Archive for the ‘Poetry’

Now our New Year has no moon

The moon rises to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Dreaming, I take the rifle and shoot my own heart. Now our New Year has no moon. The streetlamps of La Chappelle bend down to the darkness but still spread their light. I shoot them out, one by one. An unknown Tamil comes along. I say Hello and ask him for a match. Then I see that his eyes are seeking a life. I am asking for a light and he is asking for a life? Yes, we are the generation That lit our cigarettes On the pyres of burning bodies. Was there a dead person staggering along the street Smoking a cigarette in your New Year dream? He had a house but no bed to sleep He had a village but no road to walk He had a country but no freedom to smile. This is why our New Year has no moon. When you gobble your milk rice…

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The Offer from a Sri Lankan Tamil Man

My King! I propose a deal with you COMPATIBLE with my Membership of our country I hold so dear which you do not wish to deny. My King! Here is your part: Abolish anything and everything INCOMPATIBLE with our heritage and culture with unwritten rules of our value system with diktats of our many Gods. My King! Ban them mini-skirts for exposed knees are not only INCOMPATIBLE with our Ways and Norms, but cause road accidents too. Sigiriya damsels, hence My King, don’t show their knees, you see. My King! While you are at it I suggest a list of things to ban; All INCOMPATIBLE with our Ways and Norms, and cause my stomach to turn too. political promises un-kept, cash transfers in brown envelopes, beating suspects on arrest, locking up for weeks, months and years, attaching bodies to tree, decoupling souls to go free, Ban ‘em all, My King!, ban ‘em all. Gracious King! Here is my part: I…

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At Your Service

Islanders always like to baila, party, party, nibble the ear whispering, pump themselves with arrack and go courting on the Green, but in these holidays at year’s end dedicated to forgetting the war and all those gadflies buried in graves, some families mourn their heroes away from the headlights’ glare of vans without license plates that remain in service waiting to be summoned when necessary. Repost This Article

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Thanks, Guys

Nobel-peace-prize-2010

Liu Xiaobo , Winner of Nobel Peace Prize 2010, “ CHRD Vassals, serfs, dependent states, including erstwhile defenders of human rights, we appreciate and respect your well-considered decisions to absent yourselves from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies for the common prisoner who shall not here be named, who has filled pages of certain duplicitous democracies with his seditious ideas. He will remain in jail and the Middle Kingdom shall prosper without end. Repost This Article

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my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii

my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii (a responsive thing) by sumathy ooo, how sad that thing called a sri lankan-thing who thinging this thing of of englees or inglisss has no capacity, no? for funny funny joking thing in the morning, day, evening or night. only thing he, boyfriend, can find is thing that, thing this, and good old papa shakes peare, no great shakes but sitting on the fence of the globe, passing on this or that thing frommm eliza to james, accumulating primitively othello’s thing? of course, this is way above the ways of pearl, bin dalen or the pumpkin lovers of the fricative z, but write i, nevertheless, of the base indian, richer than all his tribe, this thing, no caring no, meyler’s injunction against poetry in the sri lankan that thing. Repost This Article

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Inheritance

There is no rule written in an enormous ledger by an acolyte angel that says a poet will write every day until death. The uncivil war will end according to absence of such dictate when humours start to break down cellular walls and cancer spreads overcoming defences of heart, lungs, kidneys, gut, brain, in no particular order, as aforementioned parts succumb to constant hammering of shells, fits of barking orders to kill, and distant turning away from disaster, beating breasts, while asking focus groups, how can we intervene in a sovereign nation, does this particular wilful disregard for human life meet your standard, fellow citizens and friends? Pure fantasy. Nobody consulted the man in Peoria or the soothsayer shuffling along to the bead shop on Main Street. There was no attempt to interfere with ordinary irritations of Western peoples living in their democracies, or Chinese factory workers assembling sound cards. Father or politburo know best which is to donate or…

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Compilation of special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka

Special Edition Logo

Download the 162 page compilation of content as a PDF in high quality (25.4Mb), or low quality (3.7Mb). The low quality version is good enough to read, but the photos will look and print much better in the high quality version. From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka. Over this week alone, the site received over forty thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty thousand words of commentary. Tens of thousands more have read and commented on this content since, making the special edition a sui generis archive of intelligent debate, incisive critique and vital perspectives that mainstream media in Sri Lanka, even post-war, is too fearful to feature. For example, one memorable and particularly hard-hitting comment inspired by the content in this special edition came from Tathagata Bose, an Indian…

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Hand Washing

Murder cannot be hidden, bodies decompose but skeletons remain; certainly they can be washed from beach into sea and stripped clean by carnivorous fish yet the panel requires just a few examples, sufficient to flesh out a theory of mass slaughter; satellite shots will be investigated abroad and conversations conducted with survivors of precarious boats landing on Christmas Island or dragged into Jakarta. Scale of killing poses a serious problem for management of disaster; appointment of soft, suave diplomat to run damage control at foreign ministry did not succeed. Murder will be revealed. Macbeth is read also in Sri Lanka; it landed in the culture before the current lot of customs inspectors; am sure Saratchchandra contemplated translating the play if it did not circulate already in the island like monsoon wind or ethics which exist along with denial and chutzpah among its inhabitants; government can throw a temper tantrum but GSP will be linked to human rights and Ban Ki…

