the abode of the rains
loses its clouds once again,
pours its moist indifference
over the pluviophile seemingly
taking him back in time,
back to a time
when his mother hadn't grown
all that weight that she did,
when the days had forgotten
how to breathe fresh air in
and instead smeared themselves up in
the disappointment of his misplaced love,
when hopes had a hard time breathing,
and bygones had a hard time dying
and bedside windows had a hard time
concealing late night cigarette secrets:
.....
the abode of the rains
loses its clouds once again
and a very pale shade of melancholy
coats the outer crust of his old town
where faces never seem to change,
where kongs and their kwais
restore the burnt ligaments
of his old decapitated memories
and mark the inability of the place
to move forward,
where ancient channa-wallas carry
their green antique shoulder boxes
that have compartments to store
four different ingredients for
a kind of after-school snack
that can be found nowhere else
but here:
.....
the abode of the rains
loses its clouds once again
revealing itself incapable of
holding old densities and
holding old intensities,
for the pluviophile
is no longer a victim of the past
but a martyr of the future -
he clads himself in conventions
that bully the idea of conventions
and he wears a look of honor
that borderlines dishonor
in the lap of his old society,
but he could care less -
his has always been a story of
late departures,
late arrivals and
late redemptions:
.....