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A collabortive project between the British writer kaleeM rajA and the American photographer Kevin Paul Stephens.
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1 | P a g e
Medication Nation
and other poems
kaleeM rajA
Photography by Kevin Paul Stephens
2 | P a g e
3 | P a g e
Contents
City of Gold.....page 4
Endless Wander.....page 5
The Reluctant Messiah.....page 6
The Waves.....page 8
The Wedding Cake.....page 9
In Fear of the Other.....page 11
The Screaming Trees.....page 13
Medication Nation....page 14
Thinking of You, The Autumn Near.....page 15
Flowers and Butterflies.....page 16
Complacency.....page 17
When Love Fails.....page 18
Nocturnal Thoughts of Anna of America Trapped in the Land of the Free.....page 19
9/11:9 Out of 11 Questions About 9/11 Remain Unanswered.....page 22
London.....page 23
You.....page 25
This, As It Stands.....page 27
City of Crucifixions.....page 29
Winter Rime.....page 30
The Potted Daffodils.....page 31
4 | P a g e
City of Gold
Aug 11
As seconds slip into weeks,
And months melt into years,
Your streets of gold remain empty
Cutting through old buildings
Of shattered pains
And peeling paint.
In their husks,
Through hollow hallways
Pictures of landscapes and objects hang
And the wind howls through waking the dust.
Upon the No Man’s Land
Between the boy you once were
And the man you later became,
No armistice was declared to tame
The silent war without end.
Sometimes something appears to cast shadows
On the water in the well
But it’s only the reflection of someone not there.
Then spiders scurry across silver thread to wrap their prey.
Crows caw and tentacles crawl back into holes
And everything is still and silent once more...
5 | P a g e
Endless Wander
We met
And I rested my hat,
Felt
Myself free
From the seemingly endless wander.
In the cells
Something seemed to stir,
Swell, some light
Stole upon the buds,
Some strength in the being
Of oneself, same self
Others found offence in.
You spoke
Of your own self horrors
And our crippling dullness
Dissolved.
Us, the two arms
On the one shipwrecked soul
Swimming out sluggishly
To the shore at last in sight.
6 | P a g e
The Reluctant Messiah
You packed your self
In a shoe box of straw
And stowed it away
In the store room under the staircase.
Your extended family,
Your freak family of demons and djinns
Watched
As you tried on every suit
In your closet of Others;
- The blind flower,
- The orphan child,
- The glamorous socialite.
In your uneasiness,
The uneasiness of wearing stolen dentures,
You practised your smiles.
...There was a man come down
From a mountain, bearing a book
And a look of having lived many lives...
You thought you were a reluctant Messiah,
But it turned out
You were an eager martyr.
They nailed you to a tree
With the nine inch nails you dug out
Of your carpenter’s box of tools.
And with the matches you laid out
7 | P a g e
In crosses, the pairs of matches
Converging in their centres, like cross-roads,
They set you on fire.
You watched their glancing faces dancing,
Dribbling like wax
Behind the peacock-blue flames.
In slowed motion you closed your eyes
And softly spoke their names,
Your benevolent countenance
Not flinching once
In the spitting, bark-splitting heat
Your shoebox heart
Was an orphan child roaming the Earth
Looking for the spring of its birth.
You were a shadow
Looking for a body to hinge itself to.
All the while you moved
Like a cloud of calm
Amongst the throngs,
The hem of your garment remained untouched,
No garlands adorned
Your proud, Minotaur neck,
Your zinc-pallor cheeks untroubled
By hot kisses and tearful embraces.
You came and you left
With neither a miracle nor a masterplan,
But you felt yourself the warden of the waters.
The fishes you didn’t multiply moved unthinking
But your quartz current knew where it was going.
8 | P a g e
The Waves
The scratching scrawl
Torn across the page
Marked the fleeting.
This talk
Of orgasmic grief,
The waves welling
And then crashing
And dying away,
Let through again
The relief.
9 | P a g e
1998
The Wedding Cake
It’s the aching moon.
It’s the drooling waterfall.
It’s the dancing the dark magic
In between the honeymoon petals
Confettied all over the bedroom floor.
It’s the incubation
Of the dust-pregnant summer heat
In this foreign land forced to play host
To the first week of our eternal bond.
With the cake I ate my words,
Surrounded by my jamboree of parents and uncles and aunts.
Your excited circle
Of school friends squirreling about you;
They, who since their school days,
Have been taken captive in much the same way;
Their stomachs bunted and burst on average
Once a year on a gruelling four year trail.
They lift and drop your blood-red veil
Sprinkled with pill-sized mirrors
And wrapped like a captain in gold braid.
They flicker and twitter,
Whisper, witter something coy
And then burst into blossoms of laughter,
10 | P a g e
Wild cart-wheeling, Catherine-wheeling hysterics.
