When the sky greys, memories: the first blush
of a joy unknown sprouting in the vases
sparklers, Catherine wheels on the front yards
of the homes of others; We possessed nothing
but our hearts of gold that leapt in waves;
Diwali like no other, on the streets, under the sky;
Away far over the seas among our kind who
in such distance are kin in a moment: home is
just the company of friends, memories lighted
in silver streaks of crackers past the shadows
of gardens retired for the night, and we, carefree,
in Southall where it was allowed to be merry;
It was the November of dreams, a night
like no other, now comes rushing in flashes
dawning nimble across time in the hues of blue.

Beyond this our world of shadows -
where bloom flowers of peace
and grow trees called love;
There, no disease
that snatches our dear,
nor death that leveller;
No trudge to the slum
to work and live far from home
that need bringing us back
alive or dead at night;
No high-rises from where
to look down upon the hovels in fear;
No kings that having slept
through the low-tide,
ask to sings peans to the high;
No borders nor thieves
that eye our lives,
Beyond this our world of shadows​ -
is a land called Hope

Voices, broken in the boughs
sleepwalking on nulled roads
echoing in the rain, and
the swings, empty rocking in the winds:
dry withering to budding, scenes
we never saw, until now
the everyday season;
Long since time stopped and
vanished behind the screens;
Then, can I call you, 'The Day'?
Echoes in the alleyways and
the dreary skies all the same;
But I must mark The Day: now
I chore, then endlessly refocussing
juggle as broomed go we muggles;
Know who's lasered on next?
Worry not, as big realms have
no pockets but ours;
For the ledgers must roll on;
Unmarked, we may go, like this
The Day, BUT: now work galore

Find me on this page, here
I don’t lie - here I’m what
I want to be:
When it is over and when
you flip these pages
find me here
where I am always light
always loving
beating heart and burning
bush and the 'I am' ness
no not in the other book
but here where I write
the story of life
in the ink of blood;
Don’t you worry wearied
carrying my cross
on your shoulder -
you will find me here
on this page where
I don’t lie and I am what
I want to be

Thorn and flower though of the same stalk -
I'm the earth and you are the sky, vast;
Together, yet so far apart,
You hold in yourself numberless stars
and the cold of the night they shiver in,
the radiance of the moon
and the searing heat of the distant sun;
In my ***** dwell endless tears
that well up in tides every
sultry night when you arrive,
decked in your shimmer;
We are, since reckoning
together, yet so far apart,
thorn and flower though of the same stalk;
I'm dancing in ecstasy spinning topsy
lost holding you in my reverie
I'm a mendicant ambling on
among the sparkling lights
that adorn your visage
We are together, yet so far apart
I'm the earth, you are the sky, vast.

the morning comes to me endearingly,
like a severed kite topped in warm hues
the joy of netting a wandering kite,
strong in the wind and a string to bite!
Now the string, a song so lost -
to the left, the flame tree is in bloom;
to the right, and wild cherries rain;
and all the birds sing a refrain;
as the kite aflame in the faint light
distant whizzes in the sky,
blue smiling and jet waving back -
**** this hurried morning truck that
intrudes: before I see, now
she's gone, gone, now gone
flying far far away as her wont,
this lovely morning kite -
that I am now lying mourning

Is it the wind that is wistful, or is it the mist,
slow suffusing the air tinged in the scent of longing?
The leaves, they are mourning the coming days,
the earth all flowers in their teary grief, and
the birds, calling for you, in a hundred voices:
the lamp was lit here of long, but lives bygone yet
when comes the tidal wave - the affliction,
that phantoms they can never be caught
all forms in the ken of my sight, and it is you
that I truly am? there is yet an alluring song
that the siren has in her bag and though warned,
that we cannot tell apart, you from the shadow,
it is the ever-peace and not of the moment
one unseverable not islanded thousandly,
here founded on the essence yet ever unseen