Mother of the Moon,
Shaman of the Sun.
Extracting all the darkness
from the eyes of everyone.
Draining hue from skin,
Soft soulful bones.
Shadows of her velvet cloak
follow footsteps home.
The witch amidst the forest,
The light within our palms.
Dwindling breaths confide
in the cold before the calm.
Bearing portals in her womb,
Maternal one, obtuse and sweet.
A smiling jaw (phenomenal),
will lull your dance of life to sleep.


© 2016 D.M.V

I wish I could pretend
To play the false games you accept
Expecting life to grant you your wish
A wish that I won't accept

Play those games of false hope
Hiding your feeling deep inside
Once you realize I'm gone
It's a life you'll accept

I hate to lose you
To forget our past
Our life we once had
Is now in the past.

I found a love that is real
A women I can cherish
A beautiful love will blossom
That will make me forget

Write me into the world
Leave me a mark on the shore
Carve me a heart in a tree
Paint me on all you can see
Read me aloud to those who'll listen
Sing me like your favorite song
Whistle my name into the wind
Shout until the mountains bend
Picture me as I was before
Remember me like a child's dream
Feel me beside you as you go
Hear the love I couldn't show

Put me down on your paper
Keep me up in your head
And when no one can hear you
Hold these words I have said

I hear stories of an ancient land so pure.
I see photographs of bluer than blue skies
over a lake of molten gold.

I drink kahwa flavoured with almond and saffron
and add honey, sweetened by bees from the valley,
my hips swaying in a crewel work on wool skirt.

I hear songs of freedom, I know people who fled.
The muezzin prays for peace over bloodstains and tears
while children still play under walnut trees.

Clouds gather to pray at Shankaracharya Temple
on a mountain dipping its toes into water
while empty shikaras speak of visiting ghosts.

Mothers whose eyes never tire, looking over the sunset
for long lost sons; wives who still lay out their husband’s
slippers on a carpet with frayed edges.

Postmen deliver letters to addresses long abandoned;
a generation of elders, eyes of agate, gnarled fingers, brew tea
surrounded by memories of children killed, daughters *****.

I write for all people who live in war.
I write for the age of innocence to return.
I write for soft rain to wash away sin.

I write for the return to reason.
I write for peace to flutter gently through groves
of apricot, almond, apple and walnut.

Feel the pain. Hear the refrain. Smell the emptiness.
This is now. This is now. This is not in the pages
of a fading history text. This is now. This is now.

Because as we sat there under that tree one chilly Autumn afternoon all I could think was, "****, I could love her forever."
-and this is why we would never work // a.s.

My heart pounds like the Leonids.
I fail to find the voice to console her.
I do not wish to be the reclining Moon,
Nor the twilight that reminds her of the little things.
She has the eyes of a heavenly body,
I love her blindly.
And as the slow lightyear of a tear
Shoots down to her lips, I wonder
How the stars really taste like.
And so we kiss,

     But it did not change the universe.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

Let me court you and bend my pride,
Venting foolish passions,
Vowing with my heart,
     Volleying pebbles to your window.

Do not forsake for my sake,
     Say, you are the fickle Moon
And I'm a grumpy Narra tree,
That I'm the dizzied Sun and you—
A pirouetting world, that we are
     Two islands of the Archipelago.

But never say, impulsively say,
That you are the shooting star,
     The Perseids, a meteor shower,
For it is then, love,
That I would have become
The melancholy,
     The Universe.*

© 2015 J.S.P.