tree

there is so much depth
to this little person
who speaks
these small, soft, simple
words,

always.

the joker and the jokess.

leh. my song just committed suicide.

ke hola hai?

be water (vii)

be ready for love.

step aside, shivering

when they're done with enough reasons
to
scatter

they will discover
their life
a gathering
of rhythms
from the poet's throbbing heart

like petals gathered from a flower
still wet with bloom.



he gave and he gave and he gave

that we are.

new unseen stories

on the verge of the next story

sounds collapse at the glance of an ear

the smile is words choking into

a silence
so strong

this story
is a digging in, deep within
old skin
to find new truths that blend into
the unbeaten, familiar whole.

on earth

today, the whole earth is dripping with poetry.

this season is full

the ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face


powerful melodies in the driving seat
gearing up for this life, so sweet

movement is meaning made
silence, gratitude paid

happy are those faces
who can smile in a storm

green and grey the sky
marries
life on earth
in ceremonious drizzle

caught up in between the sweetness
of sounds stored in love's cocoon
in the tragedies come too much too soon
in a life lost before it's in full bloom
in the wailing whimper of the winds gone home
in concentrated desires, who knows, for whom
can you feel the earth slugging towards june?

i trickle away
this may

say what sexy weather -


without sex
fucking useless.

so i said something like this instead...

From what we know, water flows as it relates to gravity. It lulls animals into long hibernations as it cools down. It reduces the skin to blisters as it heats up. It is relentlessly volatile, constantly on the move; but above all, water is known for its willingness to change from one form to another.

What we don’t normally know of water is that it can sit in blue rectangular pools on the edge of the stage, greeting audiences as they enter a theatre. Something similar would happen to you if you entered the Naga Theatre for a performance of tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses this May.

Studio 7’s plays have always sparkled when it comes to sets and costumes, each time inviting viewers to expect the unexpected. Their acute attention to detail manages to release a generous dose of imagination on stage, making the theatre experience incredibly vivid for the audience.

So when I saw that the supremely talented set director Ludmilla Hungerhuber had decided to go minimal this time, I was initially a little disheartened, unaware of just how big a part the pool of water was going to play. As things unfold, water extends itself beyond a mere motif, becoming the primary character; taking centre stage, water helps bind all the different tales together into one coherent performance.

Inevitably, most of the drama revolves around the tiny pool and director Sabine Lehmann has done a commendable job of engaging her troupe in a number of techniques, stretching conventional notions of acting.

Characters wade through water, dip in it, drown in it, and crash into it. A plastic tube floats on it, a golden skipping rope sinks into it, oars push against it, candles glide on it. Apart from offering a visual treat, water also serves a larger, more symbolic role. It washes Midas’s greed, brings Ceyx onto shore, and delivers Narcissus to his troubling reflection. Water is caring and cruel—it destroys as well as heals, punishes as well as purges—altogether playing a significant role in the metamorphoses of these characters.

Actors swiftly manoeuvre their way in, out of, and around water. Memorable moments come in Karma’s hideous grin while he gathers gold from the pool as the greedy Midas, in his portrayal of the equally crazed and nervous Vertumnus who makes a convincing fool of himself before Pomona,  in Nirab Rimal’s naive Narcissus filled with longing and disdain towards the water that at once offers and denies him his one true love, in Samuna KC’s intense performance of an Alcyone debilitated by love and loss.

While the major characters in each of the tales do their part to sustain the performance, it is the minor chameleonic characters that add a touch of brilliance, deftly changing into different roles within minutes. While Divya Dev Pant’s narrator is charming with a subtle, restrained quality, his portrayal of Bacchus—grapes dangling from the ears—brings a long-dead Freddie Mercury to life. Anupam Sharma’s Iris—in a deliciously flamboyant Krishna-like avatar—is a treat for the eyes. Rajendra Shrestha manages to take on almost every deity that resides on Olympus, projecting a comic wrath through a false but glorious beard accompanied by elaborate costumes. Aashant Sharma’s portrayal of Silenas and Sleep prove how natural an actor he is—body, expressions and dialogues jut out with humour sending the audience into roars of laughter. Lehmann and Hungerhuber immerse themselves completely in their characters and manage to grasp your attention all through their limited time on stage. Lehmann, especially, has the uncanny ability to speak with her eyes, drawing in the audience even when her character is seated silently in a corner.

This adaptation of the play Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman dramatises some familiar stories from Greek and Roman mythologies originally written by Ovid that many of us have grown up hearing. It is a vibrant medley of tales of transformation, weaving effortlessly in and out of drama, comedy and tragedy, making viewers laugh between heartache. But sometimes, as an audience, you might be left thinking that it’s too much of a medley.

