Slow dance of filings on parchment peace
savouring the beats, my percussion hips.
Look the rampage like other man's wife.
When the dark flag bites, hymns cease
and millennia entomb; heaped heads,
tented eaves, latest art in the desert souk.
Shik-shak-shok. The sharqi goes.
Flooring it to the rhythm of dunes, as
fires spew snow into the vale of prunes.
Chaos of magnets pirouetting a ride.
Bomb them, when nuisance gets,  some
hundred women, few thousand children,
not bad price, securing the heathen trail.
Shik-shak-shok. The sharqi goes.
Veil the faithful, jail the *****. Chaos
is hope. Kaleidoscopic, cathartic taupe.
Riding the tiger, picturing a goat.

I'm kneading a complex thought now:
too amorphous, this, but,
too much mush and it's mess.
Why are you smiling at me a
bunch of multi-colour bell-peppers?
No, it is not potato season.
But I'm searching for roots of
our association. I need a congealant.
You are quite a handful though.
Sweet, but not sugar kind of;
Cinnamon, may be - served best
with chocolate warm. Too strong,
alone. I will serve you some cloves -
hot, but not the chilli kind of. Chew
on it. I have a kitchensink to clear.

I hear your footsteps on the clouds:
and I waited for you,
but you sliced the skies, and
vanished in a haze of crimson.
I am the insolent waves canoodling the weeds.
I am the rock-resolve that is dissolving
unknown to leaps. I was waiting
for you and I got drunk.
I will be everywhere, mourning in the winds
and lisping in the depths.
Though they said I shouldn't.
The chorus of gulls announces now,
that I lost you, I lost you. A whirl-storm
is rising in the desert. But that is
so far away. Evil is always far away.
I must earn my bread now, though
I am waiting for you. Half-whirl.
Half-whistle. Pestle-pounding my soul
Looking for pebbles in the flour.

I set a paper rocket flyin', and it hurtled into space
breaking off gravity - all the way to Mars orbity!

Now everyone's surprised, coz a mere paper rag
flew up high and reached that rarefied lile where
only the costliest of junkets lounge leisurely by.

They said you're stupid, you got a paper twit to beg
and you've wampered even that away: how dares
a hungry haggard send missives down the skies?

I stand staring, starry eyed. This is an old squint,
that I got learning to look the other way as
my brothers starved and pottered on the streets
when cotton and coal funneled to Manchester leets.

But last heard, papa John's makin' paper boats
to swim by them snooty stars and there's a scramble
at my yards to get some ******* to the Moon.

It is night now, and I am bloom all over.
Creeper crawling on earth, beneath:
the thicket of my blades, there lies
secret a crypt to eternity concealed.
I'm jasmine and I conceal a grave.

What is more deadly, say, concealment,
or the thing concealed? This is mystery.

I'm growing everywhere: by Himalaya
gazing at thunder cracking up the peaks.
By the well, where spake the Nazarene.
Clambering up to the heights of temple
towers, and kissing the eastern clouds.

But here is the whiff of fragrant endings:
concealment, more deathly than death.

When them leaves they don't stir
under blanket of winter snow
there an angel keeps
his hovel warm. Cherub
melts in arms by
mornings still. Lost in
tangle of her hair, and them stars
glowin magic on necktide
long after night retire.
But he set up to lose her.
Yea, this the way he made. Fear
he gonna be loser. Heck he
set up to be one.
Stop her, stop her!

Pride of the world, like a phoenix I rise
towering over darkness and hatred
scarred though our hearts be, but
un-cowed, unfurls my spirit, leading
aspirations to the skies and beyond.

We are Americans and Europeans
and Africans and Asians, divided

in religion and race, but here we meet
as one world, here we will bridge
heaven and earth and hew a passage
through boulders of bigotry into
the lands of brotherhood and peace.

It is evening now, as moist and damp
as  monsoon dusks can be,
and the lantern, it is shining away,
hanging off the ceiling. Now,
the bells ringing the vespers toll.

Elsewhere, celebrations have begun.
Sometimes, wails emerge, accompanied
by the chime of breaking bangles: yes,
glass is what makes the manja potent.

The lantern: it is what crickets
are to sound, to light in the nights.
But, it can only reach so far: built dim.
The fan slices through her smile,
and in the corners, shadows dance.
It's a wave, yes, light, and it bends at the
corners, but it doesn't handle slits well.

