12:45 am

everything passes
winds disperse
to clouds scatter

wars dissolve
to remnants and
pinpricks of song

everything passes

and Osamu did say
everything passes

everything passes
winds run on, scatter
to cloud on the sky
electrons
through eyes of streets
oscillate
between days and darks
and then they too tire
say
Osamu believed
before I could:
everything passes

wait and—
would we wait and see if everything passes?
we will pass in the waiting and it is so so simple

Osamu
everything passes…
Osamu
perhaps we never will

here
love tides
through age
and knowledge
just as shiny
comes, lures, goes

Osamu…
here

perhaps not your humanity
but this was your curse
that in every passing moment
you stayed
and to no staying
could you hold

everything passes
it’s funny
we will too
it sounds like a lie

12:50 am

everyday
the words accumulate in me
and at night
I shoo them out
I never know what they are going to be
it is like a smoke
one sniffs all day
but does not smell

how dreary…
how unaware we stay
of all that makes us
what is it that blinds us,
if not the gaze with which we see

sometimes
the words become dreams
sometimes
tossing turning wake
and emptiness sometimes—
or like right now
they become it all
sometimes
I turn on Faizan’s brutal bright lights
and I uncap my pen
and I watch this page
and I pick my nails
and I think think think
it may sound silly
but those are words too.

01:55 am

I think that someday
I would like to paint a ghost
like did Osamu
and I too would like to hide
it for no one to find

I think I’d like to paint
like I like to write:
quietly, clumsily
and without eyes

as a dove flies
and as it hits against the window
curious, and fearing
the picture it wears
I’d like to paint mirrors
and not beauty

for many can paint beauty
and beauty is never
without eyes
and though it may not lie
it may too not be true

I think Osamu
never wrote so fragile
as did when he wrote
where does this little path go?
where does this little path go?

—

11:55 pm

now I will write a poem
I will write no thought
for they lie like silk
smooth and slick with solidity
and its thirst
(pretty pearls fall and fall and fall) perhaps
poetry is hand
the ink that writes it
something of the muscle
subtly moving
to move the words
then this one will be white
for in the light that it forms
is white and sharp

thoughtless banter…

with paper and secret—
we never become so still,
all rehearsals halted
to see the show:

perhaps this one will be fear
perhaps blanket blue
perhaps time
that slips into bed and sleeps
perhaps this will be snore
(I do not snore, I breathe only,
but this time does)

11:40 pm

sometimes the night comes early
fast like the lid of a pepper-jar
that spins itself geometric into place
sometimes though it is patient
like the swarm of a moss
or of a tide that turns time
to obese slime
sometimes there is so much to say
and do and wish for
sometimes very less
sometimes, the past nights
become other people
and future nights
become other people
and they sway like drain worms
round a puddle
on a tile
we are a crowd
all of us, a crowd -
body upon body like
an ugly cluster of skin
and shadow and grasp
we write things and we make them poems
then we write more
and we are all naked, but none truer
and sometimes the night
does not come at all
and I linger solidly
fidgeting with my words

01:16 am

and this night
things are gentler

pillow - the stuffed owl and the clock,
swivel of silence
and stray dust; white-lit
hands as shadows
moulding themselves around limbs

and sensation:
a simple news
to the heart: a moth-wing
watching the light,
its ticks
timed with the pulses
of time -
it watches slowly
the light

—

and this night
we are gentler
body on body - like mingled wave,
ripples trail
but carefully so
as all fish sleep
or rest

—

and tonight
the weight
is just a weight

—

and tonight
there are no flutters
                          to drown to