While the tales of Narcissus and Echo and Alcyone and Ceyx evoke the ancient civilisations from which they emerge, those of Midas and Phaeton are a concoction of the ancient and the modern, western and Nepali in the development of setting, costumes as well as mannerisms. This flitting between pure representation and hybridisation may confuse viewers—it might have served the performance better had they stuck to a thorough Nepalification/modernisation which would have added relevance and context for the viewers.

Nevertheless, performances allure, and the cast’s bold decision to play with water on stage makes this rendition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses worth a watch.

Scenes from Metamorphoses will be performed at the Naga Theatre, Vajra Hotel, at 7:15 pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday until May 22

be water (vi)

this is all the use words are for me.

to say this,

“‘Highest good is like water,’ says Lao Tzu. ‘Because water excels in benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes close to the way.’...‘In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.’ Tasteless, it accepts all tastes, colourless, all colours, reflecting the sky, refracting the white stones of its bed, dissolving or suspending the soils and minerals over which it flows. The pulse of our bodies is liquid, as indeed all living pulses are. Water dissolves the salt of the parable in the Upanishads, covers the land of Genesis and flows by the paradise of the Koran. And the random blur of noise, the tumult of light at which I now stare is the author of more beauty even than itself: cirrus and cumulus, rainbow and storm cloud, the strata of sunset, the indescribable scent of the first rains on the summer-baked plains.

‘It is all in the water’: Scotch whiskey, Longjing tea. The universal element, it is yet so particular about its local excellences. It ‘benefits the myriad creatures’, yet the vehement loveliness of the cataract is the cause of flood and death in the overburdened stream below. Its substance yields to the guiding rocks, yet its form outlives the rocks that direct and hinder its flow.

I will during my life be certain to drink some molecules of the water passing this moment through the waterfall I see. Not only its image will become a part of me; and its particles will become a part not merely of me but of everyone in the world. The solid substances of the earth more easily cohere to particular people or nations, but those that flow--air, water--are communal even within our lives.”

From Heaven Lake, Vikram Seth

drabness flashes, flashes

the ugliest thing about having a job like this
is how it steals the dusk from you

day switches into night and you haven't a clue

what a fuck.

the time of day that you should own
that could own you
lost forever
day after day after day

what awful luck.

we couldn't

we composed

hope

was the dream

we hungered for

we conquered

in millions

we swayed

together

we carved

happiness

from underneath

our ears

we relied

words

we lifted

from their mouths

we sewed

tight

so sweet

in our chords

and we served

what would never make it.

look

the subconscious sings

and music
is a dreamless friend


dearest,
who knows what the words meant

anyway.

hear what you want

honey-eyed love

i know you belong to the sun

although we're apart you're a part of my heart

but tonight you belong to me

break down, by the street, how sweet
it would seem once more
just to dream it in
the moonlight

my honey-eyed love
with the dawn
and music will become
hunger tonight

you belong to me

but tonight
you belong
to me

that

only in poetry

you are granted the gravity

to take what you want to say

with all the seriousness

nobody would ever

expend

on listening.

our words -

always too quick
too thick

- puzzle our silences.

adding up

we've lived through a compact history of negation

now our silences as thick
and unforgiving
as permanent markers
that cut through
our fundamental desire
to erase
to forgive
to hold hands
to complement

we are still tight in our togetherness
tight in making meaning
off the other

counting like coins
of devalued currency

we are still intense
with our attractions
knotted into our repulsions

loud mouthed retaliations

we are still concentrated
with the efforts
to make memory out
of missing

weaving nostalgia into
isolation

making each living day
the work
of finding
and not finding
the other

catalysts
in our own downfall

it is all the mathematics we are capable of

we still haven't been able to choose sides in this

single

story of us.

newborn

buds recover from their bloom

beauty unfolds in the wrinkles
that have come to occupy your face.

longer

i try to spill you into mother's
ears with my
words

telling you like a story

making you linger longer into your


absence.

the most beautiful man on earth

i sat beside you
swinging in my seat
i spoke to you
through my mouth
my eyes
my hands that twisted
to try
to make
known

but it's clearly not the things i say
you say

my ears have still not trained themselves to
hear

not as much
as my mouth has trained itself
to make itself
heard

lips swell
shut

it wasn't the words
that washed over me

when silences were gained

who knew
each cell in this body would jingle

here
at home
in the night
washed with the growing glow of moonlight

there is no worry
no exhaustion
no words pandering in their own darkness

there is no need for poetry

there is a clearing
wherein resides clarity
where smiles are made
where the heart levitates

to get that much closer to the moon.