But it keeps attempting this every
monsoon night; through the rain, and
through the silence after the crickets
and people are done, reflecting off
ceilings, bending at corners, and
forming fringes where life is otherwise
just colourless, like the pouring rain.
(Oh not odourless though, the smell
of earth has entered into her pores)

Carved in stone, lost in time,
freezing my parted smile,

Peering down into the unknown,
I sit next to you, toting my arms:

Where is the world
that breathed you to life?

On this lonely peak, tires
upon tires of hopes and dreams
retreat into the the terraced
spirals of mists; Every mystical
dawn dissolves into the lakes.

Gnomes bear the burden of
mysterious gates to the beyond,
as whispers tiptoe to strains
of the Quijongo.

Here epochs and worlds end.
And counts begin all over again.

After the day's work, the canopy of stars
sheltering our heads, tell me a story
as you sit down to do your washing;
The night has now fallen silent, now
tell me Senora, stories, of bygone times,
of heroes and kings, of sagas of valour
and of the denizens of the forests,
wolves and lions, and of ancient wells.
I wonder in awe, when  you lift the stone
pestle down. Here's mine a heroine own.
It is cold, and the fires warm our souls,
woolen caps too, and the flickering lamps.
Now put me to sleep by your side, on
the charpoy:  I hear the wind sleepwalk,
jingling her silver anklets in the thin air,
when I wake up in the dead, as crickets
rustle, and shadows talk, to count my
blessings that you are still by my side.

The day when the jasmines embossed on the glass
were stained, nobody ventured into dust-laden streets
from where even the day was retreating.
Shadows, grew tall, four-headed monsters in the lamps
flickering from all over. Chasing a form, I ran
like a child after a severed kite, into the eye of the storm.
Bare footed, numb to pain, all the shards of broken
glass did not matter. At the end of the alley
disfigured receptacles, no doubt dead, lay greeting.
The sirens blared but I did not hear. The oaks
were falling by tomes, but  I did not hear. When
eagles were all that haunted this deathly hamlet,
I did not hear. When at the end of the alley
I fell to my feet and my hands were dyed red
from touching my feet, my eyes were too moist to see.

It is the story of every generation.
Water flows down the Thames, witness
to the same hubris. We are different.

We want to rebel. We want to be
offensive. But it the same story
all over again. All rebellions die.

Name a revolution that does not
crown a new class of overlords.
Names change, institutions remain.

We've had religion. We've had many a
One God. Enlightenment. Democracy.
The Commune and Market economy.

But the double-barreled
name is still in charge of the purse.
Some beaten man still mends our loo.

When we bare our chest, still
the one word that's not erased
is cruelty. in every kind and flavour.

To love another, as one does ones own
is still the grail we are after. All
chalices are poisoned in the end.

of the eroding stone
         by the ephemeral stream;
of the reed tottering in
                           the placid lake;

'tis the darkest of nights
moonless, hope-less;
but, the fragrance of jasmine
is creeping up the air,

kissing
the feisty cheeks of vermilion
emerging yonder easterly.

A tear splash and a ripple
dying in waves of joy.

I was born to wayfarers,
my mother is the Sky.
The meadows all homes
and dewdrops kin.

The Night would pitch
a tent and retreat into
the fields at dawn;

And oh her beauty
decked in a tunic
of fading stars and
the dying moon.

I sat by her feet and asked,
tell me about the greatest
mystery of all:

...and she vanished,
her words echoing in
the corners and in
the wet winds that
lashed the valley...

Rock-still by the eroding river,
reed-still in the dance of the tide,
who eyes this world in mercy?
Shameful deeds now holy for
warriors of God. Outcast of ages
from steads by night, trek through
land where shadows upturned,
curses fain down from skies
in return for the homages in fire.
Emotion of the void that sighted
the exploding stars of hoary ages,
rock-still, reed-eyed friend of man
is there such a one indeed as this?

It's one of those things, it is that kind of night:
the winds have stopped wheezing before dawn
and the birds don't want to wake up yet.
A fire is lighting up on the eastern sky
that was burning in the heart through the hours.
I see a bangled wrist half-concealed
in the mists: shadows of events mingle
past the grilles of thoughtlost timelines.
I will wade across the river at the nearest ford
and meet you at the temple: friend,
will you wait? Oh this intolerable whir of the
dewsong, it is interrupting your answer.

I belong
             to no God
             no nation
             no creed
             no section

but to Spirit that
is home as much in man
as in the dumb and the meek

say brother, I have
                                no religion

but that of love that animates
the fabric of all existence.

and no deed as holy
as to love fellow folk
as I do myself, however
unlike me they be,
though pure of the heart.

