Arise my body, my small body, we have striven
Enough, and He is merciful; we are forgiven.
Arise small body, puppet-like and pale, and go,
White as the bed-clothes into bed, and cold as snow,
Undress with small, cold fingers and put out the light,
And be alone, hush'd mortal, in the sacred night,
-A meadow whipt flat with the rain, a cup
Emptied and clean, a garment washed and folded up,
Faded in colour, thinned almost to raggedness
By dirt and by the washing of that dirtiness.
Be not too quickly warm again. Lie cold; consent
To weariness' and pardon's watery element.
Drink up the bitter water, breathe the chilly death;
Soon enough comes the riot of our blood and breath.

The silence stabs, but not painfully
So; intruding, its sour and soft luminosity.
I felt a thousand things ooze out of me
Dream-dipped drops dripping so drowsily,
And each ticklish sweetness echoing; to sea
I sank— past lids, through lashes, all. With glee
Snaked under I under I furtive; faint and feathery.
To dark I fell, to naught, to white monstrosity
One, stream of plea, two, agony, and three
Well three— I filled, filled with scarcity.
When all the ripples quiet lay, I in melody.

Dissolved in traffic
we forget ourselves
Metal and muscle of bone, of beast
Marrow of bloom
and whip-quick flapping of pigeon wings
When father coughs his crackling logs,
we know he arrives, we hide away our games

why don’t you study, why don’t you study, where have you been

So terrified of the world he,
with his sky-shaking speech.
father, father
what have you seen?

My limbs twitch and eyes flee
He knows not what to say, and we
never learned.
Taut skin aged to crease, and all that clover smoke

and dust from road,
It sits so stout in his placid gaze
I sink, I sink.
Say, father, father, will you not leave?

Dissolved in traffic—
Gyres of grey and their loosened rings
mimicked by the reeling of kites
So long he roamed
Within those slithering maps
almost became,
almost them.

Memorised the city on his very palms.

Father, father, I never could learn
the twist and twists and turns of its trails

The city got lost and I,
And I, oh— I

The whispers fade
of footsteps strange, and closed are hearts
in breathing reliefs
father, father,
What have you learned; father, father
we become ourselves
father,
The birds all settle, the metal melts, the
noises die, the traffic, oh, the traffic
your good old mistress, we forget of it—
father, father,
What have you learned

Not still, no, the rumble still plays
With thunder
And vehicles onwards go
There are so many clouds
And albeit too far their talks
I can almost imagine

No poems or music
Weaved upon lyres
Today, they too
Are polluted with normality
Such treacherous natures
Of this ever-stirring yonder
The surface speaks art,
And in depths aridity crawls

Cruel, so cruel their lightness
How I painted and sang
Of their rich tummies
How I danced in their blood

They chirp now a vacant gossip

I should’ve known
I should’ve lurked away
From their shows
Breathe now I in the rue and in a dim, dim fury
So cruel, so cruel the blue
So cruel and cold
In its silence
I hummed my throats parched
In mine, it vanishes, vanishes to grey

But tread on
The car stops and I slide out
Back in my rehearsed role
My stinging skin melts beneath the mask
The classroom roars

It is awfully quiet today

dancing off to The Beetles’ tongue.
there is gloss on lips and all features rest
for nothing else
of decor could be found
in the sudden haze, the sudden haze
of that mad devour

we have stumbled on the edge of order
and now tumble we—
beneath, beneath, under
these treacherous waters with masquerade licked;
a calm— a calm shimmering
like them Sirens almost.
come, it cooed, and went and went we
to its feather-light lure

and jumped and swayed our arms about,
skipped and laughed then laughed
till stomachs winced

loathed
and we have loved on the lips
on the lips, but slipped
as smeared, pink hues;
oily and glittery in their innocence

there lurks chaos in its smothering, wet mouth
and we moths flutter
closer, still, still...

and for us ripped
the golden lake its skin
and us it held, held till took from us
all

we have lingered precarious and
surrendered crumbled,
and crawled out dying, dead, undying

still to those chapped, glossy
banks we go
and dance and dance and—

But deceptive blood-robed pomegranates
With their piteous decay, and sullen seeds
Packed as kids’ taut skins in sand-tinted crates;
With bloom, with ruin, and sweet as reeds
Them reeds naught know of plain parched mourn
As wails it and yields to their illiterate lips;
As stumbles then snakelike out— thin and worn.
Begotten unwanted, poorly fathomed, forgotten wisps
Of old, odourless leisured hours,
That scrubbed, so gruntled, and scratched the fruit.
Then white silks soft within parched blue days;
And no heirs birthed, sublimed the flowers.
Touch it; the crumple and crêpe is not yet soot
If it could bleed, it could bloom alive, ablaze.

Here is it
Another quiet march of words
I bring no rhymes,
no fragrant tragedies seasoned to fable

The teacher speaks
and walks up and down the narrow aisle
All eyes upon him linger
All but those frozen on text
as if lost within it
Some somewhere nowhere
Some then
left right, left right
dance
One line, one line more

and so far away I lurk
So hollow this echoing of being.
I lay
a shell drained of warmth
In a deep, dim cavern

and it is it

What more could be said without I
ripping and shredding my skin to waste
Still may not stir
those angry animals beneath
Still I may twist and shrink
Naked and full and, oh, so, so lone

But the teacher speaks on
and I feel the weightlessness
of all the faces of which I am one
Pressing down and down

and write and write I might
Skin upon skin of an undying hum
But anyone can do that
Thousand men before me bled
What fiery pearl I, moulded from dust and
their dry, abandoned ash

but lone, but lone is lone
however it may sing
However we may—
In this little, little world
tossed, left right, left right