It was a damp kiss
of an image.
Dispassionately you drop
an old coin into my hands.

Faithless in your poem.
I adored the Venus in twilight.
Carnation. A rose pink color,
appears in your eyes.

Rising from the marshy
slush, greater flamingos
keep watch underneath, at the
army of urns.

The sameness now dithers.
You want to weave the moon
in your breast, unpreparing
to open the heart.

The brown rice were
not yet ready.
An old man turns in grave.

*

The thingness
was shapeless in dark
Like a sleeping Buddha.

*

Once I told a lie.
The snow started melting
releasing methane.

Spitting the blood, he said,
every winter for few days –
he would feel outcast and there was
pain in the idea of pain, but he wanted to live
without a painkiller.

Sometimes he will singe his hands on a flame
to protect his dignity. The history of his
unrest remaining untold. Then he will go
out in rains of knowledge and soak himself
in mixed joy.

A lump in the throat hurts, when he
tries to decipher a dream to measure
the life. A liar knows the complete death
of a truth to assert his independent existence
in myth.

A deadly poison of the choosing,
your own microclimate, aggrandizement
of royal tradition, makes you popular in masses.
They surge to touch your gown, ripping
the explosion.

Because I live depressed
I live inept
& thrive by comparison
In the trenches.

Like the switch button of a 90s television set, the echoes of a knock and a dead bolt’s lock pierces the static air of sharp breathing.

“Define stay, in your point of view, when you can’t even be here to explain its meaning directly to my face,” she pleads with glassy eyes on the verge of breaking down.

She silences a sob with the tearing of handwritten letters and the burning of old photographs.  She won’t need them; she already has every word bound and every pixel branded onto her memory, as much as she tried to annihilate it all.

Behind the closed door, his eyes mirror hers.  His tongue was dry, but careful enough to select the words that would quench their parched throats and hearts.

Will she open a new door? Will he face a new destiny? Are they even in the same corridor, the same floor, the same building?

They’ve been roaming separately, unsure of their directions if one is following the other’s path. Or are they just traveling in circles of pure coincidence?

He knocks again.

“Stay is when my hands or eyes are unable to hold you close, yet you know you’re home.  Because of the way you are anchored to my voice when I say your name, or the way my heart keeps you with me.  

Stay doesn’t always require physical presence.  

I know you are already decided on staying whenever I enter your mind, whenever you think about me. And you know I can never leave your mind, much more your heart.”

She stays put where she is.

The only thing she leaves is the door—open—for him.

Come in, come in
I hate how you're always late
It makes me remember all the forgetting I had to do
To get not quite over you

Not impassible.
Buried in snow, I
will bring back my moon.

There was no divination.
I still stand on my legs.

I will not talk about shadows
or any haloes. An urge to find
unknown. Touching the feet?
No I don't submit to body.

No rewards. No citation.
I will walk alone in the jungle
of prying eyes, in my
visible bones.

The flame-test. The truthless
blames, and a naked god.
I have come faraway from my childhood.

The cult moves in
circle. Stargazing
starts. You lie buried in
wet retreat. Eyes protruding

The veil sends a sweet death.

The death. Only you would
know, what was the conversation
between the repentant
and priest.

Superfluous. To beautify
the grimace. The lips―
always cheat.

A black cloud devours the moon.

Nothing has ever happened
to me. I meet my road
daily in wilderness―

tasting salt.

The lake was frozen.
Surfing was not possible.
I was walking as if on cotton grass.

You think I have become a hope
in dark?

Call me avenger,
after the punch line had-
damaged the hidden ghost.

I want you to
let me go now after the sunset.
My odyssey has not ended.

You are not
what you were, once
upon a time.

The seven colors
are wearing the dark dresses.
Trading has become the hallmark
of light.Let me write my name
without alphabets.

The echoes come back
to pick the mundane sounds.
The celestial music will not be played again.