Distant clouds lining the endless horizon hurtling back in waves,
rugged trees on the blue-barren shore, courtyard of this palace-
prison: the world shrinks, receding softly like
the last light of the evening sun:
Neither Odysseus King of Ithaca, nor a captive prisoner of
my own deeds, now, the world drops from me, in this
deep night I really am no-man, now, I am merely
the awareness of nothingness.
New worlds emerge: where I ride flying elephants, a hero I am
who won without recourse to a decoy horse, where Achilles
lives and Laodamia grieves not, where I rejoice
at my home the year after we won:
Fair Queen, worlds as real as my prism-world at dawn, where
the sea-nymph reigns; Many pasts converge and onward
to many futures from this present-point, I am really
ever just the silent 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.

Crimson shades that hang on late
on cloudy mornings, cormorants
that carry tidings from afar
reeds that roll over slow in their measured nuances:
wind roars, noon bells, distant shorelights at night.
I sought glory with love in my heart
Midas-like, glory became my gold.
Every wave carries a new meaning
for one who sees life
from the window of death;
How many deaths for honour, how many
for glory, how many more for perfidy?
Ah blessed love, that
- when the glitter of glories descends
into quicksands of darkness -
from whom nothing can ever be snatched away,
the one love that shone before my birth
as Athene, who I loved as Penelope and
who loves me as Calypso, receptacle of worlds!

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.

A roaring event rips lives apart. Like a river that parts land into two banks. Sometimes brothers are rent apart by life, never to be joined again. Nations arise out of land that was once one.

Born of the same soil, yet separated by the rapid gusts of flowing water. At the culmination though, love breaks barriers. At the ocean, the roar of the river is drowned in the peace of the wave.

Sometimes, we must let go and let life mend itself.

When the river meets
the ocean, sands from two banks
mingle, become one

ome orth azarus, come th laz, ome for zus
echo in the winds outside the empty cave;

In the desert an insurrection
to deluge the earth from cauldrons of faith;
Tinderbox by the Dneiper, an interview stolen;

Dance of Ishtar caged, the demiurge call.

Treading on ice, our mortal lives;

Ancient wells wailing with the earth;

A vessel weathering the storm, sinking
now at Galilee.

At Golgotha, by the empty Crucifix;
it all began here in Bethlehem where we wait.

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.

Sometime in everyone's life, withered
leaves will not grow back and one autumn
will not pass to spring. Sometimes we know.
Suffering. The constant visitor hidden
like a shadow silhouetting our life.
Every slow winding hour, we move closer
to when limbs falter and senses numb.
Endings ever lie hidden like a corner
sudden at the far end of a thrilling road.
Sometimes we are sure, we are more than
the frame of bones. Suffering is inferior,
deliverance is the greater truth. But:
we don't care, the thrill of weakness
is more attractive than the calm of Self.
One momentous journey, out of the
false-lit comfort of familiar darkness.
These that stalk us: disease, old age, death.
One man could see it all in one evening
what takes us many lives, may be.

O Lord of the hosts!

Shine in radiance, his eyes -
in whose heart is your name;
Who fathoms your ends?
The earth, sky and stars
pay homage to him
and fear fears him,
whom your shadow protects:

O Lord of the hosts!

Wealth finds him in whatever he does
who earns the blessing of your love,
and a shoreless boat is he who
has not found you whose
benevolent eyes keep watch over all
shattering the storms of sins,
whose glory never ebbs;
Becomes a master of destiny,
even forgetting the world, who has
found your grace,
come riding the mouse -

O Lord of the hosts!

Anointed of the dust of your foot
on his forehead, who lives mortal here,
immortal nectars cannot tempt him -
he can drink venom smiling;
Just by the shadow of your grace
the wheel of the chariot of time moves
and by a spark of your ire
abodes of demons burn;

The minions of enemies stand defeated,
miraculous, boon become into this world,
comes your name:

O Lord of the hosts!

Glory, glory to the dear one adorned of peacock-feathers!

