The one that led me astray

 My name is Bandara I am a simple scrap metal collector near kandy.

That saturday morning I had come across a stash of steel, copper and brass taps and pipes. Dumped there, most certainly by another scavenger, so he could pick it up another more convenient time. I saw the heap of banana leaves and knew it was a give away for the laziest way of hiding your treasure. It was mine to pick  up. Whoever this other collector was tehy had chosen the worst way to deposit. I myself kept a small trough in my cart and would bury whatever I could, especially when parts of my country were under curfew, and I wouldn't be able to finish my haul.
I had stacked the find in my little wooden cart which rolled on two car tyres worn down to their trecherous radials. It had been a nervous venture, Because I knew the real owner would be back soon to claim his treasure. But today it was mine, from now on it was mine.
I hid the load under some cardboard in case another collector got curious by the weight inside my cart, and by the way I was struggling to pull it.

I did pull the cart and all the way to Gohagoda, where there was a perfect girl slim and graceful, working in the pet bottles department. She wouldn't look at me, I had nothing to offer. But I'd often go out of my way to pass her area just to get a look at her. It was like spying on a leopard. When she felt my eyes on her, she would move out of sight. So I called her Kotiya.
That day I got a good look her and she had looked back. Not with interest, just tolerance. And so I thanked God "Sadhu" all the same. With enough money for the week. I headed home. With no expectations I would enjoy my saturday. I left my cart in the yard near my mother's small wattle and daub house. I tucked the money into a crevice inside the cement block holding up my bed.
I walked out looking for more fortune.

I took the same route as I had when I had found the stash and kept walking, without my cart it seemed I could walk for miles. Without the sound of the rubber and radials on the stones of the unpaved road I was able to hear everything down to the Naja Naja hiss. Animals didn't see me or hear me coming.
It was nearing noon and the heat was unbearable on the exposed part of the road I was walking. I wandered off the road Seeking the cool of nearby trees. One of those trees was a four story tall Jackfruit. I looked up and counted nine huge fruits hanging grom the trunk.
I suddenly noticed a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.
I used my instinct to turn slowly and my eyes found a leopard, Kotiya. It was moving through the outcrop of trees silently. A tear formed in the corner of my eye, just to seee the way those legs moved.
Would I follow it?
I would.



 

Opply manner servants

 A new day in the breakfast room at grand Opply manner. The servants folded sheets, organized the breakfast tables. The two women supervising checked the itinerary for the day.
The roundness of the building soothed the weary minds of the servants. Sanding and chiseling down the angry statues that were their thoughts about the day ahead. As they set the cutlery beside fine napkins on each table.

The pale sky wandered in through the glass, waking from a starless darkness, a silent and lost slumber.  
Wandering in like a confident orphan with nothing to lose.
The movement of the servants, their organization and grace intertwined with the wandering paleness.
It glinted off the cutlery and crockery upon the tables and lit each servant up, as if they were performing a play for onlookers at Opply manner.

The way it curves upward

 The enlightenment Duchy
I see these ambassadors walk out through the magestic gates
Onto the platform bridge above paradise valley
Their garments flow and glow elegantly in the glare 
In these blue skied days that eternally rise and fall
between confortable nights

They flaunt their smiles that spread and rise to perfect dimples
The few clouds that are born on the horizon show symmetry
Dancing in slowmotion until dusk muddles their forms
But nothing muddles the ambassador's form
For an empire emerges that holds each day as sacred

Not one minute, not one hour is in vein
for it expands it advances
Those that tried to slow it were trampled
Rotting in it's wake above ground
Flags and trumpets blew to turn our attention from the stench

The ambassadors called in the remnants from every corner
And made great infantries from them
Curating the next millenia of  trade and violence
Curating the human smile
The way it curves upward like a knife

The mysticism of the scrapyard

 Backyards to the city's big factory estates
Overgrown weeds, papayas and banana palms
Long path stretching along the length of the day
Along the length of stretch of abandoned grass corridor
Along the wall holding up the hill behind it all 

Along the ugliness of the industrial dereliction
Rusted fences and aggressive parrots perched
Old machines never properly decommissioned
protruding from stems of the common herbs
old metal skeletons of a bygone age

Somewhere in it all hid a treasure
Not one men and women could see
Something the spirit of the land sought
Through all that was abandoned
A mystery inside the contrasts of old and new

Inside the rust along the surfaces of the steel folds
Inside the spiderwebs set within massive iron cogs

Pick see Arizona

 The local pharmacy ran out of your medicine
You suffered there in the shared house for the disabled
Family had left you there a little container for your seizures
I saw you in your trouble and your pain

The dry heat of Arizona leaving you slow and exhausted
Now you have come along a lost child in the street of my word
The teddy bear hangs from your hand close to the pavement
Your national health card sticky and sweaty in your hand

You will smoke sometimes to smooth the edges
It hangs in the air the pill holders are empty
Stacked and waiting to be recycled
I saw you in state of stress

I send a blessing as you enter your new crisis
The internal and external thoroughly abrasive against you 

Gratitude behind the nothing

 God I love you behind the nothing
If you were to take me today I'd sing
I would still be thankful albeit solemn
I'd thank you for every moment

Even the shittest

God I love you and adore you for giving my life wonder
For making me this way through my father and mother
I will love you behind the nothing or in strife
For every year of my fortunate life

Even those shit ones

God I will love you behind the nothingness
I will not search for evidence in the roughness
I will wait at the bus stop after death
For you to pick me up no fuss

Even on one of those shit buses

I'll get on and ride to wherever we go next
Purgatory always vexed, I'll still love you from behind it.
A dark hell of unkindness, I'll still love you through the pain.
Thank you for this life each hourglass grain.

It was not shit. i would live it again.

Master Matheus and the slope to ascendance

 Matheus within the popularity.

His face had hardly aged. His hair and eyes shone. It is with this man I thought I might get answers.
There is nothing as self destructive as a desperate heart I heard myself murmur.
Passing cliques with their strange scents and shared sentiment.
Walking slowly over the polished pavers inside the mall of enlightenment.
I approached him and embraced him. His own disciples ignored me.
They looked upon me as if they had recognized me. I had never seen them in my life.
A certain envy was ready to spring up within me, the sense they knew not just who I was, but my questions for Matheus the popular.
The mall was dazzling with huge deocrated alcoves and recesses.
His disciples continued following along as Matheus tolerated my presence. He knew my feelings about life before I could speak. I was exposed before I opened my mouth. I was vulnerable before I knew I was in a vulnerable position.
We got to the part where he would explain to me how I would traverse myself into God.
We reached the steep incline at the back of the mall open to the skies.
Matheus walked up gracefully and steadily. I could find no traction and slipped.
I felt like that five year old again hauling my brother along.
Being blamed by him and my parents for my shortcomings.
My shoes were worn and so I slipped, my face smacked against the slope as I slid down.
The disciples heaved me up again. I wanted to applaud them. To embrace them.
But I was dead weight for their hands and arms. their faces already showed strain.
There was not a miligram of goodness inside me, despite my attempts.
Attempts, oh how important it is to try.
Teach me to love my failings, so as to make amends for countless examples of them.
So I slid down and simply watched Matheus and his followers ascend into some form of rapture awaiting them above.

Thank God for this short meeting with master Matheus.
Leave me behind, below. In the chambers of gossip and flattery and meaninglessness.
This family has too many children abandon this useless child that I am in the thickest part of the forest.
I will lose my way and perish away from your caring eyes.
What a burden I have become.