Twelve are the months of darkness:
twelve the months of perennial winter,
in this world immersed
in the arctic of the Spirit;

Forty are the days of penance,
forty of fasting, yet our torment lasts:
is mortal sin washed?
of the heart, not carne?

Light, here we have, but
Light is what we need, lost our lives
frozen and dark,
in the penumbra of the Spirit.

And grace comes knocking -
but when David rises over darkness
we are with Saul, comes
ben-Joseph, we are with David.

Far ahead, beyond the horizon
is the pillar of shadow that
I set out in search of:
Past waves drenched of gold
and silver nights, I rode on, beyond
islands and signets.
I dreamed of worlds of light
past the winter of faith where
prayers freeze and the days still-born
But at the edge of the world
the shadow is still long
and the light-house I imagined
of shores beyond darkness
remains distant. In the deep
the shivering sky mourns
an ancient loss. What language
does the teardrop speak?
Beyond the horizon, there is a
pillar of shadow that rises
in the firmament of my soul.
Clenching a song in my fist, tonight
I rise, drawing out like filings,
the magician of my world,
conjurer of truths, I am
the magnet for secrets, onward!
I have a shadow to resolve.

I was walking in the desert.
The shadow was long
when the dunes went silent
and I sank to my knees
staring at the skies.

Past an abandoned drum
wailing in the winds,
where a half-buried mask
peeps out of the sand.

When the rain came
it poured out in torrents
and I had no place
to hide my soul.

Forefingers to thumbs,
I strain my eye to look through
the rummage of life.

Or on the tree
in the river island?

But it is like the song
that you know you remember
but can't put words to:
looping in and out,

Where did I leave my heart?

It's hard to tell,
when the love dried up
like the river in the desert.

Long in the night, when darkness is deepest
I find you, faint in the clearing among the trees
playing with the silver hues of new-moon light.
When fog fills the air moist with rains, you
hurry into the pond on a trail of stalks bringing
lotuses to bloom and spreading in ripples.
Every lonely morning, you pour crimson ink
to awaken the drooping leaves and sing in the
tiny voices of a hundred swallows welcoming
the slow winds of dawn: you, Senora, fill all
transitions; Early nights, I see, your smiles light
the room in the faint shadows of the dim lamps

I want to see some old photographs:
older than those on the computer;
Back when moments were precious,
unveil the shrouded busts,
and see the face of my friend
as he was then;

The best of us disappear
into the fields at dusk,
leaving behind memories for us
of colours and of songs.

Tonight, I will
walk by the bund, and onward
to the land beyond the horizon
where they sparkle at night as stars
our friends here, who have
gone to the far beyond.

I am peace. I wave over
every dawn by your shores.
I sing with the grilles and die
unsung like the evening.

I exist. Sometimes
only as a photograph, frozen
in my smile. Sometimes,
smoking my pipe of joy
fiddling by your side; Some
times, I am a memory
enshrined in your heart.

The stillness of the noon;
Of the sky, of the sea,
late after the stars retire,
amidst unceasing waves.
It's about stillness.
Being still. It's about that.
Silence. No that is
not stillness.
Silence is still-born.
It's about those days when
you wake up when you wish
you don't have to.
and nights when you sleep
when you don't want to.
Dreams come undone,
castles on water.
It is the days when
the still small voice
is silent; goes dead, signless.
It's about those days.
When stillness matters.

The leaves in winter, they all fall in place.
In endings hidden, embers of a new life.
Every once in a while an unknown girl
walks up close on a smoggy night;
And an awkward lank woos her with
half-withered roses by the south bank;
Going after severed kites,
landing now by the memory lane:
by the Thames, holding a palmful,
saying, this river's named after you:
she has a dimpled smile;
By the lakes, deep at night, when the moon
walks over the waves, dancing with the swans;
Where the Lee bends around the corner,
a red bus emerges out of the mist,
a hero on chilly nights of the early autumn,
when the dhak welcomes the Goddess home.
Teals, wobbling out of the pond, by
the temple of love, closed for ages now;
Crimson paint dripping from the evening
sky at the corners;
Every day when loving this way
seems like a picture painting away,
get lost walking by the Thames;
Whirling back like the descent from the Eye,
time and crackers light the sky,
on a Guy Fawkes night.

The urchin banging at the car
on rainy nights,
begging for a buy;

The old house down the road
making way for another
highrise where no one will live;

The cobbler at the corner store
smiling away toothless
awaiting  his death;

The mausoleum of the hero
of the past - rebellion glorified
is the new tradition;

The aquarium where
water dried up
and the fish, all died;

I am the city that you
don't  see dying,
obsessed with 'progress'.

