R. Bremner writes of incense, peppermints, and the colour of time. in such venues as International Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, Passaic Review, Poets Online, Jerry Jazz Musician, Red Wheelbarrow, Brownstone Poets, and Climate of Opinion: Sigmund Freud in Poetry. Ron’s recent books are Hungry Words (Alien Buddha Press), Absurd (Absurdist poetry from Cajun Mutt Press), and Pencil Sketches (Clare Songbirds Publications). He has thrice won Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg awards, Ron lives with his beautiful sociologist wife in wonderful Northern New Jersey, USA.

Prabhakaran’s son

After the rebel leader was killed,
along with two of his children,
it became an imperative for us
to locate his remaining child.

That was not easy.
My leads led nowhere.
Filthy traitors offered nothing
but lies.

Finally, almost as a gift
from the Buddha, a search
of a safe house proved no
longer safe!

No, do not take him,
they shouted.
He has done nothing
wrong.

He is mentally backward,
they claimed.
He has not the brains
to be any trouble.

Balachandran, Balachandran!
an old woman called after him,
weeping.

He did not speak
as we led him away.
In our camp, he shivered
though it was very hot.

“Look, the boy trembles”,
our soldiers mocked.
“He wants to cry!”
But I said, “Perhaps he is hungry.”

I got milk and some biscuits
from our supplies.
The boy gobbled them
furiously, but that did not stop
the blank look in his eye.

I saw that they were right about him.
There is no wisdom in his eye.
He is mentally backward.

His snack finished, he staring
into my eyes,
I raised my rifle to his chest.
And fired.
He was nothing but a little
bloody heap
of a twelve-year-old boy.

It was a necessary task
for he was the heir.

Velupillai Prabhakaran was the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, aka the Tamil Tigers. He had three children, only one of which, Balachandran, remained alive after the leader was killed in a shootout with the Sri Lankan army.

R.I.P. Balachandran Prabhakaran, 1996-2009

When night fell, I thought it was time
to sweeten the distance between us. After
all was said and done, your triumph was
complete. you even managed to purge
my necessary revenge.

But the arrow of time will
hit its target. My secret odyssey into
the freedom of medication has
left me no option than
to stick my fingers into the
eyeballs of the world.

You may be my messenger
to the sweet surprise that awakes
when the world discovers my
fingers in its eyeballs.

Wistful, pungent,
our love was magnificent to feel,
to see, to touch, to smell,
even to hear the cacophony of passion,
beautiful in its insouciance, its evitable strength.
It felt like some gnome was holding
our heads underwater,
like sun glare was blinding our eyes
like our noses were dipped in kerosene.