Here, boughs and stalks will wait,
eyes laden moist in longing,
every overcast eve,
mourning your absence;

Here, the winds will
go still and rapture-swell
at the song of your flute,

Here I will stay, clutching the lotus
memories of our love to my heart:

Overcome
in longing here
Jumna stalls, when wonder
nights of raas unfold in the mists
of time.

I am but a maiden of these Vraja fields,
go, friend, kingdom and world await you.

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.

A father who has conquered all
that is in space,
here and among the stars
and the higher worlds,
begot Her as his child,

She of an essence beyond time:
aeons of vaster joys,
sundered now from the world
so sorely imperfect,
must yet come down here
to lead us back to the wonder
beauty of the blank spirit
the basis of all;

We can bottle up fragrance
in choicest the vials of our whim:
but released, it must fill all space, no less.

So was She the freedom
shining in the stars
flowing in the rivers that raft through the hills
in the winds that beat down the vales;

Protected, She grew in his home
among others lustred lesser
shining forth as his darling
who would keep aflame
the glory of his name;

Somehow an internet cloud
has leaked into my room, and
I can soar the skies now:

Don't know
how long this connection holds?
chat on Gmail?
am online on Skype!

Memories return on
wet wings of the slow winds.
Old photos on this computer.

Should I
be content with photos tonight?
Separation is sweeter
on misty nights.

You said you were
reading my poems last night.
what poems did you read?

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 door out back from a cosy hamlet
is too a thorny one that is not often tread

Just when all seems certain and settled
life comes knocking and seething.

And you go walking the starry path,
the wayward path, the meandering path
to nine yards of nowhereness.

Questions, some are never settled. Invitations
some are never forever. Rhythms are not
made to last, just like the seasons. Winters
are the longest, deepest and darkest
that etch their cold onto pestles of the heart
that want to pound down memories a tonic.

Emerge, shadowy oars, from mists unraveling
by the shorey oceans lining the soul,

Slow here are the sailboats of hope
that we unfurl in sodden winds
and keep rowing on, on to the shoreless zons.

when the cold gets to the bones, I make a bonfire
of all my pasts, longings and belongings,

oh the late gull that shrieks past the silences.

All, but love. That, I cannot burn,
for that I am, I loved, and will love,
change forms, change norms, but that I will.

I. Prologue

Splash words across: images on canvas.
Before Abraham was, I am:
the cubist of poets. Mangled and tangled;
Here thoughts emerge, in reverent perspectives.
The real world: how many dimensions,
depends on who you ask; Monotone
in my unidimensions. Filter. Baritone.
Coffee-brown is the best colour around.

II. Love

Here we sit by two-arms distance. To north,
to south. Facing opposing poles.
There is an attraction.

Here are images from the industrial world
gone post-industrial. Broken commodes.
Outsource your misery here. The sky can afford
a hole from on here. As long as
there's none in my shoe.

Sometimes, I roll over in waves.
Sometimes, you wave over.
Questions still hidden in the corners.

III. Peace

All that's passed remains flickering
green like the wireless router
silently at nights: recover, play it over.

Flush it all up. Splash it all around. Cubism.
Art nouveau. Portmanteau. Now fruck the world.
Neon shades rippling through the smoke
riding out dancing to metal clang;
Crazy laughter like that of an empty skull:
smoke the pipe, brother,
spread the peace around.  2013, stupid.
Idealism died in 1967. And many times since.
Repeats always a farce.

IV. Spirit

Only one man died for the poor.
Who called the dead to life.
All other stories are about barons and hedgehats:
while the millions were ground over
to oil the world. While they roiled the world.
How the poor die under the heels
of those that claim to love that man?
Disagree? Drone. Agree? The throne.

Yes, we can, brother, we can defeat this
****** corruption. Brother,
be not corrupt.

V. Prospect

A sigh of disapproval, soft in sleep.
I come and lie, back to your back,
waiting for love to seep over.

Yes, we can, brother, we can overcome
bigotry vile. Brother,
say not, mine, the only way ever.