It was a story I was writing -
very interesting, but,
it never ends:

Just when the clouds gathered
at the edge of the season,
a conflagration from the beginning
consumed all the hope;

looping backwards just
when I thought, I'd reached ******;

Like the story about the oasis
where all the chapters are about
mirages,

this is a story about love,
but all the chapters are about
how not to love.

I see a butterfly in my cup
that I never noticed before:
and it flew out and flew away.

In the winds that
blew the pages away.

The evening song of the boatman
rowing into the sunset,
mingles with the waves,
sailing past mausoleums and mansions
long deserted by the banks.
In a moon beam's flash, to the slow beat,
come alive the pasts that
play out by the stars
wading through the skies:
bedecked women of the household,
servants in toe, about the courtyard,
children frolic as feasts are announced
and the nights of splendour where
music and magic become one;
In the flutter of rain,
pigeons hide, and bats, in corners
where heirlooms were locked precious
through generations; unknown
then, the hovel of a hermit
is thronged by the thousands whose name
now mingles with those of the Gods
for a glimpse into whispers past time;
It is the beauty of the tree that bares
her soul in winter offerings to the Earth;
Of the stream that offers oblations
shivering through moonless nights;

एक हमारा सत्य परस्पर, जो
रहस्य बन छिपा रहता है जीवन भर

This is our one mutual truth, friend,
that remains hidden a mystery all life:

खेलते रहते हैं  हम, टालते,
कसरती मेहनती हैं, कसरातों
महनतों में खोए रहतें हैं हम

we are busy playing, postponing
the question, and we are workers,
we remain immersed in our
efforts and struggles all life

पर कभी कभी, कल और आज
तक का हो सकता है अंतर, कि
'मित्र' बोलने का नही मिलता अवसर

but a day comes, when the difference
is but between the morrow, and
there's no time to even call out 'friend'

आ जाता है वो बुलावा, तो
व्यूह में फस कभी
लौट नहीं पाते,

when the call comes, so caught
up we become, that return
is not an option from the maelstrom

अचानक सा वो दिन आ जाता
है जब आ सामने उभर कर

suddenly, that we have kept hidden,
comes alive emerging from shadows

ये है जो हमारा सत्य परस्पर,
रहस्य बन रहता है जो जीवन भर

This our mutual truth, that
remains hidden a mystery all life.

A chant echoing in the distance:

fragrance wafting across, rising,

spreading like the birds at dawn

far into the horizon blue:

measuring in its sweep,

the shaman dance of the seasons,

rhythmically erratic,

the drum beat that is the beginning

and the end, a comet search from beyond,

seeking death in the shadows,

like the prayers of stars spreading across

the spiral arms of galaxies

through ages beyond number, too large

for our infant eye to stand witness,

a lighted lamp in loving supplication

at the closed gates of an ancient temple,

waiting to behold the beloved again,

a flame lighting the gulf into an abyss.

I didnt know when you'd speak
why I'd feel as if,
now and then,
your voice was going muffled,
as in a flawed
television transmission?
I thought I must have been
imagining it all up;
Living out some
invisible, subterranean pain.
But, I see now:
you were a phantom;
You were never really there.
I must have
pinched myself harder

Mr. K leads a normal life. Wife and kids, school,
home in town, commuting to work, mornings
for breakfast, evenings papers, chatting away;
The clerk in the government office, executive
in the tech firm; The teacher at the university,
official at the ministry. Like the sun in many
pots, Mr. K is one person living in many bodies.

In the morning, he worships the Eye in his shrine.
Upholding traditions, one must get ahead in life.
Half-believing, within  'Bounds of reason' tepid.
The Eye sits observing him: sometimes, staring
from the sky above, and some times, through
the eyes of the beggars lining the temple street.
Irāvāṇ laughs as Mr. K walks past the totem pole.

'Bad' is always elsewhere, in the nebulous 'other';
Cutting corners is not bad, just an expedient.
Does the Eye only observe silently? It also slithers
sometimes and shakes the fabric of Mr. K's life.
Like when the mountains break way for the river.
But one K. dies, and another takes over. And so
it goes on. Irāvāṇ is laughing impaled on the pole.

Of long an aspiration, secret, that rosaries
don't quench, unexpressed, wells of old,
that anguish burning the deserts, seeking
in austerities and exegeses, an assurance
in tablets and tabernacles, and mourning
the star shooting empty in the sky at night:

a love protects vast, even when what Is
is not this that we worship, and descends
grace, ordinary so to seem obscure, that
wisdom from far must fathom its depths.

