Goliath intention
Glitters within reach on
Grecian hallowed ground; the
Girl forged by sweat and chalk
Greets the beam with pristine
Gainer flip, ready to
Grasp the world with her feat.

I

School bag, blue shirt, hair parted on the right,
Daal-rice, clock ticking away in delight;
Cycles stop, wagons with seasonal crop,
Get to her class before the gates shut tight.

II

The obsession froths beyond the eavesdrop,
Secrecy brews a moral of Aesop;
Friends don't yet know, the fear that the eyes show,
Grows the need to shout it from the rooftop.

III

Geography is boring, the maps tow
Useless details such as where's Kosovo;
It's all pretense, the absorption intense,
But her attention sets the world aglow.

IV

The wistful heart struggles to make some sense
And accept pain at misery's expense;
Then her comment, and the motives ferment,
The surging tide sweeps over the heart's fence.

V

Evening is drunk with sunlight, the day's spent,
Menthol erases the cigarette scent;
She fades from sight, the mundanities write,
A long ride back under the clouds' intent.

Framed by mankind her voice turned raw.
For toxins had tainted ambrosia
and festered in her child to gnaw
framed by mankind; her voice turned raw
in grief for deaths to come. She saw
in court why she must fight inertia.
Framed by mankind her voice turned raw
for toxins had tainted ambrosia.

Crackling mischief waxes every moon; Moon, the plaited devil
Three harvests blue, summits everest shelf to scrape out crunchy
Bliss, and scurries away, with exasperated steps in tow.

Her silent steps the night takes,
ink-stained fingers sculpt erotica:
She is the child of disillusionment.
Crooked smile hears the words outside her head-
within reach, but not quite.

The mirrors in her room reflect
the kohl of her achievements;
she is a stream long run dry
in desperation for agriculture.

The cigarettes blister her lips
in the careless moments of broken shards;
she is the firefly caught in the summer storm,
beckoning lights have shut the windows.

Her world towers and reproves the thought
of her on the charcoal street;
she is the flower that blooms by the roads,
feeds on the dust
and craves to be steel.

I walk among stars,
my vibrant soul resonates
their brilliant symphony.

It tells the story
of us, each reaching out for
the divine in the other.

Those marble plaques in the cemetery
hold no dead beneath them
yet in the rising mists of winter evenings
when night like loose dark pebbles
fall from the sky
can be heard hooves of trotting horses
from the rows of cold white stones
and on nights favored by moon
is visible cavalry in scarlet serge
with pith helmets and carbine rifles
piercing the terror paused wind
with cries of vengeance
mirthful in washing blood with blood
on the fields of Cawnpore
dissolving into marble white stones
steeped in the peace of moonlight.