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,

Smouldering pain of ancient harboured, in the heart inflamed
of a passion, amassed whole of suffering earth nestled in your breast,
came alive in her who mastered the seven realms, whose
aspiration ardent brought down in that simpleton, grace that
poured forth like a pitcher upturned on this world enamoured of death.

Ah, that simpleton who never could fathom caprice that condones
commerce in the very heart of the temple of justice, the virtue and sin
the learned uphold that cannot see in the neighbour's fall,
ones own, or how if the father that birthed the world is divine,
his children be brutes or kin of daemons that deserve stoning to death?

O Magdala, Magdala, your daughter weeps today!

A drop of blood dries the sands today, heavens weep in the tears
silent of she who stands by the cross today, even abandoned by those
for whom he gave so much; In the still dark night grace walked
the stormy water; and Lazarus returns from wherefore who knows;
A husbandsman reads and answers doubts in minds of learned pharisees.

For every whiplash cast was cast on the earth wide. Every insult
taunted the winds draping your arms. That girdle of thorns, mother,
was placed indeed on your mourning heart. When the cross
ascended slicing the firmament, heavens were mute to your pain,
lama sabachtani, sabachtani, grieves the earth unto the empty, parted skies.

O Magdala, Magdala, your daughter weeps today!

She is not of this world, no, not of this world at all:
She comes here on difficult visits
To this realm of deception enamoured of gratification
Like the moon reflected on the crest of a high wave:
Never certain, and assuredly mortal is her reign
Breaking apart in a hundred sprays of violent agony
After every roaring chequered ascension;
I too mistook pain for her
Pain, her distant shadow
Sorrow, her cousin who triumphs here
Deep in the woods I heard the song of the willow
And thought it was her song
It was the wind playing in the hollow reed
Emptied of all essence in ****** of suffering
Regal moss covers broken walls worn of centuries of abrading life
The deep night deceives of peace only to die in
A thousand pools of blood, every morning
When the harsh light of truth proclaims:
Listen, distances, resound in the hum of blowing winds,
This toll of reality:
Proclaim to the forlorn lover suffering in the thrall of the early night
Proclaim to the hopeful lover labouring in the field of life
Love is not of this world,
Love does not exist in this world
A moments’ exultation follows a lifetime of agony here
The vain, the ******, profferer of gratification
Is the sole winner here:
Go break the crest of the moon on the rising tide
Go break every longing heart!
Go warn the wanderer in the woods
Of the impending doom that looms over his quest

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.

In the heart of the cavern, light
that stands ancient behind time, beyond
phenomena, the observer of melodies;
This is where it all began,
those aeons lost when the mollusc
heeded the call to man.

Inward, stalked by worry and loss,
an inversion of the lines of time:
beyond the zero point of recollection,
where zoom microcosms of possibilities
a realm not realm, but like that
an existence beyond existence.

Here, arose an affliction, in
curled expanses that exist as some among
an infinitude of potentials,
worldlines, some dark and featureless,
others growing and meaningless
and some like here where sentient,

observatory, a shadow grows around
the probing ray of infant awareness.

and so the ascent, from light to light
through alleys of darkness. Vast,
the beginnings and interludes
between phantasmagoria; What
accedes of in slumber, the knowledge
of things and nothings.

And up even until the day when
the babe says 'mine'.

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.

Unraveling through everything
a road, a journal, a pathway
cutting through the thorn-
bush of clouded pasts,

intersecting my heart -

This is where everything began:
crowding cacophonous like
a hundred songs of birds
nestling home at dusk

roosting come memories:

II.

Had I not run barefooted here
those many years ago; had I
not cultivated that sodden
impetuousity here:

riding motorcycles in rain;

Haunting the blood throbbing
in my veins; what if I had done
something about those
flushed glances

set to missed heartbeats?

III.

Deer lurk in the shadows of grey
leaves: shadowy creatures stalk
on the high branches where
peace reigns among mists;

Ending in a clearance,

that rugged patch in the wood,
where an eternal storyteller
signs off: a form ripples
reflected on the secret lake

I see grace reflected.

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

Flame-tree abloom: dabbing red,
the distance paling green -
from the half-open window
to a dreary room;

Horizon waves bathed in gold dust -
from a vessel floating
in deep, enveloping seas;

Smudged streetlamp ayonder
a dark, rainy night;

Love, blooming silent, outlying mundane life.