Refuse we to believe so, that say who our
father is divine, that so are we too divine.

That which we seek enduring past our
graves, holding dear in our fists clenched,
through torments and tempests and
tenements and temperaments, can
smile at us too as a babe in a manger,

that the King we expect who, to deliver
us from affliction, can a simpleton be,
a Tekton among us: that the Levi and
the Cohen, are risen too amongst us:

and to love, no birth high nor needed is
the learning in law, but to feel as show
those sisters with the heart, who anoint
him in myrrh and in tears, his feet wash.

Like the rainbow shooting out of the horizon:
a whole palette of colours emerges,
carrying in her wings,
all the embers
of the late monsoon -

a side glance, bass strummed of the heart;
Her dimpled smile, drumbeat, missed.
brass, sax, crossing paths,
leaping on a trampoline,
the ***** shrill.

O my towering folly, that
stands mourning like a lighthouse
with the gulls by the rough sea.

All the tones come alive hidden
in this song that like amber
held a slice of that time
in her depths,

screen covered in mist, as now a car pulls over:
clearing it as in a Mandarin Ai, a hut
and some jagged lines: glimpses,
of that dimpled smile -
and a whole jazz band comes alive.

This object from high followed me
all evening. Sometimes, hiding behind
giant reeds shooting from the earth,
sometimes behind mist sprays.

The sea surging in the firmament
conceals it in her tresses now,
She who weeps her agony out
late every season in bereavement.

Her tears have filled up the valleys
on earth, with brackish waters.
Tonight the grilles that paint
the distance grey are wet by them.

I took a secret look, turning away
blushing on sudden reciprocation.
In the broken mirrors strewn
all over my lawn, it dunks winking:

ripples on the mirror, awash abashed:
light playing with shades of
delight, dejection, elation, suspension,
pulsation, susurration, salvation.

On late the by-lanes one night,
unusual spot I green, a bottle
like any, but for words, may be,

on the label printed:
'Old wine. Hamlin. Best before: the future'

Scarred, the mouth, to fire
a rocket used, ringing in a day
when celebrating, a hero,
Goliaths thumped by a David new.

Hope, on the horizon, the word rising.

Threw it away, almost I, when
reversed comes, rolled up a parchment,
by ash burned, from the *******, a part:
a mix strange of clippings and retort.

Marked, astonished, the date, I: was it
from today, even of TV, a listings part;

'...mesmerized by the language of hope';
'Parks fill up as people gather to celebrate';
'Our democracy is alive and how'.

Of proportions messianic, news frothing
how new born, a leader is. Familiar all :
myself now, from one such, returning.

But curious, written, the words indeed:
'Monuments wear and rivers thin,
as boatmen sing the evening song,
miracle-workers and peddlers of
honey and mead, pipers at the gates
of dawn, not men of mettle and deed'

Of a piper, suddenly, as in a fantasy
a song, and heard I, helpless, wails
of mothers, a hundred .

Strained, to read, further my eye,
when tore up the piece;
Broke up green, a bottle on the street.

Airwaves awash in the new gospel barrage:
calling forth the neighbourhood hack,
Abe Lincoln toon in towering hat,  
the corporation is coming -
will you not
collaborate my friend?

Everything good that you ever dreamed of is here:
Marbonite floored flats with self-terraced roofs;
The swankiest of cars, in imported hues;
Your arm candy drools,
now, brands, bigger brands!

All in your grasp, now, in community gates
shut safe as society decays.

Skies spitting frogs? Pestilences amass?
Listen to the Gospel according to Bane:
in the desert, smell octane. Hallelujah,
everything we make, from watches
to headscarves - your underwear is cheaper
sourced from the next so-lala-land.

Forget your sources tiny of incomes varying:
Bakers, cobblers, tinkerers, we also have
a uniform for you. Oh you rustic
tradition-bound bandy bumpkins!
Abandon your alleyways, and
welcome to the ghettos...where

What you eat, to where to retreat:
we cure everything from heartache to panache.

Wash away your sins in wonder medicines;
Waters can part, yes, see how the Pharoah
is disarmed; Big city dreams, dream
global manna beams. All that is needed for
salvation, is a little bit of classification. Are you
left-wing or right? Center-left or center-right?

The powerdrill tearing down edifices
resonating through noon. A crane arm's shadow
hovering high by the moon. Tablets from skies
now proclaim the new gospel for the land,
the airwaves are awash
of the miracle of Witwatersrand.

The corporation is coming, to a store near you:
Amen! Will you not, then, collaborate, my friend?

The winter has set in early; monsoon a memory now,

the trees are all dusty by the all-day din.