Forlorn sheets fluttering in the winds
splattered in smoke and ruination,
empty the streets where she'd played lost:

Haunting her now among
shadows in the cell she's chained
to slavery
of the religious kind.

Beast more than beast these men that
stare in hubris awaiting their turn
to partake of infidel flesh.

Behold! The holy empire of God is here.

That morning she'd grown up -
blood between her thighs had
stopped her play,
and her chastity was proclaimed.
Selima must learn to respect men
and the ways of God and His
rules of modesty.

Now, as he grunts and groans
in holy pleasure as he mounts
her by turns, ******* at the altar
to be an example of how ******
the lot of the pagan and faithless be.

Mother, is this the modesty that
God commands of infidel women?

How merciful indeed is He that
He creates in faithful men a beastly craving
and provides too for them
uncircumcised ***** in pillage.

A raga of another time, from another day,
plays in the head:
grime of the day, stuck on my hands.

You shot an arrow across the eastern skies.
Senora, a hundred cries you carry
in your womb, yet I never
found you in the peasant woman
in whose arms I fell asleep, when
at noon you disappear at the horizon.

Maiden of the moons, at dusk I lost you
to the trail of lotuses blooming westward.

It is raining in gusts but this storm
cannot wash it away:
Guilt, like turmeric, stains the soul.

Danger! There is - no end - to this tunnel.
Listen           to the voice...            it ends...            in light.
Hallucination! Just stay put -
darkness is what we were born to serve.
**** on!           This voice....            is true.
Those that go, they never return.
They           return not       as they          walked into light.
Prove it!              Then....             walk with me.
Any other way!          Then         search your heart.
Those voices are illusory, meant to lure and **** us.
Freedom              exists. I can            see its glow
as I          walk  closer.   You are hallucinating.
Voice competing with voice: you you you are are
hal-hal-luci-  li -luci-  ght  - li-  nating-nating-  ght  -nating

Sometimes you pick a pair of fish and bread
and feed thousands, and at others
master flautist, make umbrellas of hills
protecting us from deluges of wrath.
I have walked to the lonely peaks where
stones have become animated bearing witness
to the nights of wonder, when you poured forth
your love, and drank of the poisoned chalice.
Yea, even by the well where burdened of sin
I sat down, and drank of the springs of Grace.
And I do not wish to hear anything,
but relive the awe seeing you speak,
as one with authority, passion of the heavens!

My menorah is three-branched:
three the lamps that light my firmament
one, ineffable, more ancient than time
the other immanent,
and the third, the Lamb, incarnate love.
I drank of the them in a drop
of the tears the autumn sky shed.
Yea, I held a camphor to the skies.
An eternal flame, that
burns in the chamber of the heart
where I stand anointing the beloved's
feet in perfumed oil. This crimson eve
when the shadows return,
I kneel lost in the light of his love.
A silken stream from the unknown
that gushes silent in the creeks
of the heart, where I sit in gratitude
feeling the warmth in my palms.

Grown my beard long enough,
time, now, to
announce to the world,
the demands of the new Caliph:

First a rider on raiment -
of black be your fashion.

Then, in the name of the Lord
the most merciful,

We demand razors!
Yeah we need more of them -
for shaving our underarms
and other sacred duties outlined below.

We demand brides!
We can knock at your censured
doors at night:
for faithful brides and
infidel ****** for pleasure.

In the name of the Lord, most merciful,
Madam, may I ask,
is your modesty circumcised?

In the name of the Lord, most merciful,
Can we have more watches please?

But mannequins, they must be covered.
And when we huddle the infidels
in trenches or behead your sons
please, we do so in but peace!

In the dunes, the dust raises a dirge
echoing in the nooks of Qardu:
prophet of the pasts, a ghoul
who led an arc on to the mountain
singed by the daystar where now,
men cut their hands to quench infant-thirsts.
And outraged women wail into the nights.
All for this? All for this? The anguished
song in the valley in an archaic tongue
that the Spirit stands surveying
that called out a fire off a bush, leading
a nation out of wilderness. Now, who
delight in murdering children.
The emperor of the world, is busy playing ball
offering the slaughtered heads to Quetzalcoatl,
and a beating heart plucked out
of a terrified infidel does not move him
as much as the stench of oil. Black
is the song of despair whispering in the smoke
blighting the reign of K'inich Ajaw,
all for this, Marya, all for this?
And the chief of Angles is dismayed, the
spoils of crusades blow back as young men
disappear from your homes, emerging
as butchers in black baying for slaughter,
journeying to the worlds end with
Gilgamesh along the Tigris.