It is all a powder-painted blur
Of gaudy jewellery and strange, bawdy customs.
The only image that returns
In technicolour, high definition precision
Is the bridegroom making an incision
In the wedding cake and forcing it down his throat.
With the cake I ate my words.
I said
I wouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I couldn’t
I mustn’t
I won’t
I can’t
I shan’t…
Notwithstanding that every fibre of my soul forbade it,
Every sinew of the moon,
The river, the land made it
Happen in the happily-ever-after-end…
11 | P a g e
In Fear of the Other
Smell of moshcate
About the wood.
Relief of late spring in every leafy nook.
Dew drops on blades
And vernal flowers speckle the weald.
You,
A little blue
With cold.
The children-
A hoop of holding hands,
Clinging about you,
Blue
With fear.
12 | P a g e
Above you
A bird
Cocks its head.
The wiry
Claws
Clutching the branch,
Clamped with terror.
Beside it
A makeshift nest
Of bluish eggs,
A fragile hoop
Of woolly-blue domes.
Soon a chap arrives
In cobalt jumpsuit.
Cranks
And twiddles
And the engine
Splutters,
Flutters
Alive.
13 | P a g e
The Screaming Trees
The walls of time are closing in;
But you’re privy to this,
And barely flinch.
You dream of the boy
Who wears the sunshine in his pores
As the wind winds through your sandy hair
And the sky stoops to press you against its breast.
The elements slip and slide for him
But they suit you down to the ground beneath your feet.
You slam the vault shutting out the traffic hum.
You go where he goes,
Seek out the bed in which he sleeps.
He hides out in a glowing alcove of leaves,
The tiny silk-weavers have spun him out
In silver thread.
The cocoon preserves him like a corpse.
Nothing comes of him.
No new life bursts from the shell.
You take of him what you can use
And in his deadness he offers everything.
It is a terrible rape of trust
But no judge nor God condemns you.
You slip through his under-wonderworld
And disappear into the shroud
Of the Monday morning metropolis crowd.
14 | P a g e
Medication Nation
Depressed
Depress
Depross
Deproz
Eproz
Eproza
Eprozac
Eaprozac
Eatprozac
Eat prozac
15 | P a g e
Thinking of You, the Autumn Near
You’ll think of me I hope
When you reap the wind
And slash the arms of corn flailing
And all is right with the world.
When the sun blinks
Through the frolic of flitting wings
And the town sleeps in the quilt of its own smoke,
You will think of me I hope.
When the claybeds suck at your gumboots
As you trudge home clutching your shotgun,
Your head I hope will burn with crimson autumn mugginess
And distant thoughts of me.
16 | P a g e
Flowers and Butterflies
Oct 11
Your collection of dead butterflies showed your odd love of life.
Despite the inclement weather of your heart's strife,
You didn't see the soil thrown on the lowered casket,
You only saw the flowers in the wreaths and hanging baskets.
17 | P a g e
Complacency
Jan 12
From the cocoon of complacency
Only strife and still-borns emerge.
The church organs drone a dirge
For the dead and those yet to die.
In the living years there is hope for change.
In hard times, everything wanes
And the moment comes to pass.
So people peal the bells and wake the congregation
For there is a great complacency come upon your nation.
18 | P a g e
When Love Fails
Apr 10
At first the silent stars in the sky swirl together in the milk-white moonlight,
And fireflies flicker as early embraces linger in spellbound jasmine nights,
Something in the way you flowed into me was emphatically and ecstatically right,
In the deep, dark recess of my kissless, listless abyss,
You were a blazing scintilla of light.
Then came convolutions and revolutions and massive misconceptions,
Convulsions, revulsions, repulsions, rejections and dejections.
What was once devotion became a cimmerian, chimerian, god forsaken, spasmodic
damnation.
Then retribution and restitution, condemnation and absolution,
In the end all is potions and lotions, injections and crucifixions.
Till finally all is mere vanity, futile indulgence and infertile dust
And darkness that the hounds of hell run whimpering from.
This is what love does when it has done with you.
You’re broken and bleed till your ashen blue.
When love fails, other passions make do,
When hope fails, nothing can console you.
When the spirit is done, there is nothing to do
But bear the slings and arrows and take the fall that was due,
Gulp down the gut-rot and grapple the blues on the porch
Sitting hunchbacked
As the whip cracks
Watching love
Loot and shoot and burn your town down …
19 | P a g e
Nocturnal Thoughts of Anna of America Trapped in the Land of the Free
Dec 09
growing up in chaperoned climes,
summertime,
in the jaws of stars and stripes,
there was bloodshed nonetheless.
you take from the past what you can mine
lumps of coal and diamonds as big as the ritz
are much the same.
it is still only your name you can ever lay claim to.
civil disobedience or allegiance to the flag,
it is still much the same.
if the folklore figures of our gnarled pasts
can't be heroes with axe in hand,
then they must at least be villains.
the neon full sign flickers over heartbreak hotel,
the crows turn gyres over bates motel.
beyond love there is only death and decay.
only the one that inflicts the pain can take it away.
play
because inertia is deadening
and no barren landscape can spring new life
laugh because silence is deafening.