Happy lovers day. Shout out aloud,
peans more to the meek women's rights.
Forget not, there's some in your sights.

Two arms' distance is about the right in the day.
There are two faces seen in this bubble,
formed at the mouth of the tooth paste tube.
Peace to the world, every morning after.
Every little home by home.

In the still night, a quest envelops everything like darkness
spread across the sky. Among shadows, a journey for light.
One last time like the night lingering at the horizon at dawn
he looks back: So long dear friend, companion ever on my
journey this far; You know everything, yet I cannot bear
to leave otherwise; Know not what perils beset my quest,
Yasho, this journey is mine. Words echo in the empty silence
of this early hour. This morning after, gusts of wind remind
of an absence, yet only the fragrance of love fills the empty
chambers where memories retire by royal robes cast behind.
Too great to be bound, some men; some love too vast to bind.

Resume: Jewel de Saex
Address: Lost somewhere up the hills.
                 email: me@yourownrisk.mule
                 Tel: + network not available

Summary

Hire me if: you are looking for an adventure.
Clouds, gorges, and I never disappoint, for we can cry.

Education

Bachelor, Mistress and Widower at the University of Zoya, majoring
in Life Sciences, with a minor in the applications of horseshoe magnets.

Expertise

I know them laws of attraction well +

New languages: both Silicon and Carbon-based ++

Magic, luck and fate.

Experience

For years I steered a boat
riding a rough river that
passed storms every day.

I was the rain-maker, I can
bring tears to any passing cloud
by my mere hand-gesture:
(all the dough-kneading.)

I was also the chief gardener
for Loz, whose farms at
the other end of the Earth
I visited by the switch door
in my old photo-albums each day.

Skills

Jugglery, innovative use of cutlery, reading runes, plucking prunes,
riding boats on dunes, talking by eyes, hearing by sight.

References: Not available even on request.

*NOtes:

+   Turn pages back and you always find, only one person was in love.

++ I can decipher the meanings in the lispings of cherubs and angels.
     I understand the cloud and the river, as of men in any tongue.

Log floating in the green stream:
jetting away in the flow,
now I'll stop in the thicket,
uncovering the cricket-song
trapped in the reed-locks.
Splash! that's a tadpole miss;
The trouts, they are laughing.
Gone! that's an angler's bait in vain.
Cranes have got their picking.
There's a hundred suns around.
This is a bubbly babbly morning.
Onward forward I flow, reed in tow.

Dark, this
restive hour, when
I search for a secret
peace, that lies lurking in the heart,
lost moon,

pre-dawn,
before worry
rises to shine on the furlough
when grey the twilight in furtive
retreat:

this hour,
when winds summon
birds to the distant realms
when little voices rise on beaming
star lakes.

Dear Lord,

I thank you today for this gift of food. This, was another child of yours. Abel Abel Abel. An intelligent bird. A member in its dumb chain of life, family: what is family to that insentient mass? Do they mourn when one of them is gone? Does it affect them, does it bother them, does it pain them,

As it does to us? Yes, we, the great golden yardstick against which to measure out the universe.  Dumb, may be, but dumb life with a heart. Who knows about the soul. Isn't soul that little pin-***** somewhere deep in the heart? Do I have one? Do I care, do I mourn, do I see the pain that I cause to these fellow children of yours:

But if not this, what else - a leaf that covers in fear at being plucked, a root, a bulb that in ways we cannot sense with but an instrument, cries out in pain at being uprooted, skinned and roasted live. Or a fruit, that mothership, host to a million seedling lives, every one of them that could grow out to outlive my life by orders. A stalk, a branch, name it.

Yes, this is food. This is a chain. I eat and am eaten. Terrible, this creation, that has sprung from wellsprings of love. Or is not this world the product of a loving God, but that of the evil non-God? But where your omnipotence that is screaming through the scripture hoarse?