This morning, the taxis ply early, eager to get the office-goers in.

Tea fumes in the mist.

The lady in the bungalow alights from her car

with her child, early from school.

Vegetables still asleep on the pushcart.

An eighties number mingles with the wind.

A van loaded with kerosene cans parks at the gates:

there is a tenement at the basement.

I.  The event wall:

The quarters going coloured:
Red, yellow, limpid azure,
white unalloyed;
at the center, a dark void
lightening, radiating outward -
never breaking the event-horizon.

Reverent circumambulation
by tradition, is done clockwise.

II. Reading the tiles

Is peace in expansion
or contraction?
Incarceration. Staring at the tiles.
Acceptance or rebellion?
Time doesn't tell.

III. Prospect

You are free now:
making a mascot of you,
we have set you free.

While singing paeans
to your greatness yet,
we bemoan how
coolies and ******* are
be-spoiling our home.

Rest in peace!
We'll wait for Christ.

The song of the ney blends
with the dunes:
as ancient paths
follow footsteps out,
into the wilderness of the desert,
seeking a truth greater
than constricted life settled allows;

The percussion of the drum,
missed heartbeats:
stopping at wells
dotting the scape, where,
the earth pours her agony forth
from her sorrowing depths,
the prophet's sons wept for God.

The grieving oases mourn
an unhealed
wound, of long
a heart searching the
sands, for one who gave his life
for the love of his Lord
here and his humble fellow man.

Night, the oldest of mysteries
settles, spreading like hunger.
A pall of mist
shrouding over the world.

Siren sounds and firefighters,
drunken brawls, and
receding beats.

Eyes of wonder asleep,
emerging out of
the network of shadows
growing creeper-like.

Stray nuggets of light
also reach the eyes shut
in meditation.

Furtive shadows of passion,
elsewhere. Muffled joys;
Shades of bottle-grey.

Cricket-song. Ululations
faint.  Raspy owl-calls,
intermittent.

In the deep, secret
rites of initiation.

Somewhere in the far
highlands
the stars and
the broken moon peep in.

Old song on a highway truck.
Little lamps adorning the hills,
courtyards in the distance.

Sliced orange shades,
your visage in evening light;
Bright forehead, dotted red,
Chandelier-ring, square-cut
ruby, on either ear; silken
streaks in hair flowing over
cheeks by the wind;
Ripples in the pond at night:
dimpled smile, broken
as in a dented mirror.
Lost from the front, lost
from behind; doubt rising,
like incense, ladder-like
the rib cage in x-ray vision;
Broken pots, moss-filled,
collecting the last rain,
bits of moon in the puddle
skinny-dipping after.
Totem pole, towering
light house, Zeus-thunder
zipping past the sky, my
Babel ego. Zorro moments.
At the center, a fulmination:
spreading front of a quake
ripping space and time apart.

And when the days grow on the soul
like a shadow at noon,
the night sets in deep, after
the stars retire,
the winds go silent in the valley,
there yet comes a time,
when that throb
of nameless pasts comes alive.

You have everyone,
yet, I know, you have no one:
is this how I love you?

I see you disappear:
the last bird into the swallowing
cloak of the fast-setting night.
After the rains, you disappeared
into the pond, hopping on lotus leaves.

An anger at my lapse,
smoulders on in winter's moist depths;
An anger at yours, hovers over
like the last cloud of the late monsoon.
Yes, when the sky weeps her
agony out,
all the hidden embers glimmer.

Now I open the window and sit longing
for the mellow autumn rains.

Day and night vie for each other
now, but the darker is winning;

The moon mourns in her ruddy veil:
tonight, the garden's wet by tears.

Incredible, the attraction,
of carbon for carbon.
Even more, the attraction
of carbon for gold.

In the wild, they rarely bond.
But in man, inseparable.

Carbon and mammon: be not yoked,
says the jewel diamond of our race.

Who cares? The cross,
an adornment nice.
Mammon in mud? Silicon
too, says the IT guy.

Fullerenes in the sky: on this
Guy Fawkes night, sparks truly fly.

Carbon will **** for gold.
This the oldest maxim of old.

Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!
Folk come from far and near, just to hear:
say some a Rabbi is he, others, the Christ;
quelling the ghosts, he turns water wine,
the dead walk back to life at his command.

Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!
He's cast his glance wide, this humble
son of a carpenter, is too, a fisherman wise:
he pours forth his love, like none ever can,
to his disciples, he's a friend and kinsman.

Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!
Where they see sin, he only sees the light,
and nothing can anger him but unholy
commerce in the temple right. Who'd have
thought, God's son, was thus in our sight?

