Flame-tree abloom: dabbing red,
the distance paling green -
from the half-open window
to a dreary room;

Horizon waves bathed in gold dust -
from a vessel floating
in deep, enveloping seas;

Smudged streetlamp ayonder
a dark, rainy night;

Love, blooming silent, outlying mundane life.

I.

Brooded over by fate
nestled high up on the hills
by the mists, our love,
but now floating away
in a reed basket
on raging flood waters:
a home seeks a roost

II.

When it rains,
the whole world goes silent.
All the din and the dust,
lost in the downpour.
And voices long submerged
come alive in the heart.

III.

I seek a baptism of the soul.

Is'nt it of the scripture
that we are made in his image?

So, is birth, his lot too,
and age, and
the long wait to death?

The body's been bathed
many times over.
Yet this scar of unbelief
remains unscathed.

IV.

Thunderstorm.
Candle light.
Slanted shadows.
Across the table,
blazoned red.

V.

Yes, there is still
'you' and 'I'.

I. Gray

In the dim light of the dusk
fading through the sky
an exhibit on a canvas:

a single strand of graying hair.

The arcane gallery housed
by the serpentine lake of memories.

What an awful lot of balderdash
shrieks an elderly gentleman ahead.

What a masterpiece, I think.
A masterstroke, in fact: just a strand

stuck like a line across the canvass,

this is it: time is catching up.
mortality comes calling
in pieces and strands.

II. Red

What embers, my dear, lie concealed
beneath those heaps of burned
logs deposited in your soul?

Waters healing were poured out
ages ago: was the love

too diluted, that even now the gale winds

of raging events bring those embers
burning from your depths?

I can see them burning in your eyes.

III. Black

Oh his gulf between you and me.
That you carry what is of me
before and hold what is
after I am of the ashes,
I know, in your oceanic vasts
bloom our fleeting island lives.

But what were you, before
you were of flesh? Did Aleph
bring you forth too? Tell me
friend, for this is my quest,
my mortal angst at finding you
nailed on the cross above: or
I must be a necromonger.

Are you the one who does not exist
as we know, or are you who also exists
as we can know: what are you?

That blood flows on this earth pondering
on this question.

In this is concealed the answer
to the question raised by that strand.

Tav is not the answer. Nor is it in the cross.

Cast to the valley wind,
withering into the element,
the lone rock, forlorn twig,
shivering lake of the late season.

Off he goes, off he goes, the prince,
in search of peace.

That first time when voice breaks:
the agony of growing up
in a transient world; Moments
when the rhythm of hearts
beating in unision breaks, pain
that accompanies sensation here:
of loss when age catches up with hope.

The constant, the concealed ever-present:
suffering, the shadow of life.

Off he goes, off he goes, the prince,
in search of lasting peace
in a world of transient joys.

I.

I wake up, wake up, as if
hearing the solitary leaves fall
in the breeze
in this late night:

Is that you? My pulse,
freezes for a moment.
Or just
a face in the crowd?

Did you not die?
or did I
wish you out of my life?
Is this, a nightmare?
Or just
my fragmented plane?

II.

Come, friend, let me inspect your wounds:
ah, have they healed well!
You have always been
a sort of miracle-worker.

What was the need for all that pain then?

Oh those carefree
days bygone of Nazareth!
Where we learned
to chisel our destiny.
And ran after severed kites floating away
in the dust winds.

What was
his name who we learned
Aleph from?

III.

Oh this pain:
of life, growing out,
growing out
like a sapling out of
a crack crumbling
out of an ancient wall:

do the skies weep out
in commiseration now at our fate?

I hugged an ideal;
and now I am outcasted.
And I am outcasted.

IV.

Do you hang on your
Tesseract
my friend, broadcasting
your assumed pain about
in the four dimensions?

I know them four well.
Three of space
and the fourth, of pain:
pain, concealed, hidden
in our
cursed world of normal dimensions

V.

Who do we change?
Do we change?
Isn't all change death?
Die, die, I die:
Die, friend! Die, Relation!
And now
in the darkness I am awake
counting
the shadows of falling leaves.
Why am I alone
in this deep night? Where kin
mine own? Is that you,
that face, the
face I saw in the crowd?

Did you not die? I heard of it.
Never gathered the courage
to come, see for myself.

VI.

What was
his name who we learned of
Eli and Abraham from?

The night is a deep well:
stalks fall and echoes resound
as if out of an abyss.

Flash a lamp in, lose the light.

Braveheart awake in the late hour,
is there a solution to anything?

Events unfold; Always unplanned.
Reason an afterthought.

Still we dream. Dreams dreamed
all night, for a newer dawn.

To achieve something, something
that can make me more than you.

Are you cut out for that yarn yard?
Who decides when

a weakling mortal
breaks out of fatal space?

Flash a lamp in, lose the light!

Stalks fall and echoes resound
as if out of an abyss.
The night is a deep well.

Earlier I did not know god as God
and gods were my friends.
now I know God and God
and I have a master.

Long before my time, my pagan lands
were deluged by the sword of the believers.

and so it came about that
growing up under the rubric of the believers
I, an infidel pagan, think like them.

so, I approached the high priests
and professed my faith in the one Saviour
seeking innocent acceptance and
they asked, Do you believe in the One God
and His sole and final apostle?
well, that depends, I said, on
how you define 'One' and what you mean
by 'God' and who can be called an 'apostle'.

I was too pagan for the believers.

so I approached my pagan brethren
and asked to be admitted into their fold
seeking innocent acceptance and
they asked, what Order do you belong to,
my friend, and what may be
that of your fathers and their fathers?
well, how matters, I said,
the Order my fathers belonged to, or not
to any, when the Spirit lights my heart?

I was too catholic to be pagan.

And so it is that time passes.
Ever wandering by the margins of creeds.
That yet neighbour me on my land.

Earlier we did not know god as God
and gods were our friends.
now we know God and God
and we have a master.