of long revealed in the dunes
ancient in the tongues
guidance
for our lives

read them in full
live them lines
as they our fathers did

rend them
meanings accrued
port not a port, nor a portal
nor a road a road
vessel a vessel

compendiums
codices, them
cross-references
exegesis

veiled must the woman be

between the simile and metaphor
spiritual and literal
lost in the dunes of these lines
the meaning

these are our leaders: ash-born, clay-footed,
emerging in the fudge grays of beyond light,
shadows of the incense plumes
we light in prayer

long washed ashore here from yonder worlds
of darkness and mystery

by a wand wave thieve-made,
exiled our kings to the far realms, alien
then this self-lost band
of otherworldly priests, effeminate
our smiths and weavers, liars
our bards that sung of heroes
and conniving crooks our tradesmen

no we are not to prosper in common
with our kinsmen across the hills
but in the name of God, amen,
say peace to the holy ghosts,
rises deified a language and a nation

so we break the idols of the past
and garland our heroes of reason
clay-footed they come,
and die drowning without an heir

alpha and omega
of our rootless world,

on this road to the world beyond the  horizons
the years, they unravel, casketed
events rolled like leaves on the trees
flanking the sides:
some, tall, a family of beautiful memories:
put down, now logged and lumbered -
there's a wound that cannot be healed
it's called heartbreak - cyclone that
breaks on our land, ravaging everything
some bent down, broken pride
and leaves, leaves, caskets within caskets:
there, yonder beyond the electric cables,
a moustached village deity astride a horse,
wielding a fearsome machete, under the wide sky:
where we stopped those many years ago
wonder eyed, to capture on our lens,
now passing by nonchalant -
shack where drivers always stopped for tea,
the stream-bend where cows crossed, the restaurant
that we no longer visit- now behind the new lane
the boulevard of green gulmohars blooming late
all rolling back like waves into the sea
it is a year ringing in:
it is years that have been rung out
like pieces in the glass cup-boards,
shell-dolls, them old books, deities put to slumber
of last worshipped, and books, them books, prayer books
mystery books, all untouched for a long long time
it's a quest that's over, past its prime
there rages that debate whether it points
only forward, never backward, but I say
my friends, there is no arrow of time:
only memories - every event, a flower,
plucked from the garden of life,
ever arranged in bouquets or coffins
in the heirloom collections of our reflections

There a dawn before the dawns
the first of the Gods that drunk of,
that we have a world
to cherish for:
light beyond all death,
hymn that hearkens to wisdom
a vast beyond the vasts:

oh our anchor past the
storms of lives,

this morning, Regina by love,
may we be of peace
drenched in Thy infinite
presence!

two are the shadows cast
of the future
back in our time
it is of us that we will be
us as in the world

both shades of a dark darkness
how did it come to this?
oh if we did but
contemplate
on us that we will be,
as we wont to do,
as we seldom do

are these all that were on offer?
how if we are not of this darkness
for how else would be know of
dark from light?

privilege and sacrilege of the gentler kind
sets the world on a tinderbox the other
why did it come to this?

now, a wring and a toss
with hand on our hearts
for we cannot choose,
a game of dice,
is what separates
of us that we will be
us as in the world

beyond, here in these words
realms of the real
not
but unreal

sundering depths
reddening surreal
of existence

rending the veils

beyond the void-worlds

time is a drum-beat
that keeps kettlewarm
the count of life

awareness streams
beyond the ego-maze

where blossoms
the deepest bud
of the unwaning flower

that I hold to my *****
not as I,
not as I.

It is the taste of the old water
that is at the bottom of the tongue
no not now this rancid season

of then, that blue of the sea
gradient brown, black in the deep
waving, like your hair in the wind
dashing the shores in passion

now long past that season

blue of the late sky, overcast
and vulnerable to the ruddy
invasion of love from all corners

it was them golden kites
flying away to distant lands,
who knows to which far terrace

it could be magnesium, potassium
we are the salt that has lost all flavour,
we are low on that one bit

of sodium hidden somewhere
frost-packed frost-bitten twice shy