I don't think I bloomed
I think my roots got deep.
But I didn't grow
I have to keep it all buried and not let it show

A clock
that has stopped

years of black dust
clogging up its mechanism

hands that are bound
by unseen hands

an echo of a memory
diluted over time

until it runs like clear water
containing invisible particles
of pain and grief

the clock starts to tick
and I run behind it

always too slow to be part
of its motion

(I)

If weary eyes about this classic form
Intake each part; as syllabled before,
Then by such mind here meaning shall deform;
Equal'd the lay of bareness white it wore.
Is time as spare as air is plenty free,
That need bestow deception with what read?
Such reading glass forbids that beauty be
A script of heart; a sight that's better dead.
Yet beats here still and still you lasted long,
Now pity rules behind that centred stare?
To scorn this amateur's own state and song;
Summounting lines with mere a boorish glare?

If here by some of tradegy is true
Then wish you never read, nor wrote it too.

(II)

Enriched upon the riddance of your doubt
Comes comfort you're the old you thought myself,
Now you to fade and shall you fade without
The fame that gifts the older works their shelf.
New beauty now; adds you with further dust;
How knew the wise this antidoting cure:
That pleasures eyes and lets dissolve the rust
And bid this very heart here write her lure.
Yes! She by here account, withholds no lines
But flourish thoughts! Like leaves by April's spring;
That chatter sweet on limbs of sugar pines
In rustling, rapping ode: 'for her we sing'.

By merit due her beauty takes this hand
And writes new love not you in this withstand!

(III)

This poet's eye awakens in her grace!
Abiding treaty's of the sun and dawn,
That sovereign's sight reveal her blessed face;
Entrancing loyal ink that beauty's drawn:
With homage to the Nyx for hue of hair;
There woven rare as silk around a star;
To gently patterned curls of rippling flair
That becons yonder beams from moons afar,
To crystallize her pupils; aqua blue
In clear cut waters found no longer there,
With sensory of sight that pierces through;
Where waiting greets the words of love to bear!

'Oh not another sonnet!' Yet, by three
I have denounced your worth by praising she!

Night sits on my chest
Squeezes poems out of me
And grinds my poor soul

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree . . .

                                               Coleridge:­ Kubla Khan


Sheba’s ghost, lamenting, wails for Yemen:

Her incense trees are lacerated, scarred.

Sapped for their fragrance, drained of life and marred . . .

Their smoking blood offered up to heaven.

No sinuous rills flow forth to bless the dead;

Beneath her ruined dam no gardens grow;

And Bedouins only sing of what they know

In wastelands of the nomad past. It’s said

That all those spices, all that golden smoke

and irrigated dreams beneath the sand

were just a subtle Solomonic joke.

The yearly weight of gold, the camel-trains,

Are cryptic numbers—chanted in refrains

That only Marib’s phantoms understand.