Month: August 2021

Offal

I

Here in the dim lit room
Held together with velcro
I await for an awakening
There is a gaggle of gods about me
And I hear the mice being murdered in rafters
While my stereo melds a melody
An edible static like
Ants in my mouth
And bees on my tongue
So I spit the honey and drink the stings
And I drown the birds and cage the wings
To breathe, to breathe
The liquid light
From the cigarette between my gasoline lips
In amorous delight

II

The flame of my flesh and this napthalene world
Resting upon a rusted needlepoint
Take heed of the dust motes
Suspended in time
For they are you
And they are me
Awaiting
With nothing to see
In the far too near eternity

III

I see stars in my bedroom
And prophets under my eye
Rainbows growing from my skin
As I fall into the sky
And there is a hymn in my ears
That aches “Praise to thee”
And I am drowning in my tears
Eating a faded tapestry

Her Fire and Her Flesh

Her eyes were on the fire
Her fingers in the dough
The smoke; it left her breathless
Like the kerosene she poured into the stove
The sweat dipped her lashes
To her tears were all blind
She was only a shadow on the wall
Though being a woman one of a kind

She had trapped Ganges in her hair
And Pharaohs praised her lotus feet
Her’s was Mumtaz’s Taj
And to her belonged the Papal Seat
But all that was her she had given
In dowry for her father’s name,
With the hope she would be treasured
And not burnt alive for the same

But soon a time shall come
When a Sita will not walk
A false Ordeal of Fire
So blind people would not talk
And soon a time shall come
When a Draupadi will not accept
The men and their game of dice
Weighted against her self-respect
And no longer any Eve shall answer
For Adam’s own intent
And let a Mother be always a Martyr
And Father always a Saint

Shore Without the Sea

I know no more of you
Than the shore does of the sea
A lifetime spent haunted
By a murdered memory
Of the ever alive distance
Like the lights between two cities
So far from flame the fire
That there are two eternities

My body, it wanders,
With the wind that holds my hand
Which whispers me to write
About my love on seeds of sand
So the wind may carry it along
To you, wherever you are
On the pillow of a wooden moon
Or beneath the shadow of a dying star

But my thoughts they do confess
That my mind can now surrender
Every dream I had of you
So I may no longer remember
How it was to be untrue
Towards my life which I shaped in sorrow
Wishful that my barren tonights
Shall light our shared tommorow

And I hope you can see me now
(From across the desert you brought to break
The castles I wrought in dreams
To keep us forever awake)
So you know I am free at last
From the future that stems from past
A sole light that sleeps off far
Beyond the cracks of memory
Of how I know no more of you
Than the shore does of the sea

The Dance of the Dying


I am here in the now
Without a why
Or a how
Leaning upon this thought;
Who am I
And belong to what

Is this world the same as me
A life made alive in memory
Of being a being without a voice
Free to choose but without a choice

And shall the death be all it take
To make me cease and never awake
And to not know what all this meant
If the sinner in the end is same as a saint

Perdu

Once I wrote a poem
The perfect one
For those who cannot read
It had, commas, at all the right, places,
And no exclamation mark!
Or operose words one does not know
Or any rhyme to ruin the bitter flow
If only I had been able to see
The invisible ink
I would never have used the poem
As a tissue paper