That you are compelled so to
walk amongst us:
this gives us the faith to find
meaning in our lives,
we who know not if we are to be
as beasts or spirits blessed.
We who hesitate not to ****
for loot and lucre
as much for our disbelievings.

Not to be trifled, a babe eating mud,
creations can be glimpsed in its mouth.
Impish pranks of childhood days
forebodings of pastimes sublime.
Nobody will dare spar a cherub,
for the light shines through caves and prisons.
Nor slight a woman noble.
When it rains and the river swells,
always a thirst to see miracle partings.
On fields reddened with blood, the
call of righteous battle.
And awe, at the enveloping Supreme.

And to love, is to be divine,
that when love dawns, no need
for theories and proofs otherwise.
Truly on dust-laden dusks, the westerly wind
tugs at the heart, that you may yet
return with the cattle.

Dicontained, uprooted from
origins and disbelongings
stowed stored
in hermetic containers
stacked by soul-less rows
in the dead cold night,
transiting to upended lands.

Inside, a monocular view:
ironed pillars, art-palm,
disinteresting shots framed
of distant falls,
as luggage tumbles off
the conveyor creaking
tired from endless
circumambulations of the
graveyard of emotions, where
day on day, hopes, loves,
dreams, die, unwaved for.
Welcome - to neverneverland.

There's something like that.
It does exist, doesn't it?

Poverty, is earning less than ₹ 47 a day.

That's less than a dollar a day.
Who earns less than a dollar a day?
Beggars in Manhattan make more than that.

There is no poverty.
There's nothing like that.

Wait a minute: *beggars in Manhattan?

Packets of peace cordoned off by fences and barbed
wire, hooded lush in manicured fields.

Endless stream of labour crossing over water pikes:
hear, no see - river in the bush.

Emerges curved a mirror on a pole: three directions,

The three birds, tinier than my forefinger, eating grain.

Lisping away in the wood the warbler and the shrike.

Wild flower, pops out red from a corner
of the cultivated green: and I am...

On a shore flooded in the tide.

Now     on a         flitting            log:

Rain,     trying     to fill up
the ridges white,

that,      I,             along with
*****, snails and           tiny        starfish
are ambling to escape from.

The trees, they are       laughing wet.
As are the            distant           waves,
snapping on returns.

Is that it? Samsonite...No, mine's a no-name.

I thought red would do - red unique.
But, my, so many reds on this belt.

The wait, for prized possessions
checked in - clothes for the trip, and razors!

Thought much of myself when
I ran ahead at Immigration, but
the posh lady I raced, walks off now -
she's found her red.

The belt's stopped now. We are all packed.
Hope's never lost if not found yet!

FILO says my neighbour-in-line: First in, Last Out,
kind enough to explain. Well shouldn't it be
LIFO? I wondered, the late loafer that I am.

Yawns - shorter to fly, longer at the belt!

Red, red, everywhere...now
an American Tourister, snooty.

But mine's a no-name
ribbed red, economy class beauty:

and am waiting...

This is the night of the distant circles.
Tonight the gulls are in meditation.
Senora, tonight, I find your tracks
disappearing on the shores,
though the tide is afar.
I saw you, draped in a garment of colours, and
adorned of the golden dot on your forehead
vanish at the horizon.
In the morning when you
emerged fresh from the shower of mists
with your clouden hair still wet,
I was the wheezing breeze flying West.
I was the bumblebees returning to roost.
Now I am conversing with the echoes.
I want to decipher the language of the waves
whispering to the stars.

Last of a beloved set
of bone China plates
just developed a lesion.

I celebrate this journey in the desert -
I am but a traveler in my time:
in this pasture of my fathers, land,
where stands this miracle of glass
now calling manna down
from the high home of eagles:
I am but a helpless everyman, lost
in the desert, on a journey out
from the clutches of misery, and pain;
The world is making progress.
As I see the oases running farther
away from my sights: on
elevators to the skies, numbers
of the young call on benefactors
across the seas, for a ropeway
across the quagmires: a home, a car
and the family life; saving for a
better day, in the future, while
my home went from mudbrick
to thatched grass, then out on streets
by the gutter with the dogs;
I am a cleaner, cobbler, janitor
in the land where I was the tiller.
Wiping the sweat on my brows
as I loaf on the lawns, awaiting
labour days hyphenated by mealtimes,
there is no witch-doctor now, and
no money to pay up at the hospitals
that the wealthy from afar line up to,
but to die helpless a wretched death,
I celebrate my helplessness!

x/x/14

I'm late I'm late I'm late -
No, you are early tonight.

x/x/13

Why do you follow me
through the bushes?
Admit it- you're smitten!

x/x/13

Don't you look beautiful,
new bride in your veil
of silken clouds?

x/x/ 12

O faint streak of hope
on this godless night!

x/x/x

Go, go, dreams,
fly with the winds
to the far lands beyond
the silver horizon!