Mary's son is here and my, what a flutter!

In the stark valley,
by wheezing winds,
eyes puckered,
hope, gone afar:

solitary peaks

snow-capped at
summit, rising,
parting the clouds,
for opal skies.

An aspiration.
A lighthouse.

Floating on restless waters, tonight,
broken moons breathe in waving clouds;
Time is a colander, through which
life escapes, never to return; Yet tonight
the beanstalk remains tangled;
I sat watching swans in the moonlight
where the canal and stream met;
Rock the boat! Peace is a botheration.
Could the road that diverged loop
back to the fork? Walking backwards,
tonight, leaves and assorted bits of paper
fly forward; After the off-licenses close,
someone's dashing for the last bus
before dawn, running in reverse; three
hooded figures lost in the cemetery,
walking backwards; The moon
weeps tears of mist, that
ripple spreading inward in the puddles
after the rain; There's a weeping firefly
crawling in the sink; Or the kitchen-lamp?
Bubbles die to the siren-song of crickets.
Is there is an Ithaca fabled?

One-sidedly decided arrows,
vacillating ellipses;
equilaterally considered triangles,
biased Isosceles;
worlds, whorls, rectangled
squares, afflicted rhombuses;
A self-destructing nova.

The night opens up,
a book of wonders across the sky,
shining in the stars; broken moon;
Wading across ancient expanse.
Flashes of illumination:
lighted mountain bush,
cross rising on the eastern sky;

One look at the visage,
blooming out of this figure
wrapped creeper-like around faint
sight, flower emerging in silver light
out of the shadows: bubbles,
rolling, nonagular, collapsing;
Oh pointless ratiocination!

Now we are past the age
where fireworks make sense, when,
colours and sparkles mesmerize.

Let us sit down, friend,
and reminisce the wonder nights:
when the moon came visiting
and stood silent by the palm leaves,
the still leaves sang a song
to the passing winds
to the rhythm of dripping dew.

Everything is finished in a moment
here, like the sparkle-***.

Ages pass before we see,
the whirl that follows
in the wake of the Catherine-wheel
of time is in our eye.

Yet a night comes, lit by rows
of joyous lamps, when of long
lost, our soul returns.

That which we sought in objects vain
is forever our own, enshrined
forever behind the throb of sensation
here, is our undefeated kingdom,
closer than the closest.

I walked with the hundreds
climbing mountain trails all day
and settling by the pebbles
at the summit, to hear you:

I, for one, never doubted
there was any scarcity of food;
Yes, you were always
a miracle worker.

On nights of wonder, you
spoke to us in secret on
marvelous things.
Actually, I did not care:

Whose grace floods the desert
and in whose law, love precedes,
such a one was with us and that was
all that mattered.

And now, by moonless nights,
when I stay up, alone and orphaned,
in struggle and privation,
I wonder, my friend, why is your

coming again set in the future?
Do you not come for love alone
than to keep the law? Do you
not part waters for our deliverance?

Naive waves keep reaching for the oars:
who will explain to them, the rover is gone;
The empty vessel sways from side to side
in wheezing evening winds.

On moonlit nights of silken silences,
atop misty hills overlooking the waters
at Nepenthe's, a dreamed-up reverie.

After the dawn, the night lingers on;
In the darkened room, hiding in corners ,
and dying in the emptying space
hugged between the arms.

Yet, when snow covered everything, and
the clock ticked timeless, a throb enshrined
in the heart of the stalled heart of time,

of those many years ago, carries on.

You need the low angle for the camera
to zoom in on my frame: I can scale
the skies, jump down cars, beat
the baddies and romance girls
by age by half: I'm the hero. I defy
everything. Age included.

Look up close, there are no wrinkles;
Muscles, better than gymbuffs';
Hair, not a strand grey, and
skin, as elastic as young. Yet
I've been around for a good quarter
of the lives of you the commonfolk .

There is no start or middle here:
I know no crises, I know no end.
Touch the screen, feel
the sparkle! I'm the polestar
of the ordinary life, I defy
everything. Life included.

In the secret chamber of my private
existence, I sometimes peep
out of the looking glass, but
the glimpse you saw of my eye
blown up, is all you can catch
of the tears that line their tips.

Hypermart.
News on air.

Boondoggles,
owl ogles,
ongoing.

Jaywalking.

Reverse gear.
Biting into ginger.

Hindsight: familiar.
Slow down,
observant mirror.

Heartwringing.

Twigs
flying in a whirl.

Coiled up cord;
Snakes from the past.
Boondocks,

hornswoggling,
heartwarming.

