Besides a miracle. Neo: Questions. Lots of questions. Tank: We're supposed to start with these certification material first. That's major boring. Let's do something a little more fun. How about... the dumps? Neo: Dumps? I'm gonna learn from the dumps. [Tank winks and loads the dumps] Neo: Holy dump-o-mania! Tank: Hey Mikey, I think he likes it. How about some more? Neo: Hell, yes. Hell yeah.   Meanwhile, certification agents are discussing on the appalling failure rate of certification takers. Agent Brown: Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions. Agent Smith: Never send a DotNet resource to do a Java certification   Trinity & Neo are attempting a mock run of the certification. Neo: Whoa. Déjà vu. Trinity: What did you just say? Neo: Nothing. Just had a little déjà vu. Trinity: What did you see? Neo: A question I just attempted, and then another that looked just like it. Trinity: How much like it? Was it the same question? Neo: It might have been. I'm not sure. Morpheus: Switch! Apoc! Neo: What is it? Trinity: A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Certificatrix. It happens when they change the questions.   Neo returns after miserably failing his first certification attempt. Spoon boy is a disillusioned techie who has exhausted all his attempts and hasn’t still been able to clear the certification. Spoon boy approaches Neo, who is in deep study. Spoon boy: Do not try to clear the certification. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth. Neo: What truth? Spoon boy: There is no PASS. Neo: There is no PASS? Spoon boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the PASS that bends, it is only yourself.   Neo returns after successively failing his second attempt. Neo: I didn’t make it. Morpheus: What are you waiting for? You're faster than this in choosing the wrong answer. Don't think you can’t, know you can’t. Come on. Stop trying to flunk the certification and flunk the certification. Neo: I just wish I had more time! Morpheus: I'm trying to help you clear your certification, Neo. But I can only give you the dumps. You're the one that has to clear it. Neo: Why do my brains hurt trying to study for this certification? Morpheus: You've never used them before. Neo: What did the Oracle tell you? Morpheus: That I cannot help you with Java certification Neo: What is happening to me? Morpheus: You are the One, Neo. You see, you may have spent the last few years taking certifications, but I have spent my entire life preparing dumps. Neo: What is the purpose of Certificatrix? Morpheus: What is the Certificatrix? USELESS! The Certificatrix is a computer-generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a techie into this. [holds up a Certification Guide] Neo: No, I don't believe it. It's not possible. I can’t even take printouts of the material. Morpheus: Neo, sooner or later you're going to realize just as I did that there's a difference between studying the dumps and studying the certification material. Neo: But you said you would help me. Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth. Morpheus exits and allows Neo to continue his certification study.   Neo is shockingly captured by the Agents, when he goes on a coffee break. Agent Smith: We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation to fail the certification. Neo: Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about, I pass the certification? Agent Smith: Only human. You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe you are special, that somehow the certification does not apply to you. Obviously, you are mistaken. Neo: You can't scare me with this Gestapo nonsense. I know my rights. I want my dumps. Agent Smith: Tell me, Mr. Anderson... what good is the dumps... if you don’t know the technology? Neo: But... but… Agent Smith: I'm going to enjoy watching you fail the certification, Mr. Anderson. Neo is later rescued by Morpheus when the agents are distracted in attending to a rare case of a certification-taker shouting in jubilation after clearing his certification. But in doing so, Morpheus is captured by the agents. The only way to free Morpheus is to clear the certification. But without Morpheus, Neo does not have access to the latest dumps.   Neo begins preparation for his third and final attempt. Trinity: Please Neo, you have to trust me. Neo: Why? Trinity: Because you have been down there Neo, you know that certification; you know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be. Neo: But I have to do this. Trinity: Neo... nobody has ever done this before. Neo: That's why I am going to pass. Neo approaches the certification test center. [Neo walks through a metal detector in the lobby and is approached by a security guard after it goes off] Security guard: Could you please remove any items you may be carrying, keys, loose change... [Neo opens his trench coat to reveal the certification guide & the dumps underneath] Security guard: Holy Cheating! [Neo knocks the guard down and runs] Neo courageously makes his way to the desktop where he has to take the certification. He commences the test and quickly begins keying in the answers. But as bad luck would have it, Agent Smith catches up with Neo.   Agent Smith: Did you know that the first Certificatrix was designed to be perfect? Where none passed, where everyone would be miserable. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Some believed we lacked the questions to test your technical & domain skills. But I believe that, as a species, techies define their reality through dumps & certification material. Which is why the Certificatrix was redesigned to this: to flunk all of your techie civilization. Neo: Not this time… Agent Smith: You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of failure... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson... Neo: My name... is Neo. Neo presses the “Submit” button and the screen goes blank. The monitor blinks to life, “Congratulations! You have JUST passed the certification with 70%” Agent Smith: Nooooooooooooo…….! [disintegrates]   In the Certificatrix world, Neo closes the browser. He looks at the mindless masses around him, picks up his ID card, puts on his glasses and then looks up.     *All characters & events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or events, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

a candlelight vigil

im about halfway down now. I thought its a bridge but its a well, scream, scream, its a well, ITS A WELL! I did sense the downhill in the darkness but I never drowned when I pushed off and leapt, so I wasnt sure. 

I often see your face in the darkness, forehead caved in, with a golf ball sized shrunken crater where your nose used to be, and you said, you said to me, I want to be, I think that will fix everything, I feel the energy feminine coursing through me, no no, its hopelessness, not you, that ones me. 