No, I am a sinner. I have sinned, to be born in this wretched world. A dead child was washed ashore, the other day. Until then, I said, to hell with those barbarians crossing rivers and mountains to reach my land. But what of death? I boil and burn a billion little lives in my glass of tea every morning, many times over. Oh plasmodium, that I have to **** to live, oh this life that hangs to me like a necessity!

Good Lord, have you made me in your image? What is, whose reflection in spacetime appears like this visage, flesh on ribage, beating heart, pumping lung, viscera and nerve and vein, bone and nail, wallowing in pleasure and pain? That is an inverse problem that baffles our genius. It is ill-posed for certain, with no means of regularization for sure.

I must live I must live I must live. ****, that organism is small, dumb, unintelligent, insentient, it's pain is of another kind, we can't eat air, and we are atop this chain, cobra's head, that houses all the venom. This is evolution, we are evolving space suits to head to the stars and spread the Gospel to those unknown realms still sunk steeped in barbarism.

Yes, He is great, he can be heard in the voices of lunatics that some times  get recorded and transmitted across the generations. And I follow the masters, they were vile, very vile, they were chosen, yea they were chosen, so vile is virtuous, I be vile, I be virtuous, I am chosen, yea, I am chosen, I head to God, on the backs of a thousand dead souls.

Amen. Peace to all those I consign and all the masters I quote. Holy Cain!

I.

I knew she liked me much,
the way she blushed and
went cold, every
morning at my touch;
I love her too, my favourite
cereal bowl: she's
all ceramic, a queen
among bowls. So, I decided
to break ice and ask her,
this morning, when this space
is resonant in unusual
calm amid the buzz
of clumsy bikes, kitchen clanks
and crowbar knocks: tell me,
dear bowl, I say, tell me more
about yourself: I want to
know your story.

II.

She blushed again: really?
Why would you want to know
this my sad story?
Everyone I ever loved,
has been cleaved from me
and here I wait today,
polished and reflecting
the mad whirl of the tireless
fan every sombre morning.
Silence. I gave her a caress:
an empathetic, loving one,
and nudged her on.
She stuttered. I gazed intently
at my interested face
reflected off her beaming eyes.
Well, where shall I begin?

III.

I was the soft clay
lining the shore of this
beautiful lake, in some remote
haven untouched by betrayal:
a far off land, where
people just loved and expected
nothing back.
China? Mongolia?
I was about to ask, excited,
but then kept quiet,
how would a clump of clay
tell one country from another?

IV.

I loved her soft smile
rippling past me every morning
and deep night, and we
loved each other this way
in waves and caresses
for aeons, when one day
this menacing contraption
a monster, cleaved me off
and transported me
to a boiling cauldron. I wept
for pain and roiled on
until hardened and cast
into this shape.

V.

Earlier, my dear bowl,
still earlier I wish to know,
what were you, before
being the sand on the lake?
She got thoughtful for a while.
Well, I was the mountain
that fell in love with the sky.
O, her beauty that
came alive when she wore
a tunic adorned of twinkling
stars and the crescent moon
adorned her forehead; But,
the jealous winds
cleaved me off her: bit by bit
scraping me off they
deposited me by the lake.

VI.

Earlier, dear bowl, what
were you, before being the
mountain that loved the sky?
Now it seemed like I was
in communion with an ancient
deity: a being so vast, that
all existence was in her throb.
Ah, those searing depths
where I flowed simmering
by ragged channels, I was
the pain that the primordial
planet carried in her womb.
Before exploding over the land
and rising to the ashen skies.

VII.

I could not ask her more.
We both were lost in a
trance-like moment. I just
touched her and we felt
every event that pulsed in her.
The giant star that exploded;
Spreading gases and dust
all over vast distances.
Gathering together and
growing all over again, through
and through time, since
numberless cycles of creation.
Stardust. Here in my humble
bowl, is gathered,
the seed of all existence.

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.

