i will wade out
                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
                                       Alive
                                                 with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                                       in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                                            Will i complete the mystery
                                            of my flesh
I will rise
               After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

The radiance of the star that leans on me
Was shining years ago. The light that now
Glitters up there my eyes may never see,
And so the time lag teases me with how

Love that loves now may not reach me until
Its first desire is spent. The star's impulse
Must wait for eyes to claim it beautiful
And love arrived may find us somewhere else.

1
The jack tree, framing the museum gate
was an eyeful, with fruits from top branch to roots,
reminding  a lush woman, pregnant and languid,
expectant, beaming a smile, what else could be
a better fertility symbol, gladdening one's heart!
2
He sees her, Lila,waiting under the jack tree
Lila, a fixture, highlighting jack tree's abundant fertility,
on a juncture of present and past, symbolizing
what is left inside the walls of the museum
only the bits we came to know sporadically,
stashed away for curious eyes, a puzzle for us always.
Everything flows in to one, yet remains in fragments!
3
He knows Lila will turn the corner,
now or later and go in to the museum,
standing in a lovely garden
full of past waiting for her
he guesses someone else too, accompanies her,
A lover? Perhaps not, his heart consoles,
only a dim figure, he could see
in his repeated dreams of her.
4
He ingeniously attempts, different ways to see her,
in points of time and different points of view.
Lila, he feels is a girl, he may fall in love with,
but the fact is that she is in mystery's wrap,
the play of Maya -illusion- in matter
that realization wakes him up to awareness,
of himself, many things that count.
On the lonely roads of university campus,
she walks looking in to a past,
she wants to leave behind or retrieve?
Following her far behind, from a clearing
in the forest of a time past, he thinks about,
the time they were together,
now, she becomes a symbol,
to explore the secrets of the past, himself, life.
5
A name with dimensions, Lila is,
the Sanskrit word for play, the cosmos is engaged in,
the dance he would do life long,
but there would be walls erected, like the time they were together.
He thinks being together has significance, if only you count so,
Lila is in the scheme of things that moves universe too,
he learns to detach Lila from her physical form.
6
Lila in the universe is the dancing atoms,
the stars dying and being born in other universes.
While reciting poetry on stars and* 'multiverse'  
he feels the flow of life. Lila is the flow of energy unlimited,
Lila, takes over body, mind and consciousness.
7
Lila smiles at him as he walks to her,says she:
"Waiting for you here, took me to the unknown, waiting for ages,
I am curious, is it you looking at me or a past fragmented?
I feel your eyes playing with my body mind and beyond"
She didn't say she is imagining things. Now, all that matters is this.
They gravitate towards each other.He is pleased at the light emitted
They both are fascinated by the jack tree full of fruits,
life forms of nature and nebulous energies that navigate,
going back and forth has become a habit for all of us.

A big bang in every nucleus, inviting big crunch, that creeps in,
Lila and he walked in, the doorman in the museum smiled

So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.M.,
the clock tolling its engine

like a frog following
a sundial yet having an electric
seizure at the quarter hour.

The business of words keeps me awake.
I am drinking cocoa,
that warm brown mama.

I would like a simple life
yet all night I am laying
poems away in a long box.

It is my immortality box,
my lay-away plan,
my coffin.

All night dark wings
flopping in my heart.
Each an ambition bird.

The bird wants to be dropped
from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge.

He wants to light a kitchen match
and immolate himself.

He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo
and dome out painted on a ceiling.

He wants to pierce the hornet's nest
and come out with a long godhead.

He wants to take bread and wine
and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean.

He wants to be pressed out like a key
so he can unlock the Magi.

He wants to take leave among strangers
passing out bits of his heart like hors d'oeuvres.

He wants to die changing his clothes
and bolt for the sun like a diamond.

He wants, I want.
Dear God, wouldn't it be
good enough to just drink cocoa?

I must get a new bird
and a new immortality box.
There is folly enough inside this one.

I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.

I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for ***** and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not.  Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The night gowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed -- well, the sheets have turned to gold --
hard, hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.

As for me, my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn't yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren't yielding to pitch
I'd tell the whole story --
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-****** story --
and shovel back our love where it belonged.

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black and a red powder seeps through my
veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see, meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down right in the middle of a Russian
street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip is adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won't flinch and
i won't blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
i won't blame you,
instead
i will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and i won't use it
yet.

Out here there are no hearthstones,
Hot grains, simply.  It is dry, dry.
And the air dangerous.  Noonday acts queerly
On the mind's eye erecting a line
Of poplars in the middle distance, the only
Object beside the mad, straight road
One can remember men and houses by.
A cool wind should inhabit these leaves
And a dew collect on them, dearer than money,
In the blue hour before sunup.
Yet they recede, untouchable as tomorrow,
Or those glittery fictions of spilt water
That glide ahead of the very thirsty.

I think of the lizards airing their tongues
In the crevice of an extremely small shadow
And the toad guarding his heart's droplet.
The desert is white as a blind man's eye,
Comfortless as salt.  Snake and bird
Doze behind the old maskss of fury.
We swelter like firedogs in the wind.
The sun puts its cinder out.  Where we lie
The heat-cracked crickets congregate
In their black armorplate and cry.
The day-moon lights up like a sorry mother,
And the crickets come creeping into our hair
To fiddle the short night away.