20 | P a g e
there at the cusp of new turns
you can watch the stars burn
holes in the ink black of the night sky
on a warm 4th of july,
and i can say you are the big apple of my eye,
and you can say
it is so
it is more
than i could have asked for,
more than the moon itself.
it is be
so let it be
these pages that i riffle
are one sentence a head
of all that i say
all that i think
all that i do
my life in chapter and verse
from cradle to hearse
flows from my pen ;
the pen is my body all flesh and sinew wrought
the endless ink that flows from it all my waking thoughts.
out on the mean streets the pulp fiction magazines of garish colours
fade and gather mache on the drains.
hoary headed
aided and abetted by the years,
you will be wizzened
and withered like me.
and we shall smile
content.
our lot
was our lot
and our lot was plenty.
we were kings and reigned
during our fifteen minutes of fame.
we will say
we will make
banquets and bouquets
of every day that fate brings
because we know of hate and why the caged bird sings,
21 | P a g e
we know of the plans of mice and men.
then smiles uncurled,
the tiny flowers of our minute life unfurled
shall lie with the soil
and not care a whit,
and we shall pass
as all things come to pass.
as all is mere leaves of grass.
let it be.
we'll be free....
NOTE : THIS POEM CONTAINS 25 REFERENCES TO AMERICAN CULTURE; CAN YOU SPOT THEM ALL?
22 | P a g e
9/11:
9 Out of 11 Questions About 9/11 Remain Unanswered
Apr 12
The spectacle of political
Propaganda whores and the spittle of the
Rabid dogs of war, give rise to the
Spectre of global tyranny, another
Day in history that will live in
Infamy. Bin Laden. Knowledge laden with
Shame and dust sends war machines fuelled by
Blood lust trundling on undeterred driven by
The hated, riven by the hateful.
Mass hypnosis, 24 frames a second.
Those that lie with autocratic dogs
Wake with fascist fleas in a cell where the bells
Ring the death knell of all liberties.
“..We are as a people inherently and
Historically opposed to secret
Societies whose mistakes are buried, not
Headlined, whose dissenters are silenced
Not praised; no rumour is printed, no secret
Revealed. With your help, Man will be what
He was born to be; independent and free...”
Notes: I wrote the poem in 2 verses - the first containing 9 lines, the second 11 lines. All the lines in the poem alternate
between 9 and 11 syllables per line. As I don't normally write to rigid structures I thought it would be a good writing challenge
to do so. The poem is intended to raise certain issues rather than state my personal political views on the subject.
23 | P a g e
May 08
London
London is the sermon
That no one will hear,
Nobody cares.
Time folds in on itself
Under the force of its own speed.
Remember the fall after your summer of love
And invincible life?
It was the hallowed streets of this town
That convoyed you through
Its every social shindig,
Every shimmering soiree.
It was the legendary landmarks
Of this glittering metropolis
That welcomed you at every corner
Of every street.
It was this city of flashing gold
That cut the cracks in your teeth,
That lit the tracks of your feet
Out of the shadowed town of your birth.
There you were,
Finally alive.
After twenty moribund years of inertia,
You burst into life,
The air heavy with magic spores.
You were fallow no more,
Sallow no more.
Flanked by family and friends convivial,
The past was immaterial.
24 | P a g e
Your part was finally congenial
To your place.
You were misdisplaced,
Uninfutile, uninfertile,
Dedispossessed, disunrequited
Death undone and unblighted
After all.
All those people that abused you,
All those words that bruised you
Were no more.
This town didn’t care
For the ghosts of your derelict past.
It nestled you in its steel wings,
Asphalt beak and concrete claw
And gave you the wings
With which to flee.
You were wax and feather graced,
Aquiline and proud faced,
You were free.
25 | P a g e
Oct 97
You
The passage walls
Are closing in…
How are you then?
Did you bury what you showed me?
I remember what you told me
Of your collection
Of pressed flowers
And stuffed birds,
And what they meant to you…
Did you make it?
Did you find him to share the baggage with?...
Look at you now,
Smiling and laughing,
The little boy I used to know
Behind the sagging mask…
How are your parents?
Did you forgive them?
You seem to have come to terms
With the work at hand…
Was it hard?
Is it hard still?...
I play back
The picture of you
In my head.