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On Replacing the Sun-God

The Sun God disappeared from the scene in May, 2009 killed by advancing army units, not clear which brave soldier pulled the trigger, for some reason government has kept quiet about circumstances, but other magicians in splendid whites are raising arms to salute on Galle Face Green’s reviewing stand troubling peace-loving citizens. They stand before armoured carriers while fighter jets fly over the head of Old Parliament at the annual parade to celebrate the late rebirth of Dutugemunu into our democracy, a spirit who appeared to have achieved beatitude centuries ago, but has required one more round on his favourite hunting ground, a touch of three kingdoms-in-one panache, obeisance of tens of thousands marching past, and loyalty before judgment of the ruling family which will not brook any pesky, possibly traitorous questions, while poets must in turn choose subjects patriotically, no more kissing under umbrellas on the Green facing crashing sea, or relaying news of former residents of Menik Farm…

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Mass Marriage, Vavuniya

What a large and dramatic idea occurred to the brigadier in charge of rehabilitation , to organize a mass wedding to spur former Tiger troops into formation under a different philosophy and yet appeal to their strengths to cohere as a group not any longer in waging war against the State but to reveal their common humanity to agree to a public celebration of private bonds, to ensure their co-habiting led to proper inheritance for children, access to social welfare payments when necessary, all to the good for these members of a herd, now in white vershtis and magenta sarees eating cake and chatting with relatives witnessed by the Bollywood actor Vivek Oberoi, no less, before returning to detention camps, now two by two, respectable members of the new unitary ark, where domestic animals gather obediently while the brigadier sheds a tear; he told the press, he was nervous, even more so than before his own wedding, which did not…

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Negotiables

I wish to crack a bottle of arrack and kick my legs out on the verandah before the sea at twilight, this mix of liquor, even kisses, pleasure under whirring fans, brought by our soldiers bludgeoning villagers with bombs. They chose war, the Tamils, must now face the music, hopping on one foot to a new master. This is obvious, why write poetry anymore, or even put on a suit or read the classics? The arrack is sweet and limestone, salt and gems, if any , in the North will be harvested to enjoy our southern evenings strolling at Unawatuna hand in hand under the moon; even that Tamil boy who lost his mother and father to a misplaced projectile, says he must move on, learn a trade. There is a new calculus, throw away the abacus, Boys, the dream has been denied. Bend your heads and genuflect, we may yet be kind and give you a bit of land…

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The Thirty Year Old Boy

End of War Special Edition

I would like to believe we have been forgiven, that the end justifies means, that prejudice has been copy-edited out of the nursery reader, that the black man with roving eyes and moneyed breath is not after all Tamil, a dirty devil come to spook our children at night who wish only to dream of sweets and cricket, and how they pumped the minority during the tea-break in front of the tuck shop in a public hazing, not approved but allowed by the benign authority, the Principal of laissez-faire– oh let our boys steam off, better now than grown up and angry with wives or trying to get a job in the Tamil-run Public Works Department, or the Civil Service, or even the thosai kaddai. Of course that is history now, the Thirty Year War has been won, and Tamil shopkeepers must hide their newspapers under lungis, and speak Sinhala at checkpoints, or while seeking entry into government buildings. Their…

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Madness

Colombo, Nov 2: A mentally challenged man, who jumped into the Indian ocean to escape arrest, drowned after being badly beaten up by Sri Lankan police in the water in front of a large crowd, police said. (news item) wonder was horror-edged and pity was guilt-edged flotsam on our conscience as we watched the boy thrown into a senseless sea swirling with violence and as shocking anger beat him to death and forced him to drown we who had watched worse and said nothing gazed in silence and a mobile phone video-recorded footage of folly that moment of hideous history prevailed to bear witness to a country whose war was just over to a people now at peace. the waters whirl and the foam is still froth-white the sun glistens still on the golden sand but the boy we call mad is retreating into the ocean still trying to hold off the blows with batons and sticks the last vestiges…

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19th may, 2010

Killinochci-Sumathy

killinochchi town getting ready… may 2010 19th may. you have nothing to say? i can only falteringly mouth, nothing of …. nothing begets nothing, a king says, and launches a war against garrulous daughters and sulking ones; and i think of an other daughter, too too loud or too soft, of other wars and other deaths, slipped between a pillow and its case, a letter, a bomb, a whisper, slipped between the familiar and the family, the nation and its engender. on 19th may, 1991, sivaramani, took her own positive life, her cry strangled with that strenuous cord, blazing a trail of blood of the nation and its many stories; 300, 000 slipped between a miserable soul-dead wretch, who would not take his life and the dark of a storm shelling sky, a black and blue sea, dotted with doom, a king without daughters striking those ‘[trojans =delete] crushed between sea and sky’, a tale slipped between waiting and waking,…

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Justice Our Way

Intervening in the controversy over the teaching of English ‘our way’, retired Senior DIG Edward Gunawardena wrote a satirical letter to The Island of March 27, 2010, which concluded: “So Sir, let us appreciate the fact that speaking or writing English “our way” can have entertainment value too. The Queen’s English can be, murdered. But “English our way” … cannot be murdered. There lies the only advantage of learning English that is recommended… “We know they are who. They don’t know we are who!” What follows is a comment in English-Our-Way, on Justice-Our-Way. For you know who A woman got jailed for she is who By those who think we should stay we are who So if you are not you are who But convert to she is who Better not let they are who Know you are who Repost This Article

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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