Then, when a pin-fall echoes ringing
in the enveloping darkness,
and muddied silence eclipses all light,
spreading all around
the mistletoe
guards the path forward,

we must know, it will all end.
For a greater power than all we know,
than even the greatest of Gods,
a secret is enshrined within
the very fabric of existence:
a mystic voice echoes,

from the mists, a boon-giving hand
reassures us lost here:
Whenever in trouble, wherever you be
call and the help shall swell forth
from within the wells
dug empty in the crusts of our being;

Like the last light of the evening
the image of clay disappears
into the waters, that in mystic union
connect earth and the heavens,
appearing again year after year
in yet more lovely forms:

A river of love that swells forth
at our suffering, the cradle
of our weal and woe, the Mother
of everything that ever is.
Nine there might be, the darkest
of nights, but the tenth is

the day of victory for sure!

Here in receding darkness, the sky meets the earth;
In waning hours, here the music of the waves
consoles the mourning sands; here I go pursuing
the citadel of mists, rising lotus-like from clouds
hanging on rugged mountains in the distance.

Maelstroms in the desert carry vortices of sand
and moist fragments of mirages of oases;
The fury of the sea brooks no contenders:
***** make home the sands levelled flat of my
feats; Again the uproar of mist-filled thirst.

Invisible companion, tonight, in moonlit silence,
will you come walking waters, like those ages
many, of Galilee ago? A storm is brewing.
A labyrinth of seasons in the Catherine-wheel
of life, growing and swirling out of the haze;

When the pall of sullen smoke recedes,
and the rubble long rummaged, after
the nightjars all return home to roost,
and tear-wells in the heart dry up,
the hour,
when the wails of sobbing mothers muffle,
broken
the silken dreams that we conjured up.

Under the vaults of the darkened skies,
who uncovers the faces masked,
read the blackened hearts of hatred?
Not the siren of death we heard then,
stirring the empty wells of our being:
but the song of the hopelessness of life
in the company of our shadow selves.

When our tears are dry on the shore
And the fishermen carry their nets home
And the sea gulls return to bird island
And the laughter of the children recedes
At night
There shall still linger here the communion we
Forged
The feast of oneness which we partook of

There shall still be the eternal gate-men
Who will close the cemetery door
And send the late mourners away
It cannot be music we heard that night
That still lingers in the chambers of memory
It is the new chorus of our forgotten comrades
And the hallelujahs of our second selves

What gives you, who gives you,
you,

who've exchanged your humanity
for a senseless existence
and desire for death -

this right,

to come and **** and maim
the unarmed and helpless,
innocent women,

and children?

you,
armed to your teeth,
against the defenseless weak?

is this strength?
is this a religion?
is this how you attain heaven?

My heart rate, sine wave usually, goes
sine squared when I see you,
sine cubed when I approach you,
woh, Dirac-delta when I hear you!

How do I heal this singularity?
Now how do I extract the real part
from your complex valued smile at me?
Euler says, it all goes in circles anyways.

So, I decide to cast a phasor P
that intersects the line H bisecting
your heart plane, such that H · P  = 0.
Can Cupid tell dot product from cross?

'A triangle on the mount of mercury
is certainly an auspicious sign'

Thumping percussion of a native beat
in my head, a gyrating hindsight

The evening streams down pouring
streaks of grey and mangled orange

Walking past a bicycle chained to railings
front wheel mangled into a rough square

Squaring a circle, huh? How did that happen?
two thumps and a sonant beat...and again...

I see you sipping latte by Nero.
Mangled, stream out of your eyes
many coloured triangles
rushing, wheeling at me.

Vibrant beat, gyrating bottoms.
The mercury is soaring. Ululations.

The night-witch has charmed the city in her cloak.
Stars, oh, I see mangled triangles out of her hat.

Rain falls on the windscreen
in shades of grey brown and fogged-up blue,
car become boat in the rain-clogged road
floating away like in a Monet,
into the evening mess.

Frayed nerves, rules break, as dangers lurk.
The wiper slow tells its tale own.
Irrelevant discourse, irreverent songs,
the FM trend for DJ fame.

And we have two 'rivers' in our city,
swelling in refuse, bolstered by the rain;
And we have two beaches in our city,
soak in the surf, if you can ignore the rubble;
And we have many parks in our city
where litter garlands our heroes daily;

The last patch of green, cramped between
rising heights all around, accursed of
dump and construction junk,
steals a dying look at the moon late.

A walk in the woods, by the mist, by late evening.
A stroll, warm, through a field covered in snow.
Nice paintings on my concrete wall.

I'm told, the money plant is good for one's health.
Trees, a luxury for our wealth.

