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K. Eltinae
http://keltinae.purpledream.com |
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K. Eltinae is a 21 year old poet, who has been writing since his early childhood. Writers such as Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Naguib Mahfouz, Tayib Salih have had an aggressive influence on his literary appreciation and development of writing. He is currently a languages/diplomacy and public affairs major at the University of Khartoum, in Sudan. He is working on a novel tentatively titled "A Beautiful Release" a masked autobiography about the neurosis of finding stability and peace. |
Name
03/23/03 |
You are called by a name
Which no one gave
Yet it is your given name.
It was given up to save,
What was lost already,
In a place no one could keep,
Your name was just a serum
So they could watch you sleep
There's a ring around your finger
There's a ring about your name
There's a ring around your expectations
For things to stay the same
How permanent is a name to you?
How long does it exist?
Is your name another way
Of throwing out your fist
Against a world driven by labels
A place pursued by shames
I shy away from name calling
I deviate from all that fame.
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Paper (Sitting Still)
04/01/03 |
I am not angry,
I am pinning up this dread,
I'm not listening to these voices,
Screaming in my head,
You're shaking something awful,
Baby why don't you just sit still?
And let my mercy wash over your body,
Like a forgiving sleeping pill.
You know you're shaking,
Just like paper,
Without motive,
Without scheme,
You are falling down that flight of stairs,
Which you have claimed to be your dream,
I don't blame the half of you,
That's been left here waiting,
Begging to be whole,
I just wish your life,
Could find elan,
Of some timeless control.
I don't carry these strokes around,
My shades have grown friendly,
As the family clock,
No one cares about how I feel anymore,
They just wait for me to talk,
And when I do,
The whole earth moves,
And nothing is still again,
You're still shaking just like paper,
As I am watching you descend.
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Private Show
04/07/02 |
I saw your stretching feet
Distanced miles apart from eyes
Your gaze narrowed by experience
Your stomach fuzzy with the vulnerability
Of some well veiled lies
And was instantly attracted
Or rather distracted
By the emotion in your dance
I pictured an entire episode
Of this swaying
The things we could be saying
But would rather not touch
Don't you think this silence
Is a little too much?
Why have I fastened this smile on?
Like a wandering belt
To shield the things which I have felt.
For You
I have created my own dance
It lacks music and a beat
It is the dance I practice night after night
As I suffer,
You retreat.
It is a dance we both understand
In a privacy, no one can hold
It is a dance I taught myself
When my feet grew tired and cold
This dance will last till morning
I will savor it as heat
Against the nights I know will come
When I will surrender, in defeat.
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Truths ( You Decided )
04/16/03 |
Everyone is chasing the rainbow I lost
Running around trying to put a price tag
For my dream with no cost.
And when I put my foot down
When I speak my heart
I come off cold and biting
And people start fighting
And the blood that's left over
Is always mine.
How many changes of heart, till I'm through?
How many times have I had to change my tone?
To get across,to be heard?
Who am I following?
Where is the floor?
I think about your words
More and more.
Don't do me any favors,
Don't ask to taste my flavors
Then comment on what you'd change
I'm not shrill, baby its called range
I can reach out into the ocean
Bring back the salt you won't taste
But the ocean is beautiful,
And you're just a waste,
This isn't the end of the song,
The scale goes higher and higher
You decided for yourself
And lost your crown
Deep down where it matters
You're a dark spot on my carpet
I've decided not to clean
You can just about imagine
What all of this could mean.
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Favors
11/02/03 |
I'm calling you on a favor,
It won't cost you much
Just the most striking memories
Of the things you loved to touch.
There are two versions of what happened.
I keep both for perspective,
I keep both to decide,
Which one of us was at fault
Which one of us complied.
The first is of me,
Knitting a cage, a web, a trap
Where I lured you inside
Like shade to a sleepy cat
I held you captive made you promise to sit still,
While I took advantage of you, and had my fill.
I never looked back once,
Never made the gesture to clean up the messes I made
I just listened to the song on the radio as it played.
Till you were finished crying,
Till you were ready to go home,
Then I swore to God that I would leave you alone.
But you came back for another round,
Indulging at the pace of your heart,
And that is about where your version should start:
I became the "obsessed"
Trailing behind your treasure,
Begging you night after night
For your Instrument of Pleasure.
Things got out of hand
Things were taken to heart
Your love was a sharper blade
Than I had thought.
I robbed your bank of decency,
Used your ideals like bate,
While the whole time I was rewriting
Your last chapters of fate.
You accuse me now,
With varying charges of theft,
While all I ever asked
Was to look at what was left.
My eyes never sparkled in the pictures,
I never feigned to be your friend,
I just wanted to blow out the birthday candle at the end.
And now that I've taken the light
I'm taking all that borrowed time
When all your sick favors were mine.
Do yourself the favor,
Make things even
Symmetry was never your strength,
The Art of Love is weighed on,
Estimates undefined by length.
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Jailbird
01/12/04 |
She was brought against her will,
When she had beauty still,
And so many things now gone.
She built a raft with truths,
She couldn't leave behind,
And years later went blind,
With the hunger of never knowing.
All the things she had lost,
Were all cunningly designed,
To reappear one morning,
Like seaweed on a shore,
Things she couldn't use anymore.
All held hands like an omen,
Like a necklace on skin,
They all wanted back "in"
But "there wasn't any room for the past" she cried
Inside where all the beautiful things had died,
Remained the carcass of an anonymous song,
Captive to a departed regime to whom no one belonged.
