We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don't tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreathes of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that's where I'm floating,
and that's what it's like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?

Hunters, where does Hope nest?
Not in the half-oped breast,
Nor the young rose,
Nor April sunrise—those
With a quick wing she brushes,
The wide world through,
Greets with the throat of thrushes,
Fades from as fast as dew.

But, would you spy her sleeping,
Cradled warm,
Look in the breast of weeping,
The tree stript by storm;
But, would you bind her fast,
Yours at last,
Bed-mate and lover,
Gain the last headland bare
That the cold tides cover,
There may you capture her, there,
Where the sea gives to the ground
Only the drift of the drowned.
Yet, if she slips you, once found,
Push to her uttermost lair
In the low house of despair.
There will she watch by your head,
Sing to you till you be dead,
Then, with your child in her breast,
In another heart build a new nest.

Milady, I would join the war for you
Barefooted may I be, will walk into the battlefield,
As I have a gun with one bullet,
A rusty sword and no helmet,

I will be preparing,
I am planning,
I was praying,

But, an unexpected knife
Pierced through my beating chest,
Killed me, right before I was to enter the war; with me not being able to use any of what I have

I am at random,
And the lines formless
In my mind:
A lover and the pain,
A cat and a dying master,
Memories while walking
Among the tombs,
The names are faces.

And the void is a mind globe
Spreading itself into a sphere
As the sweat scourges my forehead,
I wipe my third eye:
      Hours leapfrog from page
To page,
   The sound of poetry is among
Everything I have known,
    A dispersed word translates
Me for the verse,
    But I am insubstantial,
Much as my thoughts.
In my room,
     On my desk,
I brood over the wind of yesterdays
Erosions,
I am nailed to a tree,
Deep into a lifeless tree,
I am no poet saint.

     I am not here nor there,
And when all the words have convened,
      I will find a piece of myself
In every poem,
    Though I remain incomplete.

As i wait, the sun dried all the leaves
Days have become dull and boring
Picturing you next to me is hard to imagine
Even the smile in your photograph is not helping me

Cobwebs starts to form in the ceiling
Your scent still lingers on my pillow
I miss your whole being
Your sweet talk at nights is what i longed for

Nothing but you, who floats in this clouds of thoughts
Come back and make this fantasy come to life
I don't see anybody fulfilling my wish but you
Lay down next to me and forget the world

Come out of the lamp and be my genie tonight
And hear my simple wish of three, Stay with me,
Love me and Understand me

Oh how everything
Was in my power
I never felt negative
About my presence
Songs got me through
Anything everything
Now it's not the same