The Noresoup Jukebox

September makes a grand exit showers upon showers my now fairly drenched capris. I grow resentful  as the weather worsens my aching knees but the garden's harvest was so bountiful it placated my anger with ease. short-lived joys, core theme of my rushed September. the evening would bring to my attention missing crystal on my gold ring and a few marks on my ring finger. losses after losses, what a very remarkable September. I had you, then I didn't, and then I had a few others. Then I lost about 100 times trying to propitiate my very darling mother and father, no different, I suppose it is time to leave home for another. What a dream summer had sold me! scammed I was, proper. For in this excruciating autumn, I find no thing in life can cause a stir. Everything dies eventually, these cliché falling leaves. and with them, my childish hope, for fruitful busyness like the buzzing bees. 

Lizzy McAlpine - I Don't Know You At All busy day filled with countless, unexpected additions my fervent to-do list made the most phone calls since spring asking around for space where my big boned frame might fit in. then, I wondered,  who is he really? another round of calls and very rigid promises made I cannot pull away and bring to my family shame though I paid my leave to a few hundred people goodbye, actress no longer then, I wondered, who is he really? so, of course, a phone call to my salula and a few cards with my younger sister all the stupid questions I have not uttered in so very long and they both say the same thing. ride the waves, go with the flow, you seem happy. then, I wondered, why this all feels so silly. salula reminds me  I long dreamed of person I could talk to about the mundane like this very ordinary cup. dreams spoiled by opinions elsewhere landing right on my lap warnings written in pretty cursive saying he's no good for you writing traits of the ma...

God, You must remember me from a while ago. To be precise, a year and 5 very bittersweet months. my face has changed since then do you recall how my countenance twisted in guilt and shame; I am terrible at being a daughter, You, who gave me my mother. Woes, woes, I have moved past thinking  they are all I am made of. I grew out of my mother's wider pout for my father's thinner lips; although I grieve every now and then for the change. And well, I grew into my mother's eclectic eccentricities in living, having adopted a few new friends, and a crowd of admirers; I beseech You, who amongst them might be the man my younger sister dreamt for me? Life is still so very strange,  and the ambiguity only seems to grow with time. What is this life for? I, who have never known. And I saw what they did to Nepal, and all the floods that followed. Yet, here I am, wondering why I was so lonely trying to sit upright with my lost dignity, fear ambushing me against the north wall of my apartm...

happiness is a butterfly - Lana Del Rey well, who's to blame for her nosing around this cat fussing only to find sweet escape in all the butting and bantering; this shiny, feathery wand teaser. and who's to blame the cat for wanting much more than  whatever's shiny on the surface; hunting a moving target this insatiable mind. and who to blame when the cat succeeds? and in doing so, finds out, that the prize was, in fact, rancid, poison for the mind, poison for the mouth. can she perform what God once did transforming this wasted land of bones into something powerful and holy, calling herself Ezekiel? and if she hopes for such a revival, waiting for the bones and tendons to form, will she be ridiculed for not paying heed to warnings when all advised her that there were better men, better land to run to and hunt. how to placate what curiosity brings, cat who was previously yearning, now cat who is heavy with doubts. and just how many masks had the prize worn, for all to tell ...

Alice Phoebe Lou - Angel my mother places her hands on my head prays this holy confrontation dedicates three lines to my ambiguous future and another three to my current disposition point of contention i don't believe God cares to correct attitude or posture well grateful am I still. although this gratitude broke  in the next five very long lines about finding the perfect person  to do this very awful life with. and then, my younger sister dreamt me a bride and a groom who was the least bit dashing. I ask her, "Well, is he rich?" She is quick to spurn. Speaks at length about how  he is made of humility and little riches and I sober up. "Why couldn't you dream up a better man for me? for at least in dreams, they should come easy." Frustration bubbling under both our skins "Oh, but you don't understand! He may have very little, but to him, understanding you comes easy."

Peter Cat Recording - Floated By drunk on wine my formidable friends cooped up in this lonely room unafraid of difficult conversations and its emotional landscape. Emmett Sir takes the stage, speaks at length about being the head of a family at this very tender age. Mordechai on my shoulder we make a promise if we hang around too late on the shelf we must marry once we turn 40. And yes! I make a declaration. no man is enough for me, so forget their wit and intellect. I would like only, to have someone who can hold  space for me, and my wild tangents, and the crippling ruminations with ease. Rin finds it hard to agree and perhaps I should too and it might be sooner than later that I repeal my silly declaration. Then she tells me to be selfish for myself and Emmett Sir pours three shots to that. my throat closes up how to swallow such a daunting pill? for I have loved others so very fiercely in all the ways I know to love, and yet when the loving is to be received, I freeze and come ...