Zebra-striped cushion covers on soft-white chairs,
cream topped calorie delights, inviting -
this patisserie in Nairobi:
"you're welcome" the smartly outfitted
African girl spoke in flawlessly accented English
as I pore over the menu - a posh girl
dressed in haute denim and a sleeved top
walks in and spoke French in pouted lips
as she found her corner spot, reading;
an Asian couple walk in, wife in hijab
and baby in tow, as the man sneers at me and
answers 'assalamu alaikum' on phone
as I ponder on identity when
the French matron in Yoga tops walks in
saying namaste to me, and calls out for Henry -
her outfitted and bespectacled pomeranian
oh don't we all want to be someone else

Holy yards of hallowed houses of prayer
rise in sublime chants and hymns
at this hour of the blessed dawn
when auspicious shades of light
grace the scabbards of swords
long sheathed and covered in shadows
of figures on the stained glasses

A divided land of long used to darkness
engulfing, rejoices: a saviour rises,
a hero who can unite and heal:
purple robe and the rag, Roman
and Celt: the long suffering realm
finds solace at last in order and justice;
A quest brews, of sacred chalices

In the noble hearts of faithful knights:
Alas, a tragedy in the shadows,
whither, famed Artorius, wise?
Hades schemes to ****** away
your Persephone to Annfwyn afar:
No mortal wounds could fell you alive,
But this, you carry on to Avalon.

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.

There is a passion that rends the skies
dark of pain, to thunder forth
in this suffering world;

Grace that rains and brings forth
an oasis of refuge in this
world weak of flesh;

The spirit rises weighed on the cross
by the suffering inflicted in place
of Barabbases, thousands.

In the dunes of the desert, a call echoes:
husbandsman, tinkerman, everyman,

Never mind the pharisees;
The spirit to the letter is moon
to the mirage.

Weighed down by the burden of life,
you who have been told you deserve
nothing more than the dirt of the earth
you sinner, you sufferer,

A passion calls forth to you. So difficult
indeed is to see the father, aye,
lawmongers, enough for us to see
this humble son of a carpenter here;

O you crushed
under the wagon wheels of time
taste that love by which you are
before Abraham was.
Come, be pillars
in the mansion of your father;

Tiller toiling away in the sweat of life,
you on whose shoulders walk
the sweet-talking liars
who yet enthroned say
you are worth
only more taxation,

You can part waters. You are a miracle.
You drive away ghosts. You can
call the dead to life. Yet you are
love and see no difference
in Mary from Mary,

a secret ocean at the shore of an oasis
to drink of, until we are here
as He is in heaven.

Heaven for us to see and live here
not some unknowable hereafter.

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.

O Lord of the hosts!

His eyes shine in radiance
in whose heart is your name
whence the origin and where the end
the earth, sky and stars
pay homage to him
and fear fears him
whom your shadow protects

O Lord of the hosts!

He who earns the blessing of your love
wealth finds him in whatever he does
and a shoreless boat is he who
has not found you whose
benevolent eyes keep watch over all
shattering the storms of sins,
whose glory never ebbs,
he becomes a master of his own destiny
even forgetting the world, who has
found your grace, come riding the mouse,

O Lord of the hosts!

Anointed of the dust of your foot
on his forehead, who lives mortal here,
the immortal nectars cannot tempt him
he can drink venom smiling
just by the shadow of your grace
the wheel of the chariot of time moves
and by a spark of your ire
abodes of demons burn

the minions of enemies stand defeated,
a particle is a mountain,
boon become into this world, comes your name,

O Lord of the hosts!

Glory, glory to the dear one adorned of peacocks!

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.

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.

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...

Thoughts
splash echoing
like pebbles into a well.

Confusion.
Woven like a web all over.

Returning at the same spot,
beaten, broken into
a hundred parts.

Echoing.
Returning.

Plumes of obfuscation.
Rising, spreading everywhere.

Frustration.

This spiraling music in the head.
What is the way forward?

The rickshaw slices the expanse
speeding away from my grasp.

A query rises into the wilderness
of a hundred distractions.

The bell. The bell. Distant, sonant.
Door. Phone. Beep. Beep.

The firmament is camouflaged.

