Ergomaniac
Clackety-clack, clack clack, clackety-clack. You clatter like a cajón following my flamenco fingers / keeping my rhythm as I focus my sweet solitude / testing if my brain’s expulsions become garlands or garbage / I do my best to make sure I don’t see you at all / You do your best to only be forcefully felt / But we are together aren’t we? / Like Mouth and Stomach? / Servant and Master? / Beauty and Beast? / What part do I play in our daily mix of tango, cha-cha and reggaeton duets? / I know that I feel you more often than anything else in the world and you bear the immense weight of my tangled mind through the tips of my fragile fingers / Every single day. Clackety-clack, clack clack, clackety-clack.
Face / On
I see you smiling. Are you? I hear your kind words. Do I? They say a long dark snake eats the moon slowly. How does the moon return? Does the snake spit it out because it starts growing in its belly? There is only so much light to give. Smiles are flowers that bloom when the soil is fertile. Kindness is the river that flows out of a glacier of wellness. Glaciers dry up, don’t they? Is soil forever fertile? Plastic flowers, recycled rivers, and fluorescent lights. We know how to mask our masks, don’t we?
Navilan is a father for sure, programmer by profession, poet by identity, and educator in a dreamlike past. He has told many long-form stories to short-form humans. One of the stories has been published as an illustrated picture book. He is happy in his nook with his family, reading, playing, and trying to fall in love with life again.
inlandiajournal 