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Marathon
02/07/04 |
You're standing next to me,
Stretching muscles like bubble gum,
And I am watching you 'ause I've got none,
Everyone predicts you're the winner I know,
But I tell myself I should still give it a go,
Cause we all react differently,
To the sound of a gun,
We all run away from that setting sun,
We all want to resist against time,
Like a statue refusing to fall,
Ignorant that life offers nothing at all.
So we began you and I, you are ahead,
And I watch my father bury his face in his hands,
Like he is watching something happen that he can't quite understand,
"I'm not here to compete or for your applause" I scream,
No one seems to be paying attention to me it seems,
I'm waiting to see where his feet will carry him,
I'm trying to follow the point he is aiming for,
And suddenly he has collapsed gasping on the floor,
Within minutes time he is gone,
Competing in a different race, we can never watch or applaud
He has joined the team of God.
And I am standing there, watching tears fall like sweat,
And I'm damning the people who made up this bet.
Why are we measured?
Shoulder to shoulder,
Fitted and knitted for a one size for all
Why can't we walk bare?
And understand things as being rare,
Instead of different and strange,
Another inch is added to the range,
The labels won't ever stop;
This sorting has taken over our lives,
I can't say why I won,
I don't know what I've done,
What kind of statement I was making,
Or what this has to say about fate,
All I am asking you to do is appreciate.
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Exhaust
04/09/04 |
You better watch the words,
You're shattering on my floor,
You better learn to calculate,
Cause one day soon you will realize,
Your lost wealth and its cost,
And the guilt will choke you from a distance,
Just like your cars exhaust.
You've got your heart set on the road ahead,
Your hands hidden in the pockets of dreams,
You've got a carrier bag of ready-made excuses,
And the look "I know what I mean",
But believe me people get lost in translation,
People get lost on the road,
The ambition turns into a stiff shirt,
That no bodies hands can fold.
I knew where you kept your secret
I watched you water it, saw it grow
But it never was a memory of you I meant to keep,
It was always something I pretended I didn't know.
But now it seems you've held it up against the wind
To catch a notion you can nurture and keep,
But I can't spend each night like this,
Lulling you to sleep.
In truth,
We find the dangerous words we lose,
In the homes of the hearts we break,
We go their eager to find one fluttering,
In the air just by mistake.
But each of our harsh words have folded like a chair,
Under the hearts of those we've lost,
And the regrets are the dirty pollution,
That today we call exhaust.
A face can stitch a smile, wink an eye, produce a tear,
But a heart is a cave that echoes
Our lost utterances and their fears.
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Sale Of Your Life
04/24/04 |
You have the kind of smile,
I could split in two and save for later,
Shoplifting through the aisles of my desires,
Ignoring my mind like the oldest cheese on display,
Just look at that cheese, molding like my heart,
Freezing under all those heavy lights,
No one thinks she's a smart buy,
No one gives her a thought,
Then I look over to what you've bought,
And realize the only reason; I never stay on the shelf,
Isn't because my love is smooth and can be spread with a knife,
It's more like you're convinced,
That this is the sale of your life.
I watch the moving shapes,
Listen to groceries repeated under breath,
And I think to myself,
Look at that cheese, she is a lighthouse
She must be mad with neglect
But as I looked over I can see
The advantages she has over me.
She hasn't compromised herself at the cost of being wanted,
She hasn't tipped herself to the edge to get caught,
She's not concerned with being bought.
She doesn't mind the indifference,
People don't notice her much,
She is chilled by the vacillating hands,
Who can't decide
If they are willing to try something new
For five dollars or six,
Some of us are kidnapped to the pockets of youths,
Who have kicks throwing our prices out on the street,
Where the rest of our heart's ambitions lie in defeat.
Is it so much to ask for a price tag,
For the things you never intended to give away?
Is it wrong to feel you want something back for what you gave?
Is it right to lay night after night like a broken doll playing wife,
Allowing you to indulge in the fantasy sale of your life?
I watch that cheese getting farther away
Like a raft of truth, I embedded in my mind
But then your smile robs me blind.
This isn't the sale of your life
She whimpers but not a soul is in reach,
I was the only thing she had her heart set on to teach.
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Small Love
05/10/04 |
For Koala
I am the dizzy ceiling fan,
You are the glare off of the opposite wall,
Our love lies in its crumpled up body,
Offering mostly, nothing at all.
We are the elected audience,
Pretend-making amends,
People, who visit look at us curiously,
As though, we're still staying friends.
All the while, your glare gets dimmer by night,
As my pace steadies,
And we try not to fight over,
What we've lost already.
Reality surfaced like a dizzy child,
Onto the floor collapsing like a doll,
And that my love is what changed,
Everything that was small.
You chart ahead, apathetic,
Measuring distances like meals,
You hardly pay attention,
To the way that body feels.
In its soundless clammy state,
Fever ascending through nerves,
The paralyzed victim of betrayal,
From a love he failed to preserve.
No one knows exactly when,
Things began to fall,
We all watched the nurse's gestures,
As the sheet folded over his face,
Her solemn footsteps echoing down the hall,
And that my love is what changed
Everything, that was small.
You are left in the corridor,
Your glare aimed at a window,
Where your cigarette smoke plays with light,
I have stopped spinning, I have found respite.
My heart signals out its last call
As I abandon everything I loved once,
That was small.
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