Am looking for a direction;

Confusion. Obfuscation. Frustration.

The clock ticks away, little concerned of the absence of attention
The tender morning silence that was unaffected
By the sharp chirps of myriad little birds
Quivers a little as waves recede
In the wake of the first morning train

A soft smile acknowledges a nudge and nods for a kiss
Thoughts crowd the wakened mind like the returning
Waters of a receding tide; long does it take
For us to see: a highest joy is spread common
Before our eyes, yet unrecognized.

Joy to our lives such                           Hope, supernal that
who grace this world of darkness    rejects hatred, they call forth
once in an aeon.                                  the soul and tend love;

Gripped in sadness we                      Purgatory cells
who have lost a lighted lamp     -     imprisoning the human
this mourning season;                       spirit for small gain;

Evening colours
come crooning to me in the swallows
flying by:

saucers in the sky,

as I wait for the bus

that will go and halt on the wall
in my living room.

The evening is somewhat dull now,
let me hurl a few stars
at the horizon:

I have a dozen in my purse.

All of them gifted by you,
collectibles, kissables.

My tiara princess, the hair-band
is your secret wand.

Ah, my leg, it's
stuck in Grosvenor Road.

So I hurtle back. and loop forward.

Folding memories neatly into my
back-pocket.

There's a Divergence Theorem
gone missing here, volumes
are not going sheet-smart.

I want my nj's.

I could drown in those dimples.

He lives in his farm house by the hills, his
quiet life of contentment, seeking, creating,
discovering; Oh he’s a scientist, and
he grafts his poem trees; Beautiful plumes do
they grow for flowers, which fly out eastward
every morning; Well now he does, the sweet
fruit of these: eat poems to live? Silencing
those who asked him once. Oh and some of the
plants can talk: beyond our hearing, ultrasound.
Penetrating objects our eyes otherwise.
see not: stones; metals; oh don’t we carry
venoms of hatred in metal tubes of
veins crossing our hearts, conveying darkness
across the seas? These poem trees, talking, can
see through. And tell, when some leaks out, causing
fires, and deaths in a school or train station.
Quiet life of contentment, seeking, creating,
discovering; Living in his farm house
by the hills. His work at http://dreamtube.stream

A drum beat. A distance.

Breaking out of her veils,
a tender morning.
Hum of the winds.

Hanging roots of the banyan.
Emerging out of mists.

After many lives perhaps
a meeting.

I closed all doors and windows
and lie listening to the tired fan.

You have found your way in,
smiling in the leaves
past the grill,
shadowed on the ceiling.

Oh this feeling. That can light
two hearts. To know this,
to know this.

The roots are hanging strong.
Upside down.

Tugging at the heart, the
solitary song
of the early koel.

Mists un-heeding,
sometimes succeeding.

Vulnerable smile, cherubic.    Vessel in the well.
  Watery eyes. First tooth.         Nameless relation.
    New birth. Memories.             New joys. Old pain.
       Overflowing love.                    Half-voice. Kin-sister.

Stars, crackling up in the creux.          A relation called
Nights. Angling; moon.                 brumeux love, half-hug,
Nets wide cast; comets pass.                folded in the wallet.

Pouring out. Half-gong.      Calling to the valleys.
Brook. Shadowy corners.    Tongues, welling up
Delight, discovery.               voices, hushed whispers
Bleating with the sheep,      hymns rising.
crying with the birds,          Conjunctions of states.
whirling with the winds;    Conjurer of fawns.

Casting; soil; roots; new growings;
smiling, spiralling around the hollow,
new life; a cherub, the new dawn.

Nameless and formless
I wish to just be
Yes I am, I just am.
To whom providence sends in my life
I am love and care.
When their time is done,
they depart and I do not grieve.
I am a fallen twig,
I fly as the wind carries me along:
In spring time I fall on soft grass;
Hug me and place me on your ideal
or don't notice and trample me over,
I don't bother.
I am the storm cloud high up the sky.
No-man lived but
Ulysses died with the storm.
Nameless, formless
Yes I am, I just am.
This fellow who appeared as me
I am the one who appears
as You too.
I have seen my own death, now
I wish to just be.

