When the apocalypse came
it was not raining fire from the skies
no schism in the ***** of the earth,
the seas are not swirling over, nor
the rivers welling up in grief;
Quiet as tears of the early sky
we mourn - how many more
do we count lost and begone?
Shovels and pick axes say ‘no more’-
a touch and hug and a word of cheer,
who knew death comes in garbs
so dear ? there burn the pyres
endless in their dirge, painting
distant the Sun in hues of the dark
and we hope and we pray,
let this be it, Lord, if we must suffer
let this your coming be then -
for we can’t take this anymore
How many more do we lose ?
How many the logs that weary
feed the fires of the infernal?

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.

When did it happen, how did it happen?
What lonely hour did dawn break into the
dark vaults of the firmament high? When did
the storm-cloud tiptoe across the arid sky?
Was it that night of the festival of lights,
when you nudged past the crowds to stand
by my side? That winter when the moon
shone across the desolate snow, to rhythms
of dew dripping from distant tiles? Or
the days after the storms when I discovered
that vulnerable you beneath your chiseled
cloak of practiced calm? How does the spring
bring mourning valleys to flower in the smiles
of a thousand vines? O cherished mystery,
when did this feeling, deeper than sorrow,
unmoved by pain, mightier than weakness,
stronger than the bruises from a hundred lies
that line the course of this chequered life, how
did this arise, anticipant joy of a journey nigh?
Bonds of lives past, is this how ye come alive?
That very first day when hello-eyes smiled?

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.

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;

Mystery girl, let me make an ansatz about you:

You are like an anti-gravity wave -
the farther I go, the more I pine for you.

Some kind of growing exponent:
yes, you are the solution I ignore in my

quotidian root-finding mission;

Ah, the annihilation, those killer eyes!
Now I see, we inhabit orthogonal planes.

Your *uv, to my uw, you are IR to my ivy.

Wonder-woman, let me make an ansatz about you:

You are elegance. Ripple-play at pebbles,
those dimpled cheeks.

Deliciously symmetric. Alpha 180,  no Beta
at all - well not Cartesian.

Guess it's subterranean, Artesian,
in the k-space, transform domain,
my mind-space, where, girl,
you are a wonder of beauty and grace.

Magicienne, let me make an Ansatz about you:

You are the particle for Love waves. A lovelet.

Dressed in that kaftan when you walk in,
I will sublimate. Ether-maker, you solve
the Hamiltonian, I see now how matter's made.

To mama's home, when-ever my mister
starts acting cool, unto how many years
ever to straighten him out:
Can you promise to ensure this for me,
proponents of marriage by love?
I've been brought up like a princess by
my father, so dare not propose to me if
you cannot manage the same and
then shut the door to my mama's home!
I'll marry whomever my father chooses
aren't all ram the same otherwise-
Until de-horned and de-bearded my man
mama's home every now and then,
gifts for every festival, weddings
and merry occasions, my cradle
to fall back on, if life does rock my swing:
So, proponents of marriage by love,
dare not propose to me
if you cannot give me the same
and yet shut the door to my mama's home.

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!

This is the time I cannot bear: this silent evening hour
As I shut windows and the balcony to prying nightsong:
In the trance of dim lights, I ride the incense plume
Across whispers and half-thoughts, slicing through
The canvasses of time: that unforgettable house of love
Perched by the lakes, circled by the stream and canal
Where worlds and time stopped to catch a glimpse
Many shades of grey silhouetted against stormy skies
Of swans gliding past fresh ripples across reeds
Drenched in a hundred hues of ethereal moonlight,
Hum of the wind surfing on the waters, drunken voices
Of assorted lovelorn: thrushes, finches, hidden warblers
Majestic storks and herons guarded the secret doors
To eternity, pitched right in the middle of the great city
By the home that housed love in precious embrace
O the cold of the winter that screened for damp corners
In our souls, through meditative shades lining the view,
The home that I squandered, I who love ruins and rubble

The displays

Half-a-commode....
salvaged from
construction-site debris, in an enclosure;

Corrugated tin...
inverted containers,
shop-floor seats, hollow from the inside;

Squashed up...
aluminium coke-cans
and bottle-lids, stashed by the dozens;

Rusting old pair...
of dented batteries -
A-class, from discarded torch lights;

Mounted rectangle...
sketch-canvas
half-a-diagonal triangle coloured black;

Foreground*

Expanse of water...
mirage lit by
a deceptive lamp playing evening sun.

Now girl, how do I live without you,
and what my existence without you?

