What is this new-found lust for madness
Marching hand in hand with my blood?
Does Moon know it is shrouded
In the sky’s black love
When it is?
Last night, I tossed a rope up towards Jupiter
Tossed and tossed
Till the hook, like a talon,
Took hold of the peachy pearl
I climbed then
Clumsily up the sky—
Up and up I went
And watched the dusty city,
Its flickering lights, and glorious glamour
All beneath me
Oblivious in its slumber

I ruled it all
The yonder, the earth, and beyond

Then the gusts came and kissed me a storm
Have you forgotten your place
Little human?
And the rope wavered
Harshly so, as a dead man tied to a bough
I feared that Jupiter
Would flutter out of my grip
And send me plummeting
To the pitiless land
Where I am from—

But climbed on I did
Through all the havoc
Such was my desperation to soar
And the moon tusked
When I dared try kissing its light
A laugh so pure
I forgot the numb of my hands
Keeping me there
Where only the clouds are known to roam
Forgot the small, small
World below
And slipped I then
Out of the short-lived ecstasy

I was a child lost in a lake
My limbs moved and moved, immobile
Down and down did I fly
As winds above me rushed
Darkness was the blood of a lamb
Unwashed
And clotted
I whirled around myself
Till I did no more

What is this new-found lust for madness
Marching hand in hand with my blood?
I fear I will drag myself to my altar
And spill whole all
That is known of me
Till I am one in the silent night
Kissing my sick Moon to sleep—
Swaying to the faint sounds
Of the orchestra of winds
A dead dove tied to Jupiter
Far, far in the black
What is this new-found lust for madness
Marching hand in hand with my blood
Begging for war—

If only I knew how to mold bricks out of lone
I’d build you a house
And paint it with flowers
That mimic the colourless
hues of your gaze

Leaves, I’d tie to stooping fingers
Of our barren talks
Fruits with moonlight in their stout tummies
your chapped lips
They envy the sweetness of
Do you know?
(Too bold a flattery, you say—
Dare me then; dare you)
Gentle I’d go
Show them the tree
And they’d make their nests
In its laden boughs

A crown on your head
Weaved out of patience
I’d softly place
If only I knew a way past this barricade
That together we built
A thousand years ago
I’d be a flock of wild geese
Guiding you out

Oh, my fluttering wings
Calmed in the sky’s blue embrace
I’d soar around in winters cruel
I’d watch and watch
The edges of our land

A bed I’d carve
Out of roses and dawns
Hang up my rivers
By the glass windows shivering in our storm
Oh, there is a kingdom
I would like to save
A bunch of bluebirds, and a quiet queen
The slender moon far, far away

If only I knew
A melody strong enough
To cure this aching rebellion
Oh, if I did! If I—
I watched, and watched the shores
Of our land
No ships came with their armours ready
Your own bluebirds,
They fight now the flowers
They ravage the fruits

If only I had a drop of divinity
Sulking somewhere inside me
I’d banish their light souls
Out of their bodies
But bluebirds,
Are pretty
And so is the mayhem
And so is silence,
And you aridity

Lurk at a distance,
I know not
What to build out of this lone

Frozen lakes, a little more do freeze
Frenzied lovers love once again
A bewitched battle we dare relive
A spear we’ll take, a spear let go

Such are the deathless hours killed
A thousand ashen folks forced to live
In ballads eternal, etched in stone—
No mourning, no worry
Shall dig us a way out of this dusk
No morning, no chipping sparrow
Betrothed to spring
No sleep awakens our drunken peace
No ghosts unfading in need of slumber

Withered we weep, withered still our waltz
Withered we love, withered still still

How beautiful is our desolation
How recklessly brave

Oh, what star kissed poems rush
Though the blood that gushes
Out of ravaged bones—
How lovely do we ache, how lovely go on
So profound is this torture and its pleasing touches
The breaths leave us for the blue above
And we, shivering, lie

But so, so beautiful we slay
So brutal stay—

Frozen lakes, a little more do freeze
The beaten bards out again on the streets
To preserve in blooms
A thousand wretched tales

Oh, how valour never became a being so well

I never learn, I never learn
Keep mourning your ashes in the golden urn
You were the dawning sun opened wide
A purity I slaughtered for the god inside

I never fade, vague as fog, I never fade
Into the scarlet waters, I wade
Dusk weeps and deserted I wait
Wait, I wait, O timeless Patroclus, I wait

A thousand ships, all united, set sail
To free their heavenly queen and her veil
A thousand ships I could’ve let burn
Into the wretched battle had you not run

Rambles, rambles on this silent sea
Your extinguished heart will hear not a plea
You took all the humans in me along
This bleak divinity, worth not a single song

Never not do I hope, never not
I hope, I hope, in this despaired hope I rot
You lurk a painful past in my unseeing gaze
As rows upon rows of men I raze

