We should cry more, mom
Like every righteous, virtuous, well-schooled schoolboy
I said no to my first cigarette
No
Unlike the picture perfect schoolboy however
It was my mother who handed me the pack
“Go ahead. Try it”
You and your old solemn pain
Ink on paper drowning in rain
We’re sitting in the living room too big for the few pieces of furniture to warm us up
Our favourite place in the house to cry
Like a desert by night where our lone tent reminds us how alone we are
I say “no, no need to try”
My mother puts her journal on the side
She’s filled journal upon journal in her introspective stride
She stops mid-way when I ask her if she’ like me to publish her journals one day
She looks at me, almost scared, and in her strictest voice says
“You’ll burn them all when I’m gone”
You and your old solemn pain
Ink on paper drowning in rain
It is said the Russian river Baykal
One of the largest in the world, freezes in the winter
Miles and miles of ice
The glory and symbol of the Russian soul
Yet when autumn comes, the ice starts to break and a few courageous hikers go to watch and hear it
Watch because nature is showing off its most progressive break dance moves
Hear it because every break sounds like a thundering explosion
A bomb planted in the middle of nowhere
A tension bound for too long
A release finally happening
You and your old solemn pain
Ink on paper drowning in rain
Standing close to the lake, in front of his temple,
The Russian shaman twitches his mayan traits
He stands on top of the mountain from where one can hear the Baykal’s explosions
And drums on his chest
The sound of 60 mayan gongs bathing the temple like with waves of sounds
And the temple vibrates
Every rock is moving like the atoms from a new string theory
A jittery dance where colours shift
The pyramid is blue now, it’s yellow, it’s a fish, it’s a sword, it’s a shapeshifting joke on the humans who are losing their minds
My mother is a 160 feet tall damn containing a reality
A ban 30 years old blocking a fatality
Mum I’ve been seeing the world through a mother shaped curtain for too long
And a new birth is due
Shaman descend
You and your old solemn pain
Ink on paper drowning in rain
Stand on the stage of the Mayan pyramid
The world will listen in
Speak woman
Cry woman
Wail woman
You’ve been keeping the last bits of his umbilical chords in your mouth
Spit them woman
Spit them mom
Give them back
Let him chew them
Let him burn them in a fire
Set at the crossroad of the line that leads to the road of the Himalayas and the line that shoots from the arm of the shaman who whispers to jaguars
Here I burn the bits you keep
And I add in your journals
And the ashes are mascara for my eyelashes to see
the world through the eyes of the shaman of the jaguars
That hails autumn to now set in permanently