You pour your essence into
the inkpot of my soul and fill me so
that you can dip your quill in
and write the poetry of my life
on the canvas of skies.

I have received your secret message;
And sit by the courtyard
awaiting your blessed return
past the procession of stars
endlessly mourning the death of days.

Beloved friend, now it does not matter
whether the blessed dawn is nigh
or an oasis afar.

Tonight, I'm talking to the moon:
'You haven't wept enough?
I'm thirsting for your tears.'

Stars, I cannot bear
seeing you shiver in the distance.

How many are the dawns
where I plucked
gossamer dew on grass-tips!

The cactuses,
they've grown tall this summer.

Prisons and palaces I have seen -
Plenitude, loneliness,

riding in my *****,

as you hold me in your arms,
onward, past joys and despair

Señora, there is yet
a thawing desire for the spring.

The long shadow of seekers
drenched of mid-day suns
broken scattered
on this land of despair;

Walking nimble
on desiccated human skulls:

A father will not
return from work tonight.
Policeman, armyman, does it
matter, innocent everyman?
A child will be
orphaned and blighted tonight.

Eagles soar in the distance
obscured by fire and smoke
billowing from the assault
on our dreams and hopes.

Paradise -
dreamed of fanatical creeds;
Beyond which
is the graveyard of Gods.

That you exist, that you know, that you care - this is joy enough for me.

Dawn mingles with your ruddy cheeks.

Peasant woman, I read the language of toil in the wrinkles on your brow.

Why should I love you? I ask of myself. This is the constant soliloquy of the monsoon rain in empty valleys.

What do you brood over on sultry noons?

But then, why shouldn't I?

Winter's witheration is everybody's lot.  

I want to know the hive called death that shelters tiny loves compartmentalized.

The sweat on your brow is sprinkled on autumn skies, waiting to sob out their agony.

A noon-time beat plays in the head
Tea-time brawl revisited now.
Lisping out a song later. 'Really?'
The fridge is empty. The late cuckoo
tugs at the heart; Summer sweat
on evening's brow. Deep down
glow, inner lit springs shadowed
in the woods. Cacophony birds
returning home. Cook, cook, cook.
Filling up sink. 'Ah, am I that bad?'
Insecticide can; Make something up:
the noisy fan; Lady in hood, rising
from the lake. 'Could I have....just
done it another way?' Walking by
the bund as the sky slips away
veiled among the blinking stars.

The peace pipe that has
two sides -

zoom the monsoon clouds,
summertime-bizarre.

Choices,
pieces of the peace puzzle:

Biblical, them both.

Pasts alive in
binocular introspection.

Smoking the hashtag#, now:

A hundred colour
abominations around.

Comrade, policeman,

look, our
daughters go abducted.

The last rain is dying
and the heat soars again:

Wand-love or rod-fear:

It's a battle of the faithful
in a heathen heathen world.

*#hash's so-sixties.

All winter's
spread scattered now,
leaves
dying damp on earth;

Banging at my chest when
you ask 'why?'',

tears stall time;

Pasts ebb
in the sky, lark-sliced;

Awaiting bloom,
all of life's spread bare.

Look, friend, now there is already
the fragrance of spring in the air:
Pin-hole it may be, but, behold -
light has found us in the dark;
Now distance does not matter;
Now the end is near,
when the sky is moist in tears;

Long after, long after:
creeper retreating into
the darkness,
to the corners, after
the shadows repair,

I wake up: veiled face, now
tears into the silence, the
late swan's song of despair;

Silver, shines the tower
earring,
in the stray light
moon-streaming by;

Silken though, after
saker heaves and sighs nigh,
hanging by a thread,
we are, night-
threads spread bare.

What language does the sky speak?

On late afternoons,
is she weeping for joy,
or mourning in the wet winds?

Deep in the night, I find her
blinking at me  in a hundred stars -

is she shivering in the
inconsolable cold of some ancient loss?

What language does the teardrop speak,

rushing down
past your dimpled cheeks?