At the table,
Barely big enough to rest the elbows
Upon the surface with any comfort,
26 | P a g e
Saying those words
Which seem to have been made for you
To use-
Your signature tune-
A sad, forlorn refrain:
“I was scared.
And I didn’t know what to do…”
I heard the message,
And you grew in my eyes.
Anger and easy answers
Would have been understandable
But you found your own way
Which was all the more admirable…
Do you still think of me,
I wonder?...
I am not with you now
But I remember
And though I can’t help you,
I carry a piece of you
With me always…
27 | P a g e
Oct 05
This, As It Stands
So this life.
This cell of skin,
Peppered with indelible reminders
Of where you’ve been
And of all your sins;
Your acts of vitriol
Which sought retribution and validation
But bought about none.
This barren scape of dissipation.
This grit-teethed, bit-champed volition
Ablaze with all those years of longing,
Those long-lost, love-lorn years of silence.
This life infiltrated with the arsenic of cynicism,
Filled with the deadening clop
Of the trotters
Of belligerent pigs.
This fetal, fatal careen into chaos,
Your trajectory into soot and soil.
This mill-stone.
This stonewall. This subterfuge.
This vice den you made your play pen
Of pernicious intent you gainsay
And yet make your own, call your home.
28 | P a g e
This web of visceral gossamer fine
You flattened with a brick.
Kicking against your fears, you tear yourself
Grating against the grain.
This slumber that was once anodyne
Now claws you in your sleep.
This scrambling for gods and heroes you crave
To stave off any further descent
Into seething resentment and quaking rage.
This life of obsequious fools and phony piety
And hypocritical paragons of propriety
Drives you to distraction and destruction and death.
29 | P a g e
City of Crucifixions
Feb 10
Did I need to shout to be heard?
There on my knees, at your feet.
As the asphalt picks at the stubbed-in gum,
You strip me bare
Stand me in the town square
And pretend I’m not there.
I am damp-drenched, gut-wrenched
Gasping, grizzled and gnarled.
Drunk blind on grape and grain,
Sunk in the gut-rot gulped.
As the hunger burrows into organs,
The laughing well-fed bulks hulk past,
The retail therapy generation
Pass by their facebook friends
Without a flickr
Of recognition.
This is a city of crucifixions.
Nobody whispers the words
That could have
Sparked every star in the sky
Like a swarm of startled fireflies.
Everybody joins hands to contact the living.
In the gulf between taking and giving,
Everybody suffers in silence
Together alone
Forgetting again
They
Are the source of the pain.
30 | P a g e
Winter Rime
Dec 09
These were the 12 months that kept company
With the sun and the bells
Now do ring
As you fix your wreaths of holly
And watch the world weary through frosted panes.
These winter winds that slice through me
Don’t dampen my warmth for you
The magi’s starry journey seems now a distant dream
As the hordes throng through the shopping malls
Clutching love expressed in unneeded gifts
We let the children play
White mischief in snow and the sledge ride to simple ecstasy
While wiser folk temper their souls
Kneading good-will into the stuffing.
This hoary-headed season gives reason to remember a philanthropist
And god in swaddling and stable-safe
Brings forth all our hearts as we recoil from cold and drudgery
And as the doorway lets in sounds of silent nights
Into our homes sparkling with tinsel and lights
and smelling of pine and excitement,
We join hands and later lock arms
To remember old acquaintances forgot
As all the clocks and popped corks
In japes and jest,
Bring to rest the past
And ring in the new year…
31 | P a g e
The Potted Daffodils
Mar 12
My sister gave my mother potted daffodils this year
With the Mother’s Day card that we all surreptitiously signed.
“They’re beautiful”, she said wiping a tear, “You’re all very kind”.
Wishful rumours notwithstanding,
The tumour had grown malignant.
Indignant
My brother dug a new hole in the ground
For the daffodils and other bulbs and tubers he found
In the shed nestled in faded packets of untroubled pockets.
I spent an hour kneeling by them snapping
Photo after photo of the blazing marigold trumpets
Almost as if they would wither if I stopped.
32 | P a g e
Later when the mother’s day cake we had devoured had settled,
I went for a walk by the brook and copse where the speckled
Mistle thrush warble
In the frondescence away from the fluorescent city jangle and hum,
Past the glum
Boarded building where the hat factory once stood
Where my sister had worked as a girl
Just as my mother had done before her.
As the sun sunk and the dusk fused
The sky with bruised-
Peach ruddiness,
The dull bells pealed at the parish church.
A flock of students from the nearby university fluttered by.
And in the churchyard, where the serried gravestones lie,
Flailing in the gills of the evening wind,
In star-splayed petals and flame-yellow frills
Were the bobbing heads of yet more daffodils.
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