This is a memorable email.
Must be printed, folded, and
preserved in a quiet corner.
Long after our time is done,
its fragrance will remain.
Like that in dried petals
of an old flower.
Life of a lost world
preserved in a piece of amber.
Years that wore slow, seen
long after in lumber rings.

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!

Jostling with the plate leaves,
old plastic bags, empty
cigarette packs, chocolate wraps,
and late evening light
breaking apart on mellow waves,
this lone lily smiling
like a street kid, a slum urchin.

The wonder banyan that has
roots everywhere; the yonder
village, morning mists, distant
playgrounds, idling cattle,
all gone but in paintings now,
and the latest specimen perching
by the vestiges of a once-lake.

Out in the park, with old
plastic bottles, cold coca cans,
well-grown weeds, pigeon
crusted icons, rusticated chairs,
and torn billboards for
company: time out in nature,
manicured to industrial glory.

The many voices of the evening

                   gramophone the sky voice the cell phone
                   the tablet  the notebook, that monotone
                   observer of mutations purveyor of maladies
                   the persistence of memories, pale pink light sink

burning in the fires lighting up the skies

                   an old pang, smitten clang, the pain balm
                   mug-life, pen-knife, kettle-strife, all the sheaves
                   them echo-songs that haunt the drill-wells
                   that are cut wounded and wear fetching

chants, to an yearning oblation

                  bay leaf, curry leaf, yes, them colander coriander
                  there's a rhyme of charlies, looping from
                  our holy wars to now our holy hours with
                  the ombudsman, the omniman, the only God

who used to thunder for the ****

                 old Zeus, the Lord of Betelgeuse, him who we
                 called dead, exhumation, exculpation, exaltation
                 an ancient loneliness that calls from the nether
                 depths, now science, now freedom, now pagan.

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!

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

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.

Dust gathers everywhere.
Only a swab on the windscreen is clear
on my dust-laden car.

Too tight to wear,
the ring
vibrates vigorously on the washing machine.
The cycle is ending. Intensity waxing.

A song of the solitary koel
serenades a reverie.

I open the screen from inside.
You, the windows from the outside.
Glances exchanged from either side.

It is the time of the late flower.
A drop, even a drop of hot water,
the skin craves for a touch.
In partings, a beginning.

In still winds, all the leaves silent.
Peace comes visiting, a migratory bird
and sits sagely by the bare stalks,
in a hurry to reach
far off lands beyond the seas.

You only get a moment: a moment
when the world freezes.

Walking past spiral arms of galaxies I hid myself in folds of a warped
reflected on the morning walls, timeline; deeds that filtered all light out.

Bent clocks, warped doors, stretched arms, Awash in the waves of your G-rays
But your song found me. bathed in sublime warmth;

I see your finger twirling universes out, I've seen your hand pick me up
your lips kiss the flaming skies. in every timeline I've walked.

Which manifold do you inhabit, I know you, time-traveler,
miracle-monger?

Hymns, hushed whispers,
a hundred jasmine buds,
the distant stars,
synapses.

There is this bare stalk in my backyard. With upraised branches, all dried,  painted in contrast to the lush greenery all around: sometimes, I feel, like the branches of a swirling bolt fulminating against dark, brooding, boding skies.

I have seen three seasons pass by. This stalk has remained bare. All around, trees have gone from withering to flowering and onward. This one though, stands constantly poignant, almost embodying pathos, endlessly mourning.

Insects - termites? ants? I don't know, but I see they have covered large parts of the stalk. Raised to the skies, like an enigma, a puzzle thrown to the distant stars veiled by the firmament. Yes, I know this slow death that sustains life.

Yes, I can relate to it. It is like this pain that haunts my soul. Like the song of the smudged moon on a misty night, sung to uncaring, asleep worlds. After skies weep out their agony, the music of the last tears dripping off tips of drooping leaves.