Droplets on a leaf: sometimes,
on the shelf, sometimes, on your brow:

startled creeper in the shadows at night,
what language do these teardrops speak?

When the whip cracks
bare on the back,
the earth scorches tired feet,
and shoulders cannot
carry the burden anymore,

In that moment
when the world merely
watches on silent,

and those you loved
are too bound my oaths
or wallowing in doubt
or too weak to do a thing,

In that moment
when blood mingles with sweat

you know you truly have no one
here, but for Him the Lord,
who shines in the heart.

In adoration, an army
can be drowned pursuing you.

In love, an unfathomable
well is given away
to bleed to death.

There's this doll you know:
got delivered to my home today,
it's all part of a disturbing game
and I found a key in its mouth:
it starts by sending
what we lack  most in our lives.

Broken illumination
as the fan flits;

Two naked girls started it all:
except for bikini bottoms,
knitted in national flags,

waving down a truck
on a bridge across the Dnieper.

Roll over the tanks!
nobody wants war:

Except our masked friends,
my maidan hero
your naked Fascist,
self-defending Lebensraum?

Gas them, gas them,
coz, we don't want war.

Got some butterflies to catch;
Tryin' to catch them since
the good ol' hippie days.

It's them naked girls
that started it all:
Havana girls,
there's pipe loads of gas
that's at stake,
drill drill off Alaska, Palin!

I will walk away tonight,
to the far beyond:
beyond shadowy corners,
and beyond the clouds where
gods gather, witness;

In the shadow of the oak,
where we play, my sister and I:

catching a butterfly, now,
digging into the smelly earth,
it's a worm then curling up my finger
that I go chasing after her.

Laughter breaks into a kite
severed, and flows away
into the distance.

Gods come alive in clay,
that we gather after rains
and give form to and
colour as we like.  Disregarding
where tusks should
and shouldn't lie.

Wild fires were not fun.
Not least for those twins
******* as embers crackle in the rain.
Did the pups die?
Who will answer to their
mum, weeping through the nights?

The sun set fire to the entire
horizon every lonely night
before retiring.

As we gather into our blankets
hearing tear drops dripping in pots
and crickets dance.

Far beyond the skies
beyond the heart of darkness,

I will walk away tonight,
beyond shadowy corners;
beyond the clouds where
gods gather witness;

It used to live on the hilltop
where a lone bell tolled
by the temple:
but the Deity is long gone
and the bell mourns
in the valley wind on empty
afternoons, now.

I went searching for it:
in late summer, the koel
would sunder open the vaults
of heaven and bring
some down for us mortals
haunted by death.
The koels are long gone now.

Peace,
peace.

Lady siting silent in the evening
staring vacant into the sky,
after a day of labour:
can you give some to me?

I thought it was in education.
But that is stored now, in
almirahs where moths
eat way what humidity cannot.

I thought it was in a position.
But they don't matter, now
a ladder ascending
to nowhere,
vanishing mid-air.

Old man, smiling past hope
that has broken like
your lost teeth:
can you give some to me?

I asked the urchin
playing in the ditch after the rains,

he said: 'follow me, I know where
it lives', and he led me to
a ***** pond lined with plastic
and all our civilization's refuse,
and jumped in.

I returned, disgusted.

It is a morning like no other
when hope is smeared across the skies
Among the mourners I am alone
death cannot bind, when life could not.

A law binds us of old, to kinsmen
and clansmen, and the court
of law can be crooked
where evidence is omniscient.

In the chamber of faith
elevated on the altar
where we light pious incense
is the decorated image
of disbelief - for death
here, is the final word,

and who knows if there was
one in the beginning?

In the heart, the answer
where a wave knocks
of love, daring storms
and disregarding falls,
waiting to wash our feet
and cleanse our lives.

So are we here for a time,
on a sojourn we meet awhile:

Now darkness is overcast
and shadows grow on the walls
Now time is distant
and memories pale
But the miracle of your advent
never fades in my soul.

From ever the time
we can count, this is the lot
of the artist, of the subtle
and unseen, the lover
who sees with the heart:

withdrawal

from the workings of this
insensitive world,
where violence rules, and
vengeance is justified.

A wheel set in motion
of long that has
no end in sight,
of which, no solution
but to

renounce.

The only way, one who feels
may hope to do anything
is by self-transformation.

In the hour of solitude
by a brook or the tide
when the wind turns a page
in the wild, the eternal can
whisper to the soul:

and in this, the deliverance
for one who
sees with the heart.