These are all good developments.
Hyper malls round the corner.
Home prices, soaring to Kepler.

Please pour in more investment into my country.
Guaranteed, riches grow in multiplication.
The markets are all about manipulation.

On your shoulders, slender waisted maiden,
you carried the burdens of this earth: like
Atlas of the old, you of Amazonian strength;

Yet today you sink, weighed down by
the vanishing vestige of shadows aflicker.
Shadows that consume all, engulfing nights,
harbingers dark of conflagrations rise.

Disbelief is our creed. But enough we believe
to vote them to power, our leaders we so love.
Yet in the hour of decision, we must believe
in their indisputable dishonesty.

Yes, aliens are around, Area 51 is for real,
late night appearances on Larry King live?
For the select few, sure, for a select price.

Osama did not die. In fact, exist, he never did.
Flags felled of the towers twin ? False, them false!
How belief, when Iraqs can happen?
Whither the weapons of mass delusion?

Conspiracy. In bloodlines is our interest
but not in the man who gave that blood for us.
Alas those to preach that love vested,
too are in gossip and scandal invested.

Fickle is our love, the mistletoe occupies now
the sacred space of the matronly banyan, and
the owl upside down, for the dove beloved old

Wondrous, wondrous is the sight:
from the front, from behind, from the top, from beneath, all around,
fulminating planes, universes, formed, bubbling out forming,
events, from all times existing as one,
beings, of all kinds, everywhere,
gods, angels, daemons, beasts, life from many systems,
including men, of this small speckle of a world,
known, unknown, and the beholder included
unfold, in this being vast, that knows no end,
that prompts awe and gestures of remorse
for having called It the friend and the other and the like,
who can tell what it is, it is inside, outside and everywhere,
our limited vision itself is not enough to grasp it.
It must grant a boon to allow the mortal man to gain a glimpse.

Such is the sight, encountered assuring fearlessness,
amid the din and the clamour of the ferocious war about to begin.

Yet, a realm exists, eternal, where joy is a term unworthy,
where bliss is a term unworthy, where ecstasy flows
out of every pore of the very fiber of existence,
to prompt the poet to say, ah, suffering I can take, but
this my receptacle is too weak to take in your bliss:
where delight takes the form of a radiant blue and plays the flute
having heard which once, all other joy pales in experience known
here a hundred thousand coloured plumes flower out of darkness,
here the ardent souls,  sit numbed by the bliss of love,
not winking once, so not to interrupt the moment.

The portal to which is guarded by a simple faith.
Even a passing desire and a glimpse pours forth, of the river of love
dancing away to the flute, in the depth our being.

Oh, to be a mother, and glimpse universes
in the mouth of one's babe, calling it forth exasperated
to open up and throw out the eaten mud.
Or be the Creator, befuddled that
his proud creation is but one puddle among the millions
this magician conjures up, who smiles innocent as a five year old.
Or be the simpletons guarded in awe by the mountain held up
as an umbrella to the deluge ordered by the rain gods.
Oh, the bewitching smile, that rended the hearts of the maidens,
to which sworn enemies cast their bows and arrows
and fall down in obeisance.

That the lord of all existence, can be a prankster
delighting in butter and frolic, who knew, who knew?

He is the unseen charioteer:
steering the ignorant soul, seated in the heart; Aeons pass
and we know not, even as He carries us in his arms across.
Oh, we can work, and approach him by work.
Meditate! Yes, sunder the knots in the heart.
Sacrifice too, is acceptable as offering, and renunciation ascetic.
See Him in any form, or in no form at all,
offer Him anything, even a leaf, a blade of grass,
He submits but to the ardent soul, this lord of love,
this eternal teacher of the ways of union.

And yet, it all began on a rainy day, on a day
when evil reigned and the rivers were in spate,
in a prison, where righteousness was consigned.

Yes, Truth, the weapon to put the guards of delusion to sleep,
and He slips out, when the rain goes mellow in her hymn,
when the river parts to the babe guarded by the snake,
when the jungles sing to the ecstasy unfolding,
when the world is asleep, ignorant and lost,
assured in its uncertain knowledge
and rival claims and fearsome philosophies
and numberless rituals and lifeless creeds,
unknown to the wicked kings, here He arrives,
to the muffled joys of a pastoral village erupting in celebration.

Gospel truth. Obsession.
Structure. Assumption.
Life path, revelation?
Bokonon, redaction!

Creator. Nature.

Existence?
.....Relevance?

What about peace?
What about it?

That passeth understanding?
Precisely. Oxymoron.

Reason, confusion. Religion, delusion.

Footnote, background, legend:

Small candle: beautiful shrine.
Put it out, darkness and grime.