Halo - Alice Phoebe Lou laundry basket scattered on the terrace this little life of mine sun, loving me so very fiercely i forget that there was a time my now dry hands folded in prayer for a moment of leisure such as this and how many years have passed since then? when I felt so forlorn in Delhi? when I played housewife at age 22 and I wanted so deeply to have someone see me. wrestling sleeplessness till 4 am classes stretching on till very late evening and when I got home, so much to do, and so little understanding. and why did God not answer? was it that I had too many pleas? was He listening to them one by one, and now, still deciding, which one He might put at ease? well, no wonder my luggage weighed so heavy. as i hang up the fresh linen, and take in the hills and the scorching sun, it becomes clear to me that I had placated all my past hurt and now they are surfacing, blisters on my skin popping one by one.

Emmett Sir, what would i do without knowing i have you? you know what my laughter means and can decipher the shifts in tone and lilt and if i come to you, battered and bruised, not even knowing  the words that might describe appropriately, you sit there with me in silence like you understand, even if not fully. and when has a joke revived someone at the wake? what emotion is a problem that requires a solution? you read my mind, allow me to cry, you don't impose a logical reason. and how hard it must have been, for you to do it all alone. wisdom and empathy built from so many years of grovelling before you were grown. yet not many learn from their pain, their years of neglect and guilt. lucky am I that I found you, man of humour, power, and emotional intellect, not having wasted a single drop from all those years of tears shed. lucky is the ground that holds you, and every room you walk into, and luckiest am I  for having known you all those silly growing years you made my yout...

Misty May, Book fair with Mordechai today I wish you could have come, although little would have impressed you for the books incited little fun. Then we stopped by Autumn Brew, still a very lovely cafe. I got a dirty matcha, no sugar, as always, but the caffeine carried me away. It's been lovely playing passenger, I no longer drive as much. Though I do miss you,  scolding me from the back telling me not to rush to the front. In other news, I am at a very  slow, liminal space;  this still-very-lovely life of mine. A few months of trying to find the right answers to --- what will you do? What is next in line? God must be busy opening someone's jar or saving a car from getting towed, Haven't heard from Him quite yet, though my neighbour said  He helped her dead Bougainville grow. Yes, the flowers must bloom in time first, and the clouds must hide till the laundry dries. Misty May, tell me in my silly  predicament, this awful state of being, how must I try to get by...

strawberry cream tea  and this old, damp balcony rin and i at twenty four watching the city lights turn off, one hill at a time small cities do not change much.  rin's ladybird hung in the air like wind chimes, ceramic, winds of change having so much to say and leaves us pondering. how did we survive all those years? and why was love so painful? shifting in my seat camping gear, makeshift table rin wearing butter yellow though seeping red and my disposition growing heavier with every memory dissected the smell of my old twin bed lingers. witnesses may laugh for our lives are now so very different and yet, somehow, all the very same. rin takes the forefront  in all the painful liminal spaces, and she saves me when i find myself in the same terrible darkness. let us trust in what has happened we say there is not much else we can do clarity is in the psalms we once rejected and in the psalms that then saved you and what is God if all He does is answer in riches to every pray...

    all the writers who loved me      wrote about me so very lovingly      mistaking my wit for intellect      and my sorry state for perpetual melancholy           and those who cared little           about what I had to think           satiated their curiosity             with visual feasting           infatuating doll that can bend and moan                 and the ones who loved me sincerely                died so very many moons ago.                waning, waxing, crescent, gibbous,                what do I know? and now this vain pursuit offering love that is to die soon affection that may only las...

sunday night,  what an awful dissolution you bring banana wine waltz in with valour leftovers --- last night's drugs  pulsating in your system the wonders of ecstasy with ladies far more open than me you ponder and sway as I prepare your lemon cake unaware that my mind has been made no more sunday nights as awful as this and what has friendship been to me all this very long hard time if you meet me inebriated and without a clue  worrying about the condition of your romantic pursuit but no man may be in pursuit of the river that changes course this delicate time all the people I know slipping away like sand and the silly grieving that follows of the person they were to me and the loving they left and no death is greater than the one that follows the loss for the person I was with them died with them and how I had achingly longed to meet her again.  you changed faces,  I'm getting to know them one by one but the next change may bear no witness for my hands and eye...