Sundered from you,
I go sundered from my Self

Coz it's just you now,
just you, my life,
my peace and pain,
my love.

And we are bound this way,
unbearable apart,
For you, I live every day
and give myself away
no moment be without you,
in every breath, your name;

Coz it's just you now,
just you, my life,
my peace and pain,
my love.

For you, I give myself,
your trust, that holds
and soothes my soul
woven, my destiny with you
and with you,
I'm unfulfilled no more

Coz it's just you now,
just you, my life,
my peace and pain,
my love.

Sundered from you,
I go sundered from my Self

Bleak the rays shattered through broken panes
life, dust, dust,  future and smoke
automobiles and gunshots solitary this hour
when screams rend the air, not my turn today -
no, not as yet. Mother, I want to rest my head
in your lap. Can I weep?

Cactus in my soul, I ask, Can I, all that I am?
Lust is the death of man. Gouge your eye that lusts.
Broken void of my afterdays, that mourn
like the wind on the dunes

         Mother, I am well. There is love, there is hope, light
         hidden like nuggets in piles of the dark.
         Mother, I must be well.

It was the other night. Nightmare in loop.
Shamed, stripped beaten violated.
I am in a well, deep pit, drained
of all the essence of light
I can hear your voice echoing with the ray
shattered tumbling down the walls

free, free I am the wind mourning in the dunes
can you tame the wind?

        In the depths, and in the deaths islanding life
        mirage of oases, Mother, I have found him,
        my Senor, to whom I give my ring

Violate me, visage of the abyss,
burn me, but can you find me?
beat me, chain me, but can you enslave me?
I am not here in these nerves and veins.
I am all of Augusta, America,
I fly in the Masts above the skies

Sweet Lord, I see you have deemed heaven
for me, no purgatory but here.
I accept, I surrender, I submit. To thy will.

            Mother, do not negotiate. I am strong.

Where in my naked body have you found me?
here, in these bruises, have your embers soothed?
I am the Lamb that does not cower.
I haunt your soul as guilt.
In what little's left of it.

He finds you in the catacombs where
I haunt the crypts that no vicar penetrates.
When all is lost, when death is certain at the sea,
there opens a way and I will walk out

           Mother, I am coming. Have faith, for faith maketh.
           I hold you here in my *****, smouldering pain,
           that gets me to wake every haunting day.
           Every day that brings the sound of darkness home.

*I fly in the Masts above the skies.
Tame me, I am the wind breaking the dunes.
Ilohi, lema sebachtani sebachtani

Another wave of hopefuls arrive:
a sea of humanity, on board this flight.
Wide-eyed young with dreams of a future;
Broken men from no-mans' lands,
seekers of refuge and an identity of hope;
The student of science, the Yoga teacher;
Precocious and bespectacled
immigrant kids with foreign accents;
Anxious old on the first plane of their lives
out to meet their children, or grand-children;
man in traditional attire; relieved missionary
from his conquest of souls; All escaping
to the Ark of the world, on board this flight,

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?

hopeless, helpless, confusing, gloomy have faith dark muggy muggy
evening of hopes, oh what an error, how could I, this again and again
same old same old, hopeless, helpless, chimera, mirage, don't trust
lost, defeated, distant, too far the journey, endless, keep walking
featureless, destiny, fate, tired, unclear, ebbing evening light, faceless;
let go, less hope, less help, less clear, less light, less known, only less
not no hope, no help, not clear, no light, unknown, indecipherable;
endless, hopeless, confusing, tired, can't walk, where to go, how, how
light is within, destiny, fate, chimera, mirage, nevertheless, endless

Dark bower by the deepest night,
Not again, not again;
Songs of leaves that
whisper to the half-moon
hymn you: Señora,
Seeking you, clouds soar the skies;
You conceal all the stars
in your tresses.
Yet you look back stopping
by the horizon and I
do not see the pain lining your eyes
by dawn: whom
do the marigolds mourn, by
the valley of the drying stream
in late summer?
Who silent walks down the rainbow
whose tracks leave
pink mists on grass-tops?
Whom does the myna call to
in agony by the wet winds
of the early hour, and silent tears
of the early rose?
Señora, perdóname,
not again, not again,
this empty night,
chasm down the valley of days.

There in that crevice, in that corner
buried in horror and humiliation:

a broken resolve, a frozen dream;

waiting in resurrection, guiding
us on, that still small voice
in the wilderness of the heart
that just never gets smothered.

