Dive down into
the Sea of Words,
flip my mermaid tail    
to the passersby.

Dive down deep
to the bottom
of the sea, the
very deepest depths
of this salty sea.

When I come up
to the surface again,
starfish weave shells
into my auburn hair,
while sirens sing
new words to me.

Vast expanse of
emerald waters,
Sea of Words
you are my home.

On rising heat, killdeer flush
to decoy the enemy--
threat to its young that roams too close
They rush to skim on hayish blur
wailing over wildflowers drying

Fretful twitter in perpetual flight
swifts-- twirl and hurl their bits of bodies--
debris
from a cumulonimbus of a late-day sky
toward a ridge of stag horn sumac
presuming horizon primordial
behind which time and city-- drift and wobble
on rising heat-- after rush hour

*Rising Heat
Rising--
to meet my mind
on its way down
from my post behind
the laundromat
where I view it all--
rising--
where I usually go in search of quiet
to almost hear the ocean
     two hundred miles away
to strain words from wind
     in careless conversation
to wonder over
     missed whispers....

But not today
In rising heat, I went down
in search of something better--
     your eyes again
     solvent for my presence of mind
     dissolvers of hours and the order of things
But I need an excuse!
     To turn, to trespass, to disturb the peace!
     For your eyes again!
And still I need more-- being feverish, weak
Or?
Or... should I take the cure?
     To deny ...To deny

To deny what?
Overtones from a sea of years?
I don't know!  Whatever it was!
Nothing explain it...

I melt... I'm gone....

A leaf that falls from its perch
meets its death as it crumbles to dust
and is consumed by the earth.

It embodies the soil and is then
consumed again...
This time by its brethren.

A mind that falls from its perch,
its pedestal, meets its doom...
In a slow, agonising descent
that does not yield any end.

It falls endless...
crashes through layers of truth,
caught in webs of the untruthful.
Stretches apart and collapses into
itself until death comes to claim,
disguised as madness.

can poetry be too clinical
too clipped
bare bones of something else

scattered, now
and bleached in the Sun
all poems come here to die.

Multiverses infinite,
Endless permutations
Harmonise together into
Fortuitous combinations
Of planets and stars,
Of fluid minutes and hours,
Zoning time into a ceaseless warp,

Yet, the sole instance I ever achieved
Absolute **Mehfooziyat
Was in that stationary speck of a moment,
When my heart lay idle in your arms.

Words barely audible;
Choked and phone line
Distorted.

[Words muttered between
Sweat-wet moans and
The grasp

Of a lover
Whispering
Back.

Fingers finding fingers;
Knots of nails and tendons
Tying, untying, re-tying.

Legs, arms, ribs, knees -ropes
And hull of something fleetingly
Unsinkable.]

Words barely audible.
Hoarse with worry.
"Will you be ok?"

IV-bag drip-dripping iron
Supplement into my arm
That itself remembers her

Sleeping head still warm
With contentment's embers.  
"I'll live if you'll live."

A pact between our broken
Hearts; that everything else
Stays unbroken.