the saddest part of dying
is what you forgot to do
the ideas born in lucid dreams
that vanished in the hue
the mountains never seen
the oceans never crossed
the poems written on scraps of paper
a lover's smile now lost
the tears you held inside
the chances never taken
the landscape of your life
an oasis now forsaken

Dear Shane, you will get well.
You have a long battle ahead.
Fight it with all your might.
Don't give up.

Look straight into the eye of death.
Tell it to go back.

Ask death to come -

when you are 100 years old,
when all your hair turns silver,
and all your teeth fall off.

That is when you will meet death, smiling.

Hiding my sorrow,
no one sees me there.
No one will notice—
I’ll hide my tears in my hair.

I watch and I wonder
if anyone cares.
No one will notice—
I’ll hide my face with my hair.

The world feels so empty,
and I’m lost in the air.
No one will notice—
but maybe… someone might care.

There once was a fella from Maine
Who added some drugs to his brain:
     He lost half his mind,
     And the half left behind
Was totally ******* insane.

The bakula and the madhumalti
Sway in the warm wind
Watching children play
In stained shirts
With mud-filled nails
Bare feet and beady drops of laughter
Unmindful of the heat
While a dog playfully rolls over
Trying to catch the sunlight
That falls through the trees

A white-eye flies low,
resting on the firangipani tree
Butterflies dance around the hibiscus
And bees swarm
Hedges have blossomed with flowers

And the mynah calls from outside—
To awaken the forgotten child in an older heart
And tell her that summer reigns

Every time I’m happy, for reasons I don’t know,
Lights flash in my heart and it kind of . . . . discos.

Why not a waltz, polka, salsa, jive, tango or calypso?
Of all dances, I am not sure why it chooses to disco.

Perhaps, it’s a dance that it can dance on it’s own,
A dance in merry solitude when I might be alone.

Maybe, I grew up in the time when Saturday Night Fever was in tow,
When pop charts went tizzy with songs that’d make the world boom-boom go.

Maybe, my heart beats to the rhythm of life, at times funky, at times slow,
Maybe, it’s in tune with electronic sounds around me — that in a humdrum, flow.

The top left chamber of my heart, leaps, jumps and thumps so,
The bottom right chamber shakes a leg to a psychedelic-lights-show.
My arteries and ventricles throb and pulsate oh . . . OH!
Pumping blood in a sudden rush all the way to my toes.

And like the ever-glittering disco ball, I spin, shine and glow,
Every time I’m happy, my heart jumps . . . And a-dancing it goes