There is a risen Lord in all of us, waiting
waiting to tide over, waiting to cross over;

Yes He finds us, when unsteady

faith is rocking in a hundred storms,
walking on the waters. Yes
the sea of Galilee is indeed here;
When in awe we sit by the doors

of that right reverend,
or that elevated achiever,

He allows our tears to wash his feet,

our hair to dry them up
and pours His simple love out;
He revives the dead in us; Yes,
He is death revived,

the resurrected Truth in us, the
eternal Hope of an unfamished fragrance.

Lost to everything around me, rising in myself like vapour,
Listening to Purcell and reading
Neruda, thinking just about you, I could melt away like this,
Burned so sweetly by your love,

Speaking in many voices the day knocks at my closed doors:
But the hammer, the drill, the
Traffic noise, din around me, all seem to just play like drums
To the effervescent dance of my spirit

I will burn away like this, lighted in the fire of your love,
I will become one with the fragrance
Haunting the depths of existence; everything must become
Like mist to my ascending spirit as I

Burn away
Consumed by the fire of your love:
This will be the frankincense I light at the altar of love

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?

We think it's in the protection:
above, the vast canopy called Sky;
then we want freedom
when pervasive is intrusive
and seek shelter

Searching, we expend lives. Rain
finds a way in, we run seeking new.

We think this is unique,
then neither vast not endless,
but blobs floating in space:
it is in the beauty of illusion; then
disbelieve, hopping bruised on.

Neither in protection nor in freedom
nor in anything other;

Under the canopy again,
up on a hill, until
buried deep somewhere in us,
we see, it was there, all along,
and we grow up.

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;

It's long since, so I thought I will fly my home to you:
winged friend, you don't stop by anymore here on lissome nights?

Oh what air-traffic,
these jumbo cars with crane legs
that even hopping seem to crawl;

Two towers have crashed ahead and a vortex is rising in the desert:
Did you not receive my messages? I typed them in into the aether.

And space, oh this messy jumble
that is enmeshed with time,
will not warp now,

No easy looping through. No beaming past. And no word from you,
but Heavenly Times hasn't reported you missing, yet.

I have time on my hands. Let me check
for all those timelines where
I won't see you again.

I need a quill and papyrus.  Soot I have, plenty to ink. Quill and
papyrus: Winged friend, a feather and some spring will do.

Above clouds that hide the earth
from the stars: slowly the receding city
breaking up into plots, dotted around
patches of green and winding rivulets:
that distant fire slicing through mists
this winter morning like a lamp lighted
to the skies; Thoughts emerging from
receding memories, reversed numbers
of the tailgating truck's plate on my mirror
that misty morning, receding skyline
riding into the frost in many shades
of grey cast on the car speeding past;

Giant eye of the fair: the same phantasm
emerging, enlarging, dimming, receding;
Hall of dreams in a castle of darkness:
waves of events playing out again and
in smoke and shadows amid resounding
chambers, a costume and a drama, a role
you reprise again, dreamed of your past,
approaching and receding, breaking
everything, my heart; that wanton night;

The fair is up, one broken slipper of a pair,
half-buried cup, corks, shimmering
trinkets, withered roses, pecking birds,
circling again and again; that distant fire
dimmed into the clouds, all now smoken
moss-pale around; We take off now.
Welcome to your flight to never-land
this morning, we serve you breakfast
and hot tea. Inverted numbers playing
in my head, some approaching deadline.
Net, 10 I tell myself, enin, thgie...eno..eno..

Accept in return, the eternal fragrance of the unfading flower of love.
It shines even in the moonless night of dark fear. It is what Hope
Chooses as her form when she reveals herself in this mortal world;
It is beauty and attracts to itself, more varied, many-hued beauty:
The butterflies gladly do its bidding, conveying the flutter of joy to
More forlorn twigs and leaves making them dance in the breeze
I don’t have to say I am happy, because love is joy and joy is self-
Evident, like fragrance that wafts across and fills vast empty spaces.

Famed to have brought light into being, but
dark, dark you are my friend, passing
through me effortlessly, though I know
there is an interaction: week, very week.

Deep there buried somewhere in my soul
was a throb heard, when every miracle
that forms the chain of my life surfaces:
and I've been searching for you. I thought

you were beyond oceans, where sky meets,
until my ship turned around at the horizon;
I looked for you in the womb of terran vaults
and then in the planets and the stars,

and you have been collapsing fields and
manifesting timelines so I proposer, meanwhile.
You are not what I worshipped in image and
then smashed it and sought in formless word.