I thought life was better than this, that we were together, better than this, everytime I see myself in the light, its horrifying, horror upon horror, sandwiched between nightmare, surrounded by the dead, the infinite dead, the graph in-progress ones, the graph planned ones, what the hell is the point or need for creation, I wish I could go faster.

the death of sound

 

The hardest question I have not satisfactorily answered is - Why is it so impossible to confer basic human dignities to a fellow creature, albeit with breasts, or even a small child, once the future of our civilization, now a timeshare, sharing the same boat on a purple sea filled with dried blood. When we do not want for food or shelter or money, whats the next excuse? Is this the point where we give up and say - 

Yeah, we tried, we really did, seperately, together, but humanity, its a lost cause. 

All the stories require millions of dollars to tell, and frankly, I just dont have the energy to open my mouth anymore. You see, we can no longer even agree what basic means.

the cardinal rules

when I was nineteen

and I kissed a boy

and it got out

that I was a maid

and he was a hero

I spent a sleepless year

choosing between love and respect

and when I became quite

the pillar of respectable

I thought, its different now

with all the contretemps

that determine my value

affixed in place

I gained enough weight

to cull out any remaining

variables

and then and then and then

times then

I realized it is

the cardinal rule of life

he will always be the hero

she will always be the temptress

and/or the maid

no matter where I go

of english and tamil

I have thought for a great deal of life, from the large powerful voices of common knowledge that language is called the mother tongue, because mother spoke it when you were inside of her, and taught it to you first. After 40 years on Earth and 20 years in TikTok land, I am convinced there's a deeper more atavistic meaning for it. I am (insert weasel words here) sure that mother refers to mother earth more closely than mother mine, and language, its the single largest influencer of a person's psyche. Its simultaneously the most precious thing we never want to forget, from what we have and what we lost. 

And I start by emptying the vessel. I am, I am, a fire demon, born in the land of fire, to a language among the oldest, and im convinced, quite one of the most original. Fire runs in my veins and in my memories, and when I am completely still, it is the roaring in my ears without a pause. 

Tamil is my mother tongue, and of a protective necessity, the numbest to description. But I try, because we are running out of time. I dont know if it is a tongue that will make it to the next 100 years. I desperately want it to, having the years of memory and the indivisible I. Tamil is the language of metal, and you can taste the metal in the waters of Chennai, a constant iron, an endless rust. But metal, you argue, is a nice pali-syno-drone for Tamil, coincidence of a rusty memory, not inevitable. But the sounds of the language are unmistakeably metallic - the clangs, the thrrrumms, the gongs. 

If you lived in Chennai, for many years, you might feel it, an inevitable reaction to the constant endless heat and wet wind, burning and melting, all the time, every minute of every day, for years and years. You become. Metal or Rubber. It congeals in your nose and your brain. To this day, I fondly remember my hometown whenever I have a fever, a cold or a migraine. 

English, is one of my first loves. I learned it at age 5, apparently with no instruction whatsoever, although I do remember my father reading stories to me. My father, who has always been nearly invisible to me, for a very many bloody and imagined reasons, took the helm in two distinct decisions for language. He read English to me when I was a baby, and insisted on pain of over his dead body, that I learn advanced Hindi as a second language in school, NOT Sanskrit, NOT Tamil. 

So English. All Indian kids learn English, usually starting at school. Probably a systemic nod to the British rule, but most likely because science expresses itself so easily in English. We are fanatical about science and math for children in India, something that unites all the squabbling tribes. I think of English as the language of wood and wind. Endlessly morphing, creative and the most powerful connector in the world today. And yet, schizophrenically, also the biggest debtor. When I saw the first Harry Potter movie, it finally clicked for me, that the language, it was, quite impossibly exact. 

Till today, I can feel my forehead rising, my ears jamming, and my tongue sharpening to a scalpel, when I switch from Tamil to English. And Tamil is plenty sharp, as it is. But running the whole world on a few languages, is devastatingly stupid. Its a civilizational duh, anyone born in the damn rainforest knows that. Who has also travelled. And maybe had a pet panda?

If pens were swords, Tamil would be the heat seeking missile, and English would be the gunshot. Neither has any real notion of forgiveness or takesie backsie, and both present endless opportunities for humor, nihilism and cynicism. To me though, Tamil is the language of power. English tends to the deafeningly concrete in its definition and expression, whereas Tamilians express power in the fluent abstract. And English is the language of love, every other linguistic representation of it seems to me banal or overdone.

the death of woman

this time im sure

im watching from across

the last million times

ive been quite sure

its not forgettable

the times I was the one

raising the flag

rolling down the stairs

arms akimbo

they always figure it out

many many too lates later

life is not a negotiable instrument

you will miss me

the void will grow forever

burn the bridges

cut the ropes

cry the rivers of tears

clattering with coins

heavy with soiled paper

that poor rabbit never knew

when it stopped growing, or why

heavy ash where the bridges were

she is the other half of life itself

the baby machine

fire up the drones

lets find a healthy few

and make it work

distorsion

inside red hot stakes

crumbling in ashes

engulfed in flames

but I will rise tomorrow

a phoenix in chains

or you will, a toss up

a rift in the darkness

no clocks in the game

remember remember

remember my dear

before you give, everyone away

life is long, life is short

life is everything we've got

ashes to ashes,

dust to dusk

comfort and cookies

some laughter, some hay

some love is plenty, and just enough

to celebrate