Birth

How far can one walk
Away from the night
Without knowing
That it was the dark which said
“Let there be light”

The Sailor

There was dust upon his eyebrows
And stars under his eye
Each for one color of the rainbow
Taped to the woolen sky
I was swimming on a rose bridge
And saw him drink the sea
He was a dolphin from the desert
Dressed as a honeybee

So I fell for him forever
Like lovers on rainy night
And my heart was Christmas carol
Raw as Eve’s apple bite
Thus we drowned in whispering voices
Pouring out our crystal skin
There were wings upon our shoulders
And a shared velvet fin

But the man he was a sailor
With a thirst for sea green ocean
All I had was sky blue eyes
And a sense of moonlight motion
So I kissed his salt shaped lips
And set his anchor free
And I watched him drift asleep
On a heavy wooden sea
Now I am swimming on a rose bridge
Alone on rainy night
And I have apples around my ankles
But no heart to leave a bite

Shipwrecked

Chained to the dust
With my own lock and key
I was standing by the tide;
Remembering the sea

One Winter of Embers

One winter
Two flowers bloomed
Three days apart
And of all those who saw
None survived
For one winter
Two flowers bloomed
Three days apart….

P. S – In the living memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Onus of an Asylum

When they with no fingers
Point at the blind
For not calling out the deaf
Falling behind
The mute they shall say
That this is the way:
We paralysed people
Walk everyday

The Beauty In Being Ugly

Be ugly
If being beautiful
Is a common trait
That way when all the mirrors in the world break. They shall look at you, as something new
To search and find
The beauty once lost to an opaque mind…

Fresco

And they said they wanted to write
My poems for me
And chew my black tobacco
And drink my honey tea
But friend O my friend
My words are mine alone
Though yours may taste much sweeter
Their seeds to me are as stone
So leave me be, let me see
The world with my bit of error
And write with a trembling hand
All that I feel of terror
And be true as a single-faced coin
And roll in a scentless sea
And come as a corpse on the other side
Dead and yet so free…

Of Bones Beneath the Branches

There were cypress beyond the city wall
With cones like eyes upon them
And I tended each for long until I felt
They saw far too much of me
And showed far too little of themself
(Those leaves with their whispers and those roots with their secrets)
So I did not water come the summer, I did not water come the winter;
And the leaves, they yellowed and fell,
And frost took the roots
Slipping needles of ice into their breaths
Till decades were laid silent
Like sand beneath the ocean.
I walk beyond the wall now and then
Dressed in nothing but the evening
And stand under the cypress
And watch the antler twigs sway
Hiding nothing now but melancholy motion
The sense of sleep
And I wonder at the difference, if any, between our shared nakedness