Tears fall
The barren land receives
Like a broken soul.
Cracks that line us,
Keeps us together.
We forget, and never forgive,
What is left of us
Is anything but lies.

Fire burns
In the heat I stand,
The flames, a part of who I am.
A disease, spreading
Shallow whimpering
Sickened by everything we are.
Greed, filth,
Pay no heed to the cries.

Ashes to dust
Our creed, we forgot.
Deal with the devil,
Sell our souls to the dark
Humans we are,
We forget our strives
In our imperfect world
*We build, rule and ruin lives.

There is sea glass in my lungs. Bottles of undelivered messages smashed and worn down from the unforgiving waters in my chest.

First Base: Innocent words turn into gentle hands moving slowly yet rapidly from the stick shift to her thighs, wondering if leaning in would be moving too quickly or just the fact that maybe she wasn't ready to be moving at all.

Second Base: They're in his room now, both of which don't even know how they ended up there.
It's quiet though,
she liked quiet,
it reminded her of her childhood.
She observes the room like a rotation fan set to low,
slowly,
yet patently.
She notices all the pens & papers scattered all over his desk. His laptop was accidentally left open. It seems to be some sort of unfinished piece she finally manages to realize; she gets up from the squeaky bed & attacks it with grace, it reads:
"             *Feathers
      Her skin looked raw,
But the kind of raw
       You could still devour &
Not get sick from.
       I loved her, yet I didn't
Even know what
       Her favorite book was,
Or if she liked
        Sushi as much as I did.
I don't know if
        I will ever be the same
Again after laying
        My eyes on her.
I couldn't imagine
        Laying my hands
On her thighs or
        Kissing her while she
Was smiling.
         I wish I could tell
Her that..."
He slams the macbook shut at an attempt to stray as far away as possible from any further embarrassment.
She was frozen.
As was he.
He knew deep down inside of him he wanted her to read that, because he was never good at expressing his feelings face to face & maybe that's okay; but somewhere else trapped inside of him said that just because she's in your room alone with you does not mean in any way that she will ever remotely feel the same way towards you.
But a wise man once told him that if you're alive & well, & you're not doing everything that terrifies you, then what would be the point of living; & he now lives his life off of that minute & a half conversation with that homeless man outside of the starbucks that is right down the street from his house.
He went for it, he took flight of his life & his actions & went in for the thing he wanted most; *her.
The roughness in their innocent kisses would have been Rated R from the way you could taste the passion & it had the potential to make every bone in your body evaporate & leave you with nothing but your memories of what it used to be like to be able to taste.

Third Base: Clothes turned from magnets to grasshoppers in the matter of seconds. Everything was a fast paced blur. Skin was being ripped open, yet no blood was being ejected. No amount of candles could cover up the scent of sweat that was polluting the room. Songs are made from the sounds that were being created in this studio. The only thing keeping them apart was their own skin, & even that could barely do the job.

Fourth Base: They layed there, in awe; not thinking about the homework they hadn't finished, or that his parents probably heard the entire thing, or at the fact that the world had never moved so quickly in the same moments that time was in the midst of a game of freeze tag. No more worries about the future. Only love for what was going on in this moment. The way she curled up to his body reminded him that love can only come from the light. Her dark lipstick that was stamped all over his body reminded him that only beautiful things can come out of the dark.

I slipped into the walk-in cooler
to escape the kitchen heat for a few
minutes. I sat beneath a wine rack
holding up a chardonnay chandelier
with zinfandel bulbs. I'd swear
I was at the Ritz if it weren't for
a lemon box slowly collapsing
beneath my weight. The motor
to my right churned out frigid air
like a 43rd floor air conditioner
in a luxury suite with fresh fruit rolled
in on cardboard carts. Everything
was buffet style and there were no lines,
just the painful thought that I'd have
to leave paradise soon.

The sanguine shades of India
Flow in mantras through my mind
In hashish tones sienna brown
To ochre greens, I find.
The soaring slopes of massif peak
And roaring waterfall
Lead to tranquil rhododendron glades
Capped in scarlet, I recall.

The clamour of the market place
The grimy squalor found
In the gutters on the roadway
With a constant wall of sound,
In the bartering for spices, red
In wicker baskets wide
With the stench of open sewer
Causing queasiness inside.

Dustiness of sandaled feet
Robes of saffron gold
And the gleaming glow of polished bronze
To purchase, should  you hold.
Patterned carpets lay displayed
In jute and woollen blend
Whilst ancient hands on simple loom
Weave more for you to spend.

Ullulation in the air
As turbaned dancers spin
To shrilling ethnic instrument
With drumbeat adding din.
Wild eyed watchers flashing teeth
As rhythms beat the air
Encircled by a chanting crowd
With temperament at flair.

Thronging people fill the lanes
Churning on their way
Interspersed with sacred cow
Meandering to hay.
Children flock with outstretched palm
Surging as they do
Insistently to foreign purse
In urgency that grew.

The sea of dark skinned faces
Mid flashing whites of eyes
An intensity of gaze that takes
You jarringly by surprise
And everywhere the pungency
Of the continent in the air
With the spicey taste of curry
And a chutneyed rice as fare.

But in speaking to the people
I found their manner warm
And their love for caste and custom
And their cricket team was worn
Like a flag around the shoulders,
Like a talisman, so proud,
And their love for home and family
Reiterated, long and loud.

Overhead, the baking heat
Occasionally relieved
By a downpour of monsoonal rain
Must be seen to be believed.
And the total inundation
Of believers on the stair
Of the teeming seeking holiness
In the river Ganges there.

And then as quickly as I came here
It became the time to leave
And the wonders of diversity
Were beyond what I believed.
What was once a frank abhorrence
Grew surreptitiously on me
The splendours of this mystic place
Well deserve their sanctity.

Now far across the oceans
In my safe and sterile land
I am drawn to stare to seaward
To recall my thoughts at hand,
Out across the sprawling delta
Gazing far to sunset sea,
That special taste of India
Flows irrevocably, back to me.

Marshalg
13 July 2014

A cloudless night like this
Can set the spirit soaring:
After a tiring day
The clockwork spectacle is
Impressive in a slightly boring
Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot
To meet so shameless a stare;
The things I did could not
Be so shocking as they said
If that would still be there
After the shocked were dead

Now, unready to die
Bur already at the stage
When one starts to resent the young,
I am glad those points in the sky
May also be counted among
The creatures of middle-age.

It's cosier thinking of night
As more an Old People's Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,
That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome
Or myself at seventeen.

Yet however much we may like
The stoic manner in which
The classical authors wrote,
Only the young and rich
Have the nerve or the figure to strike
The lacrimae rerum note.

For the present stalks abroad
Like the past and its wronged again
Whimper and are ignored,
And the truth cannot be hid;
Somebody chose their pain,
What needn't have happened did.

Occurring this very night
By no established rule,
Some event may already have hurled
Its first little No at the right
Of the laws we accept to school
Our post-diluvian world:

But the stars burn on overhead,
Unconscious of final ends,
As I walk home to bed,
Asking what judgment waits
My person, all my friends,
And these United States.