Maryanne KhanBiographyDespite herselfDespite herselfshe has cake each day served on a wisp of wishes, dusted with castorstars despite herself she is contented lissom under the full-belly moon oblique under the rusty sun she casts a shadow longer than herself has flowers every Friday despite herself there are conversations born of the heart, unraveling time wordstorms around her, a tropical night, and despite herself she listens to herself and him words longer than the day is short invading sleep despite herself a wakeful minute reveals the shape of him beside and despite herself she watches, hoping that he will waken also that he will know that she is grateful for re-invention of this kind and she can tell him so, again for Raja © Maryanne Khan 2007 - 2009 The Gold Coast from a distance at nightI sit and scrub the soles of feetroughened by sand on a remembered shoreline stretching to the feet of a glittering necklace hung upside down to pierce the sky skybuildings with roots in shrieking traffic ruby and diamond lights of cars spewing people with hands to spend and take and feet to hustle wallets hazy towers shrouded from this beach a defense thrown up by sea the mist hurled downshore to soften the dazzle of alien craft sprung up at the hand of men who never feel the sea but sell it framed in plate glass from a height of fifty floors in the distance the city seen with cataract vision stands brooding in the silken veil the mist has swathed and you and I lie entwined, naked on the beach too dark to see you as you loved me the buildings but a distant candle burning low © Maryanne Khan 2009 Ciara’s birthday poemyou were born of Cadmium redand Cerulean blue a dash of turquoise and a slash of burnt umber tempered with pure Azo orange and Alizarin crimson. a rag tempered with turpentine mellowed with linseed oil to counter the bitter thinner. And i was painting the night before you were born and you were all creation something from nothing and you were also the roses on the wall outside my window and you were the lattice that i looked through and the stairs to the attic you were the Belgian rain that tasted of chocolate the one miracle i found in my diary a year to the day since i lost my first first child and there was you, before you were born come to school with me hearing the lectures kicking my papers disrespectfully, i remind you, from the desk in front of me, saying "Mamma. don't buy it, it's a crock of shit." and did I listen? maybe You were the cockles and mussels i sang to you and later Noddy and Duckie and Little Bullwinkle and the last rose of summer and the gypsy rover and you were the little one, before that, long before that, who looked up from your cradle when i got back from Paris from studying Picasso, and my better painters and there was my Bainie with black currant eyes. © Maryanne Khan 2009 Dining alfrescocircling in the open all words no gesturesave the silver glint of knives and forks sit, as they tell me, at the table of the freaks placed with regard to a scarified billboard, fluttering scraps we fake a universe in the curve of a teapot shove aside consternation, read the paper abreast of facts no thought-crushing thread, words hung on the wire tense a secret loop below the frothed surface, the mercy of this day coins in the pocket, arms in the sleeves of warmth our last sun on the backs of hands, congealed smiles floating in the cup i at dinner, lovely in the billow of a skirt a stagecraft of mine prompts rain at the rooftops eavesdripping down reveals the stand of my trees, the breath in my grass the gaze of the keeper, guardian eyes intersect i pause, a forkful raised to lips wait for the bite, drop down drop down again, time for us to go © Maryanne Khan 2009 The poetin defining I as one of we, I wonderdo I need others to constitute an I – is we the smallest unit possible? Looking over my shoulder in an unannounced gap the incongruity of inattention when space is infinitely available the bit of available life that is allotted, I quote the rote knowledge I was looking for equality, not sure where “difference” edges in nicely, takes its privileged place and I wonder what kind of repetition we’re talking about, given that we’re we and I was talking to myself alone talking about john cage listening to silence for three, six, nine minutes listen to it once, twice, nine times and i see that it is i who am boring, and the character of boredom is probability They, one of them, found me and approached me to join I wasn’t a performer again I was peripheral, my performances were limited we converged on public places to interrupt the tedium subtle violence done to the space and to the users amongst the hoardings and scenes of street renovations a girl suddenly able to sing – I happen to know it doesn’t happen overnight why should you listen to me I exist increasingly outside the standard in non-regulation garb out of uniform where is the you I am talking to, over there? Why, as I said, should you listen to me, to what is so far nothing to witness what is here with me I take up space and ask if it’s important in comparison, say, to a shoe-cleaner in delhi or the king of the world things are relative, hammered out, in the old silence the noise of memory re-spools a scent careful listening creates a stillness of its own you came to the desert to hear what? a reed rattling in the wilderness? Copyright © Maryanne Khan 2009  email: private comments to author:
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