Every time I grasp you, you vanish, retreat,
bubble-being, who knows what exists beyond
this expanse we inhabit, these membranes
and curled up manifolds, where in the knots

I'm still searching; But before even this unfolds
in full, I discover, it is all dark, darkness
that holds these tiny galaxies of light in its
densest folds; Magicienne, wave your wand,

let us know beyond the dark and the illuminated,
let us in, into the secret chamber of kinship.

Roses and jasmines. All vowels extended until you barely make the words out,
approaching, then rushing and receding past, early mornings. The flower boy;
Wake up calls, admonishments, family fights and announcements, old stories,
dire oaths, colourful threats, affected love, who, this loud mouth? Lady next door;
Squirrels that shriek like birds, competing for turns to puncture the solemn silence;
Paperboys and milkmen, school vans and church bells, pressure cooker whistles,
whish of reed broom on jagged floors wet with cleaning water, motor noise, aircon:
Two years: that vanished like a dancing drop on a hot pan: beauty hiding the pain
Ending like the slowly turning reflection of the halting fan on my breakfast bowl:
Ja..asmi...ines and ro..oses, squirrel shrieks, now familiar story of the family next
door, wash whish, silence: who is that faint spectacled figure on the cabinet glass?

Surrealist Cut-up

pouring in together in the cold,              huddled
in              the harvest Grain-stacks, on the farm
from the palms.          gathered
heavens for Thanking gradient mist
    clenched  the earth in        evening skies;

Figurative-Literal**

Grain-stacks, huddled together in cold,
gathered on the farm
in gradient mist pouring in
from the evening skies;
Thanking heavens for the harvest
the earth in clenched palms.

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?

Let the film end before intermission
characters be underdeveloped
let the plot lie open like cut veins

and let the the background score
resonate in the hall at its shrill note

It's a broken piece of the heart
cracked into two:
two faces reside here now
on either sides of the chasm.

Make whatever you wish out of it
Sweet or bitter end,
tragedy, comedy or farce
or thriller or horror,
write your own story, make it up.

take any road up the hill
to eternity beyond.

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.

I.

I wake up, wake up, as if
hearing the solitary leaves fall
in the breeze
in this late night:

Is that you? My pulse,
freezes for a moment.
Or just
a face in the crowd?

Did you not die?
or did I
wish you out of my life?
Is this, a nightmare?
Or just
my fragmented plane?

II.

Come, friend, let me inspect your wounds:
ah, have they healed well!
You have always been
a sort of miracle-worker.

What was the need for all that pain then?

Oh those carefree
days bygone of Nazareth!
Where we learned
to chisel our destiny.
And ran after severed kites floating away
in the dust winds.

What was
his name who we learned
Aleph from?

III.

Oh this pain:
of life, growing out,
growing out
like a sapling out of
a crack crumbling
out of an ancient wall:

do the skies weep out
in commiseration now at our fate?

I hugged an ideal;
and now I am outcasted.
And I am outcasted.

IV.

Do you hang on your
Tesseract
my friend, broadcasting
your assumed pain about
in the four dimensions?

I know them four well.
Three of space
and the fourth, of pain:
pain, concealed, hidden
in our
cursed world of normal dimensions

V.

Who do we change?
Do we change?
Isn't all change death?
Die, die, I die:
Die, friend! Die, Relation!
And now
in the darkness I am awake
counting
the shadows of falling leaves.
Why am I alone
in this deep night? Where kin
mine own? Is that you,
that face, the
face I saw in the crowd?

Did you not die? I heard of it.
Never gathered the courage
to come, see for myself.

VI.

What was
his name who we learned of
Eli and Abraham from?

Have you been to Jerusalem, my friend?
Have you?
I must go there -
For I saw her in a dream there,
kneeling before the altar,
and smiling:
that same smile that lit my hovel
and made it a home;
And she vanished
into the smoke that night,
never found, never found!
She was the river that dried up
in the barren desert of my life.
But I saw her, I saw her,
she lives in Jerusalem.
Tell me, friend, have you been there?
How do I go there?

Taking wings of paper, gone flying
to where it must not,
naive,
whetted by fancy, that (neither)
sensing, seeing, nor knowing
the limits -

lost, how silly this heart!

Crosses castles
and scales heights, yet,
feels like theft, this love:

Ifs and buts, and again and again
tossing about like a ball,

Applying of dust, like
sandalwood on the forehead;

Whetted by fancy, neither
sensing, seeing, nor knowing
the limits,

Lost, how silly this heart!