By night, these figures mute, in the whispers
come alive, guardian deities to ancient shrines:
tonight, though, after aeons by the gates, alert,
they begin to wonder, who do they guard?
Gods no longer visit these their abodes on earth.

Tall statues, of somber stone, much garlanded,
dusty, layered in withering flowers of neglect;
Out of season now, but the shadows at noon
are wet in tears, this longest day of deep sorrow
who did they fight for, to be remembered for?

Long has she suffered, matron, deity, enthroned
in the shrine, but trodden of the earth, cuffed
at her home, weighed down of custom, wearing
tradition on her bangle and ankle and bearing
honour in her veil, invisible shadow of the race.

Like the mythical stream of the distant lore,
has this ancient river, at last found her desert?
To that man holding the book in his hand,
thundering to the empty skies, I ask, what law
do you uphold when the jungle invades the land

I was on a ship, a ship on the high seas;
With nobody on the deck,
Sailing through heavy, stormy waters.
Who's at the helm?

I don't know - swaying from side to side
the vessel tottered on, metal
oar-rests clanging to wheezing winds
and boisterous, surging waves.

I suddenly get a call on my mobile - how
on earth did I have network?
'I can see her', says the voice, 'an austere
lady leading the ship'. Is she
the same helmswoman who charters
universes before they come alive?

I walked downstairs, finding the parlour.
And decided I should paint,
to **** time: time, the enduring mystery.
Is this a dream? I consulted
Varo and dipped my brush in black
and splattered oil over canvas.

Dots, like sparkling stars, I see threes and
twos, and fives. Looking eerily
like loaded dice. Am I cruising through
skies? Is this my destiny loaded?

This is an allegory, says Martel. Agrees
Jung; Breton seems pleased.
Freud, though, says I'm just paranoid,
and this, my willful imagination.

I wake up, and find myself on a ship.
There's no one on the deck.
I have a mobile phone in my hand.
Miracle: there's network,

I. Éclaboussure

I drew a handful from my bag of words and splashed them across the canvas of life painted dark, dark, dark. (oil colour: shades of pain, and purposelessness).

I saw stars splattered across the night sky. And misty spiral halos.

How do I know this light is for real? This bright star here, might long be gone - ancient light.

All events are done before we are aware.

Who is the witness? Is there a canvas?  

II. Montage

How do I know. Splattered across. Misty spiral halos. Dark dark dark. I drew a handful. I saw stars.

Gone - ancient light. Who is the witness? Canvas of life painted. Before we are aware.

(Oil colour: shades of pain. Is there a canvas? This bright star here.  All events are done.

And pain and purposelessness. And splashed them across. The night sky.)

Might long be. And. From my bag of words. This light is for real.

An abyss that echoes shrieks of eagles circling above:
the moon lies smashed in her sunken depths by nights,
this pit of enveloping darkness, a vessel emptied of life.

Brick by brick, aeons layer her walls, who knows when
she was dug? she carries fragrances of primordial waters
gathered in the heart of earth to the winds of the present.

Long before Joseph's well, she stood when desert land
was verdant wood, and before the earth was tread
asunder by the chariot, this graveyard of the stars.

Plunder she has seen, and abuse as she towers over the past.

Not a wellspring, emptied dry, but a bowl abegging.
The bowl that gave a creed to a continent?
Caravans pass by disgraced crevices remnant
of that era, gone long of stone. Effeminate, she pawned
her bricks over for a life. Or a well to collect the dead,
frightened by the hundreds by the colonial bullet.

Rise and fall, she carries in her wheel of life, her spoked zero.
Of which yet arises a homespun yarn of dreams.

Darkness wells forth from this abysmal chasm, and her
waters cause feuds by brother to brother. Men of straw,
of whom in a few years, no trace would remain,
yet remain and the dove that flew the night a tryst was made
still challenges the jacketed savant on Parliament square.
A pair of inverted eyes guard the gates of darkness.

And now and again, you see yet a star
shooting out to the skies again from the waters: to the moon,
a mushroom cloud, a circling satellite, and an octet notes.

She's not one well: her waters brackish, are
a thousand islands, that came together under the shadow
of an empire on whom the sun never sets.
Count the roots of the banyan, trees.
Her sons grow weak and lumpen. Her daughters rise.
And so she endures, this ancient mother.

In her depths, on the day, when the star of David is reversed,
she endures the ******* reversed, that shined in her of ages ago.
Of men, two quarters great, arise from the same shadow:
The eagle on the west, and the dove on the east.
The not is the all, the zero is everything.
Eternity, two zeros conjoined.