KALI’S COBRAS: A FICTIONAL MEMOIR
I’ve learned to ease my hungers since
my youth and Kali’s cobras were
face down even before Columbus
back when Thai fought Khmer
Wars of sovereignty conflicts of faith
Brahma vs Buddha .
Kali, Hindi Goddess of Time and change,
seems to have been watching me forever.
More than three decades gone since I was lured,
famished, up to lichen-tracked temples
away from teaching English
away from Somchai, Pichate and Mekhala
my adoring students who bowed every morning.
Around me, squat gray blocks
encircled by brilliant yellow
bananas in the shade of a local wonder:
The ruins called PANOM RUNG
Hole-in-the-Mountain.
Orawan lured me there with a promise.
We peered into the blackness
she said went all the way to nothing.
Around us, motionless
sandstone Cobras of Kali had fallen
before the mighty triumvirate
Vishnu, Brahma and Siva.
Shyly smiling Orwan spoke
of pulsing magic within the rubble
a lingam God’s penis
gold-leaf encrusted.
If you can lift It the answer to your question is YES.
The legend proved true
when we kissed and later sated ourselves
on fried rice, chicken and fish sauce
wrapped in thick banana leaves.
What a quiet soft time that was
stretching out beside cool, looming
ruins then jump up to laugh
On a crumbling outer wall kicking
our feet out at time and chance
then back to the shade and rest.
Later, the very promise of tourism
was enough to prop cobras back erect
though I myself now stand half-bowed
with nothing but a faded print.
All those ruins restored as new
but my beautiful Orawan faded
with my faith my hope
my hungers.
Those renovated sandstone Gods are as lost
as Zeus, Hades and Dionysus
their worshippers dried corpses.
Khmer ruins are squeezed
ss Lacoon and his sons
by patient tamarind roots.
Those who’ve restored it all block by block
to perfection must believe
retracing the images of a dream
returns the dreamer to his other self.
Workers and tourists perform their own dances now
before devouring a buffet of chilled history.
What have I learned, I wonder, since
Orawan and I did a few turns atop a half-fallen wall.
Do the new visitors, looking up at a restored
Hindi triad expect answers about
Life Death and the Black between?
That was all new to me then. Of no use to me now;
but old routines to the cobras of Kali
Aware of new feasts on the horizon
holes in the fabric of time
sharing with men a relentless belief
in resurrection
the possibility of returning
Finding ourselves re-born in a better place.