they say Nepal is dying i can see it i can feel it in my bones yet all i worried about was to get the house rat out and well, cheesecake at Glenary's and when they served it  on a plastic plate all i remembered was my bamboo toothbrush standing tall in my tiled bathroom basin. Mordechai told me once, that these efforts do not make a change and so, what effort does it take? what are the marks  that my soles make any good for? when all i leave behind is something far worse than the marks left before. they say Nepal is dying i feel we will too,  soon and the church cries about salvation, and the rapture, the beginning of the end. alas! may God forgive us  for it is our own hands that have brought our suffering. 

these sparrows charming singing softly beneath the soffit the rain occupies the skies sparrows' wings on prolonged rest, they must wonder how slowly the time goes by. and when the rain ceaseless worries may feel impenetrable  and will the wings remember how to carry  what is now a feathery stiffness body heavy with doubt.  do wings forget as the feet grow  accustomed becoming wise men of nested ground; branches no longer piercing, blankets for the new chirpers. warm by the window seat it is easy to forget the sun when all that follows rain is another endless round of thunder deafening and heavy clouds. warmed window seat; skin tanned. a few hundred doves eager for when a place  is found for those heavy olive branches  to land.

would you walk the distance if I asked? called to you from  this many miles away, your tired legs, heel bites, blistered feet, and no promise of a lover who heals. would you be so bold as to cross the line there to here quench your wishful thinking and drown  in the light of my presence. holy, holy. and if I asked you  to read my palms, would you feign lines of affection and call it fate? like love is a promised thing, and perform perseverance for all the many times I will walk away.  and would you, even if you did not have to, build a ship, learn to set sail to find shades of green, dragonflies that gleam, and give your life,  if you were to fail?

when was the last time you held me, mary? like you meant it, like you loved me. all that you see now  is where i am compromised mary, are my wounds not yours to heal? forget the lousiness that brought us here, or all the hurt you bore from birth to now, what has veiled your affection, mary? as to beat me down, treat me foul. what do you pray for mary? who are your words meant to reach? for they read like testimonies, meant to preach rather than to reveal. God that you so lovingly praise, does He lead you, as well, in the way that you speak? when you rouse all my past doubts and you pick and scratch at the seams? my iniquities, now weapons against me, mary, mary,  it is thou that hast forsaken me. eyes who witnessed my suffering most, saw my fingers grow big, recalling when they were small. it is only you who knows so much of me. mary,  what sin did i commit? so treacherous was it, as to sever the cord  joining your womb to my mouth. forgive me, mary, i love you still...

soothed by resentment, this anger that doesn't dull down, oh, what a triumph to be a daughter! what a loss for the world, the potential in me,  had i been a man, how loved i would have been! sorrows, sorrows instead i have battles at home the fight to be known in all the worlds that i enter in here, out there, all the time, all places, and still, i must entertain meek girls do not survive.  sorrows, sorrows

conversations shallow as a creek you reach for my hand before you give me time to speak i wonder why you aren't curious about what i think but i betray myself and my mother grieves loving can be different from what you believe so i keep quiet and wait for my hour to leave and you will wonder what changed my mind so quickly slow to realise all you do,  is make me feel pretty. 

the nights in Delhi have grown vague barely a memory awful to think  only two months have passed and yet, forgotten so easily red night light suitcase, bedside table fridge that was my sun broken washing machine you, witness to all these fragile little things. perhaps forgotten healing witnessed only by strangers park full of them and only one girl  crying  in the middle curious neighbours busy streets trees that made pretty patterns relentless sun that shone on me you, thief of the joys of these fragile little things.

inspired by Maya Angelou's "Come, And Be My Baby" what to do with hands so full of time? holding a pen, writing, scribbling, still leaves the other so full. longing is a thing,  but yearning, a life. how to respond to love other than sarcastic jabs? you who desires so much of me i, waiting, for the eventual  dissipation. how to tell a non-reader in softer ways that leaves the heart wanting more? that i, woman, might succumb to these brave attempts  at sweet and tender.  perhaps, when the skin gets thicker and you can bear the jabs better. wait,  a while, for my speech to grow  from bitter to feather. why do i dance around only to regret when the music stops. will you have me if i come around,  stop the chasing, if i come around, without the nerves, and ask you to be my baby?