Soars high, the soul-bird,
yearning, leaping out of this frame -
oh a big flame, this love!.

Come marauder, sword unscabbarded, lay  
siege by deceit, wound mortal my coil again:
I live in aeons where millennia are puddles -
you will be assimilated, your venom spat out.

What of nations but the notions of separation,
people go, languages die like colours and petals
but here lies anchored, the soul of the world.

Deep in that recess where no man has gone,
by moonless nights, unfurled ancient
the song of the stars flowing in  distant skies

Who knows when time began? Who clocked
the beginnings? Here I asked of nought and nigh,
here the endless vast, and out of a featureless past
speaks the wisdom that lights continents afar
heroic the call to selfless action in the field of war.
Here was love born, in all her colours, and the lore
of the unhinged compassion of the liberated soul
here I asked of the highest god, why none above?

and came war beating its chest, lust laden again
pillage and plunder of the savage kind

but, I live, I live, I live,

I live in the cave temples of the unknown world,
I live in the music of the evening sun,
I live in the dance of the spirit drunk of love,
I live in the ruins whose soul is beyond plunder,
I rise towering from the ashes,

There - flies the wheel of law on the horizon high

There is yet a mighty dawn waiting to rain
down light on the veiled world, free free,
I am a spark of that thirsting fire!

I.

Brooded over by fate
nestled high up on the hills
by the mists, our love,
but now floating away
in a reed basket
on raging flood waters:
a home seeks a roost

II.

When it rains,
the whole world goes silent.
All the din and the dust,
lost in the downpour.
And voices long submerged
come alive in the heart.

III.

I seek a baptism of the soul.

Is'nt it of the scripture
that we are made in his image?

So, is birth, his lot too,
and age, and
the long wait to death?

The body's been bathed
many times over.
Yet this scar of unbelief
remains unscathed.

IV.

Thunderstorm.
Candle light.
Slanted shadows.
Across the table,
blazoned red.

V.

Yes, there is still
'you' and 'I'.

The mother that nourishes you in the rainy dawn.
Loving maiden whose fragrance fills the spring.
Mirage that you thirst after, heartbroken in high summer.
I am the daughter you cherish at the winter of your life.
Your friend always, through ages vast.

I am the unknowable love that sustains your being.
I am the joy for which universes arise.
I am above the last that men can grasp.
I am accessible here always in your heart.

Dance of the thunderbolt in the storm-sky.
Music of the sky-river at night. I am the flute.
I am the Supreme. I am all.

Rend the clouds!
You are the rain that washes the worlds in love.
You welcome the world in your arms.
You have no one. You are everyone.

Drenched in the tears of distant clouds
comes calling a name, echoing
in the dunes of the heart;

There is nothing in a name...

Announcing of itself to a seeker
knelt on a hilltop,
burning in a bush,
of an essence beyond names;
Beyond the before and after;

... but the word, is something else.

Long the season of withering,
but deep in the night,
a fear grips the heart racing
to the rhythm of the dew
dripping down the tile;

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!

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

Secret inspirations on wonder nights
that come on the wings of wet winds,
moments that tiptoe across the gulf
of the worlds, I keep them deposited,
safe in your soul; When you smile,
you bring hundred hidden meanings
to life; You are my journal: in you I
hold my fondest fjords and rarest
gorges zealously concealed from the
prying eyes of life and time; Empty
flower vase that brings a silent corner
alive in shades of azul, dream-song
of the lone twig romancing the moon
in waving waters of the silent lake,
distant star that lights smiling eyes,
invisible companion on sacred quests,
hope of the cactus in barren deserts,
Señora, without you, I am a poet
orphaned in the loss of his journal.

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!

Earlier I did not know god as God
and gods were my friends.
now I know God and God
and I have a master.

Long before my time, my pagan lands
were deluged by the sword of the believers.

and so it came about that
growing up under the rubric of the believers
I, an infidel pagan, think like them.

so, I approached the high priests
and professed my faith in the one Saviour
seeking innocent acceptance and
they asked, Do you believe in the One God
and His sole and final apostle?
well, that depends, I said, on
how you define 'One' and what you mean
by 'God' and who can be called an 'apostle'.

I was too pagan for the believers.

so I approached my pagan brethren
and asked to be admitted into their fold
seeking innocent acceptance and
they asked, what Order do you belong to,
my friend, and what may be
that of your fathers and their fathers?
well, how matters, I said,
the Order my fathers belonged to, or not
to any, when the Spirit lights my heart?