In the halls of living, I search for your name
Your love-licked body I surrendered to my flame
I hear your starlit lips yell at me to stay
Achilles, Achilles, live, you ****** sun, they say

All my charismatic promises I forget
This wish, sweet moon, you shall not get
I tear then my heart in search of you
A river red as doom, and a stillness blue

I am here, Patroclus, now spare me this lone
My frenzied ghost screams soundless on
Our ashes kiss and kiss in the golden urn
I never learn, alas, I never learn

I stole a sheet from the test papers
For my hands are filled
Already with ink
from exhausted pens
Well, that is all I planned to say
But I must keep on this ramble
Only these words feel real
Only they keep me warm

Sun dies gently behind the clouds
And gossips scatter around
Girls in blacks
And yellows and reds
Scarves dyed in greens, browns
And blues
Intricate galaxies stitched
On their swaying tunics

I do not dissolve here
In these beautiful tides
and their slow dance
Not with a carnage stuck in my chest
Not with the bleached dawns
Rising and rising restless
And we’re all fighting, yes, we all are
Why then
Is this field so lonely?
Not a mourning, not a deafening blast
Is heard

A barricade of silence
I wrap around us
Us, I,
The boy
who constantly yells for freedom
And the girl
Who will let him not

Then again, us
I, the two children inside
One weaves a step out of his fingers
Other hops on
Peeps out of my eyes—
“Do they want me yet?”
“No”
“You, then?”
“No”
What then is wanted,
They wonder
But do not say—

It is an ungrateful inquiry
All luxuries they have known in this house
Crowns and swords, dresses, blooms
None kept from either
Why must
Then they want out?

Then the guys pass by
The scarce colours
that fill up their clothes
And hoarse laughs erupting
Their uncovered heads
And princely gaits

I belong there,
No more than here.
Not in flowers, not in bees
Do I blend
Not in capes, nor veils

No weapon I wish to hold,
Not an anklet studded with gold

In the grass, I cross my legs
Far from beetles
Far from wasps—
I watch red ants crawl up my shoes
Crush them, I do,
Casually beneath my fingers
One, then, three and more
Until dusk is silenced
by the night

Not a beetle approaches
Near
I wear the shimmering skin of a wasp
Not a wasp calls
I am skin only

Later,
The black sky comes
And takes us far.
The girl climbs up my spine
And pulls the boy along
They zip me open
And crawl out
Sit next to me, and they sing a song

I am the castle
Who could not help them live
I am the rusty duel
They were born to fight
Yet love me still, they do

And the crescent—
It is a woman nor a man
A crescent it is,
a crescent, stays

And when darkness comes
And eats the world
We join our hands
And build a softer one
But what good—

It is too dark to write now.
The lights flicker like stars
with smoke sickened
They pound in my head, pound and pound.
I hope the ramble
Was worth the theft

Flowers fight flowers
To aridity
In my chest
Such is a penance
Must paid
For your distant benevolence

A liveliness so ecstatic
It slays and slays
All bits
Of melancholy peace
I’ve known
Lust you,

I lust you to war
Lust you, I lust you on
Nothing purer dare I claim
Lest the Sirens
Whirling
Within your gaze
Question the chastity
I have so well known

There is a desolation
Beneath this devouring tide
And you do not get me
You do not understand
I have always
Loved bleakness
Have always loved
A piece or two
Of you

And here
Bees fight bees
And the carnage
Weaves you a golden dirge
Soft as satin and softer still
Will you not hear—
Will you not?

I sink and sink
with the fair maidens
Who lured me to stillness
And not a note
Not a tune stirs its gentle wings

Your mute Muses
They know not a taste
Of hues
And I lure myself
Into you
Still

How awfully beautiful
Is our dance
How bleak—

Treading on through the hazy crowd
This circus dims with every dawn
Every dawn, I say, every dawn
Not the funeral, nor the mother knows
But dusk is a pitiful thing
Wrecked and lone, a pitiful devour
Overruled by its own shade

The crumbled clouds
Plummet upon us
And our skeleton hands
Sculpt gods out of mud

One for lightening,
One for the calm
One unborn and one undying
For you one, for me
We worship them then
Light up a fire that runs down our veins
And we bow

It is a beautiful blasphemy
A painful ecstasy
As the goddess within
shrivels to stone
And dust becomes the funeral
The mother
Dawns kissed and kissed
By dusk’s benevolent shade

The jester lies still with his king
And swords are headstones
Ripping skulls apart
Only uttered eulogies bathed in red
Dusk is a pitiful thing
As flames gush out of our skins
And ground can hold no more

Gods, gods still
One for war
And one for birth
One loving, one deaf
For you one, for us

Mortals, we trod through our immortal realm
Deathless we’re buried in her stoney arms

Dusk is a pitiful thing
Gods mourn our funeral
We, mothers no more
The circus dims
Dims to life with every dawn
Every dawn, I say, every dawn