Summer raining on the Eastern seaboard
I liked you better before November, personally

There are metal shards floating in this bathwater
Their own tiny islands of pain
A mirror in shards face up on the floor
Guess that is just another 7 years of bad luck

Pennies are dropping into the bathtub
Copper going plink plink plink
Tiny rivulets running their paths

That's just the sound of my lifeline going down the drain, again
Smells like metal and tastes like pain
Red river gushing from my veins

Locked door trying to staunch the flow of secrets
Head swimming to the tile floor
clink clink clink

Scars these days open so easily
Like the Raven said, Nevermore

It is a rainy evening.
The tires on the car aren't
New.
I won't use my phone; you're
Driving.
You should have been home.
Not yet late enough for me to
Allow myself to worry properly,
But I stand by the window for
One tenth-of-a-second
With the feeling of a toddler
That suddenly realizes
As the sun sets between trees
That it cannot hear their
Voices any more.
At all.

Break the body and give forth freely
What comes back
~ Comes back to heal Thee

Tummy jitters with
Infantile anticipation.
I am a tiny puppy let loose
In a giant green park.
All words in the world are too big
For my mouth.
I am standing at the absolute centre
Of my heart's deepest dream.
Here Am I.
Nothing is
Other than
Home.

As the story goes, my newlywed
Ancestors, in accord with
Tradition, drank mead
-Honey wine- for the first full
Month of their marriage.

Honeymoon.

I am in love with one woman.
She was the most stunning system
Of meat, bone and spirit
I had ever witnessed
In my life.

Seeing Munch's Scream
For the first time was dull in
Comparison.
Collosseum was a pile of rocks,
Las Vegas an epileptic's nightmare.
All the places I have been and seen
Are no longer memories,
But places I have no peace with
Until I bring her there
To share

Them with her, and visa versa.
Look what the Romans built
Before Vikings roamed.
Romans, behold this beauty,
This blink of time, this mild drop of
Breath into oceans of atmosphere,
The art of arts in my humble
Gallery of Man.
This love that I love with the full
Weight of my person and will,
That loves to make me laugh,
Call me old; even dinosaur,
To make me angry, then mellow.

That plays me like a child plays
A whittled flute
With no single thought
Of Mozart or
Grieg.

I am in love with
One
Woman.
The Just in
*Just One.

Stop trying to remember his scent, he smelled like summer and reminds you of the time he made you laugh so hard, you snorted out milk on that dead, hazy day.

2. Don't waste your day trying to decipher what colour his eyes were, it'll only remind you of the galaxies and constellations that you once saw in his eyes

3. Stop trying to retrace the shape of his mouth in the middle of the night, you'll choke on your tongue trying to taste the mint he devoured seconds before pulling you in for a kiss

4. Stop reliving the times you clasped hands together, the glass plate will fall off your trembling hands.

5. Burn this list, admit that the galaxies and constellations shining in his eyes were wilted, the one in yours are bursting with fire. Remember on the dead, hazy day his laugh sounded like nails running down a chalkboard. Remember when you kissed, the weeds growing from his mouth entangled the roses blooming in yours.

Realize that one day, another boy is going to come and plant daisies where he left behind thorns.

In the woods outside my home town
Mushrooms grow in clusters shaped as dead vikings.

The soil rich; thick -dense- with history.
Lean your face on the ground. Feel the warmth

Of blade-based battles on forest grounds now buried
Under centuries of rot, moss and everyday oblivion.

Rust-warped swords pulled from deflated tractor tires
By angry farmers' hands so far from unlikely

Related to those who -fifty or more generations ago-
Forged the ancient nuisance.

Worlds change. Everydays forge
Themselves harder to relate to.
Whose world is this now?
What time of era is it?

Millennia tic like seconds in
Eyes and ears large enough
To behold aeons.
Solar systems atoms, planets gears in
Perpetual automata.
Life experience has no
Value; time and age grow in
Different directions.
There are no Complete
Encyclopedia-
No Great Answers, no cold hard
Facts of Life, Death or
Other States of
Being or not.
Only vast waves; myriads of
Poetry, and in the innermost
Center of it all:
Mother Voice:

          *Shhhh...little you.
          Relax.
          All is as it should.
          No thing could ever be out
          Of place.
          Or time.
          Or out.

Distance has a particular way of hurting:
It begins slowly, and is self-contained.
Because our mothers would often speak about Love,
and how everything falls helpless in Love,
Distance becomes a housebroken dog.
It is powerless, and whilst I love, I am powerful.
On Sunday, our fathers would teach us to put our faith in things unseen,
and so we grow confident and complacent.
Just when you think you’ve understood it,
It sinks its teeth in hard and deep.

An idealist tries to make it out light and easy
They will often write poems about finding
ideal love in the real world.
But I will write about knowing
real love misplaced in an ideal world.
It’s a world where comfort could come in binary files
filled with digital empathy and memories.
Where typed words and numbers that form
black and white promises could replace
the real and organic voice of reassurance.
Where wires between my webcams and your headsets
could entangle themselves in ways our fingers
used to be intertwined.
Where waiting for an email meant as much as
waiting for you to return home to me.
Where the strategic positioning of your punctuation marks
could transform these passive symbols
into active symbols of love and concern:

A comma, like a shared pause for when our eyes meet
Exclamation marks for when we wave to each other from across the street,
or as a passionate gesture from underneath these sheets.
A question mark for when you’re sick and I am by your bed
Worried, because you wouldn’t eat.
A semicolon for when we argue,
and a full stop for when we finally give in.
A parenthesis for containing moments of vulnerability
that only seem to leak out late at night.

You won’t know it but,
I dream mostly of an online conversation,
filled with time stamps that affirm your presence.
If I’m lucky, I will find an ellipsis
Small creatures of continuity with
heads heavy with hesitation.
…
And - if I’m really lucky,
I’d undo those black buttons of suspense
and see you once more.

The furnished souls
Adorned with mahogany
Luxurious pieces in every corner
Eau de parfum, the finest from France
Does not allure the senses
The settees, chaise lounges and recliners
Standing there, forlorn, awaiting guests
The ornate crystal chandeliers adorn the ceilings
Trying to illuminate the gloominess
The flooring of Makrana marble on the floors
As if there is a puzzle to be solved
It looks quizzically at the incoherent footsteps
Of the infrequent visitors, not even interested
Mansion filled with embellishments
Yet there are no worthy inhabitants
The Swarovski crystal curtains, veils the outside world
That waits, without any expectations or superfluities
To furnish the soul with love




© Amitav (Radiance)

My grandfather could barely make
Out the blond boy's head
Lost, if only just slightly|frightened
Enough still|amidst
Waves of green potatoe field.
An old man's single arm held my
Weight; I was that small.
A strand of grass to his oak.

Old ladies with veins on the outsides
Of still strong hands,
Who worked those same fields with
Him sixty years before,
Would look at me with unwitheld
Bewilderment:
You look just like him when he
Was your age...

How alien now, the idea: Someone
Knew that old man as a child,
Remembering well enough
To compare us.

And I still find myself there at times.
Lost|but not quite|yet
Worried that I am.
Waiting in the potatoe field.
Smaller than then, now that
I've grown;

Knowing that nobody's coming.