I was too catholic to be pagan.

And so it is that time passes.
Ever wandering by the margins of creeds.
That yet neighbour me on my land.

Earlier we did not know god as God
and gods were our friends.
now we know God and God
and we have a master.

On the far corner of my hall hangs a giant poster. Janeway is leading
her crew through the unknown. Spruced up so nice, you could
mistake it for a wall. My cupboard of skeletons. Beware, uncover the secret
at your own risk! Sometimes though, I wonder why we don't just accept:
aren't we all about the mean? Good man. On average, I am. White crows,
do exist! Everyone knows but crows are black. Of course the extent counts.
Of deviance I mean. But trust, you must.  I am a monkey that learned to
think. So are you.  I learn my religion, I learn my culture. I learn to act:
my part in the Play. Life is a rule-bound game we choose to accept.
I rebel too. When the rules aren't fun no more.  Isn't that true of me
as of you? Meantime, meanwhile, mean love. On the average lets seek:

I.

The door stands outlined in white:
in this dark night, a presence
weighs in from the corridor.

The fan holds a garbled reflection
of stray light on its illusory blade-disk.

I'm talking about parthenogenesis.

How can renewal be born, when
creativity loses her companion,
freedom?

This monotone life lugs on.

II.

The tree shrugs the question off
by her parting arms half-illumined
by the streetlamp.

The late bird of five calls flew away
to a far-off tree, couldn't be
bothered more.

I hear a voice
soft in the setting chill of the distant autumn:
choked eyes beaming in love.

I seek palingenesis.

Check all emails and ensure zero
unread. But
answer none, follow up
nothing.

Umpteenth time through the day.

III.

Autotomy all over again.
Habits
die like tails, to be grown
all over again.

This is an etiological myth.
An apocryphal story that
renews itself on the palimpsest of life.

I must cut my nails.

This tea has brewed too dark.

I thought you were my life. I grew my life around this life.
You and them were all I had.

Lost home when voice broke,
now this wind that scatters all -
peregrine again.

How do I start anew? What part of me do I say is not me
now and where do I find the I was before us?

What part of the mist
is mountain-tears and what part
the last monsoon cloud?

The heart is a hollow of the bowl-song, an unrung peal
of the untolled bell, sullen tree laden with loss

First snow of deep night,
silence has a colour now -
a hue called longing.

But I must let go. Transitory, the joys of our life, like
the distant lights disappearing at dusk behind the hills

Go, larks, speeding east -
all my ***** loves set free,
now rises the truth.

I was free, always free. The receptacles are gone, but love
finds new vessels, new vehicles.

Emptiness is full:
the shell has all the colours -
gone the jezebels
but still rich the air in hues
that more can dip in and drink

I bored a hole through the rock of resistance
lining the base of my heart
oh the terrible pain -
with the rotor blade of hardened resolve,
to heal, to heal,
until I have reached my soul:
look - the waters of love -
they gush over.
Sweet waters of love,
To heal both you and me.
This axe wound on my trunk
is sore not all by you:
In the dead of the night
I welcomed the shadowy woodcutter;
Now I find recompense.
But now, sweet waters of love,
from the soul -
to heal both you and me.

Did you tell them they were from a mystery man? His heart is all
locked up, no one finds entry there. 'Coz he says, there are broken
shards there that you'll step on. There anyone who enters will see
a hundred broken pieces of themselves, soon as the lights are on.
So he keeps it shut, and he's a mystery man. You'll never know
enough of him. He's just made like that, elusive, elusive. Nights,
he's awake to some unknowable pain. He just cannot bring his
thoughts to cease for a moment. Bats rush out off hidden corners
sinking into shadows as owls keep watch. He dreads deepening
nights and shrinks worn from twilight. He curls up hugging some
silken knots that sew his broken soul, your elusive, elusive man.

Pro-

Photo-frame on the wall,
beautifully adorned.
Empty.

Snap your hero in.

-logue

Never mind their foibles;
Every fault is just a small weakness
when found in the otherwise great.

Dying to deify,
we are itching to sanctify;

Castigation unabashed,
but, for the struggling everyman.

What if we will never find
another son of a carpenter
who will die preaching love?

Epi-*

In a world starved of messiahs
ready always to worship ever
but be, never,

iconoclasts are icons;

Sentimental impossibilities
in the language of hope
aye, fete-worthy acceptables.

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.

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

long washed ashore here from yonder worlds
of darkness and mystery

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

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

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

alpha and omega
of our rootless world,