Again that roar of sea dying into murmur.
Yet another splash and retreat.
Wild wind wet with the constant spray.
Sometimes I don't and sometimes, you don't.
We walk together here, this way.
Sometimes the sea, the world at others.
Yes, sometimes there's only one person's track here.
So many years now, yet everything is in those first days.
Voices that persist in the interludes to birdsong.
At noon they peep in through revolving
shadows of the tireless fan.
Forms that flit in and out of my mind
as I motor away into the ebbing evening.
Streak of light that dissects the painting on the wall
late every night. Blinding every morning.
Broken well that chimes back
your own distorted voice and visage.
Sometimes I wish I could walk out of your life.
Sometimes, you wish you could from mine.
My altar went dark the day after I set it in order.
What if I lose you, what if I lose you?
The rose plant died when the maid watered her
this summer when I was away.
What of me finding her dead like this?
Withered leaves, speak to me.
This bare silence is thorny to my soul.
Solitary pond, speak to me past the springs of teals,
rain that obscures the closed temple to the deity of love.

Everything spreads in an expanse.
Forms like candles feathered
flickering float in glassine tombs,
Sounds like those dip and sink at sea.
Silken carpet of clouds pulled,
numb stones and numb thorns,
pain from under my naked norms.
Chain breaks and rattle songs,
oh the horror of raveling knots, that
endings have humble beginnings.
Everything's same, but nights melt  
and fans slow, flooding the days in
broken moons and shaken stars.
Solitary lamp in the damp room,
Everything spreads like ocean waves
from me in an expanse like this.

Against the canvas of green
churning out shades of wet brown,
silhouetted
the late crow atop a streak
of another bow of shadows. Canopy blue
islanded in many shades of grey,

ruddy ruddy grey:
crimson light dancing on the darkening tips
of leaves, still wet after the downpour,
fluttering in the slow wind;

Till you disappear from the edge
of my smudged mirror; Turning back
then, I wait on,
and catching a fading glimpse
of you walking away, for moments more.
Life inverted; Fluttering in wind.

Heavenly angels
that descended into the earth with the rain
burst forth now as the copperpods blooming
late now at season's edge

That at last when the night is
falling asleep, and I hear voices
muffled, concealed
in corners, oh my despair
the day breaks in, like a thief ambling
across, it is morning already...

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

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

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

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

Youth who pelts stones at the convoy,
go get some drunk.

Dawdle up to a tavern.
Cozy up to the ladies.
Have some fun.

You feel great with the gun.
You want to die a martyr.
Yours is a dead cause.

Revolutions are past.
Revolutions don't work.
The baron you want out
is the hell back soon.
He's got the capital.

The dead die unsung.
Sloganeers rise
on ladders of the dead.

Youth who pelts stones at the convoy,
go get some drunk.

Fancy cars. Drive around the world.
Throw away the watch. Wear your phone.
4 am queues are so in. Dior, the who?
Thank god: Chrome can stand in
when Mozilla's bonkers.
Drown in likes and wallow in tweets.

Stay drugged. Stay unconcerned.
Pack up your rage and light a bonfire.
May be the smoke will
plug the holes in our skies.

It's all over.
An unmarked grave is all you get.
Gun or some fun.

Whose cause do you want to benefit?

I pressed my ear to the ***** of the
silence before dawn.This is the hour
when birds wake up, contemplating
on what to sing. The sky's smudged
in dispersing clouds. Priests are
washing up for the morning prayer.
Tots plead to sleep more. Here I find
the blessed light that trudged past
aeons and aether, now scattering
past the screen of mists, illuminating
your face, blooming over lotus lakes.
You were up, weeping with the winds
wheezing through the streets all night.
No bells, no flowers, no incense
rosaries or hymnals, this my chapel
is the other shrine in this home.
Now I kneel hearing the throb of love.
One, nameless, the continuum that
here I call myself and there, you.

For her sundered from space and time
at the dawn of phenomenon,

not the little pettinesses of our world:

and
a portal to the unknown beyond -

the sky flaming red at dusk,
still in the lake the late summer hill
little a bloom in the bush hidden,
even shy a smile devoid of guile,

little every joy here;

Thought they,
faint of heart she was:
but every swoon carried her across
the world of the river of lights

In Her presence dawned on this
forlorn our earth -

Beauty since the beginning of time
exuberant in the hills
in the plumes and vales
and in the cruel hearts of men;

And grandeur, of the kind
unbeknown before, as the king
her father sewed up an empire vast;

And perfection in works
unknown before -
in every weave and hew;

All that men ascribed to her
father the great.

There is a song that skins remember.
A line that resounds in silences.
A form the heart revisits
in fervid recollections.

That you must not speak,
that you must not speak.

Silences can ****.
No need to ask Crusoe.

Stars that explode in suicide:
From aeons of tortuous silences,
from distant companions,
silently cold.

Yes, our silences talk. Sorry, this
was not how it was supposed to be.
Strains of there we go again.

Gulfs of empty spaces between
silent vales, that birth the
mourning winds.

Murmurs leap out like dolphins
out of our silences.

Waiting to hear each other. Past
the dirge at the grave of my errors.

I want to talk to you in whispers
and the language of the leaves
pouring down in winter:
you are silent, like the autumn sky
all the clouds stalled in their paths
for the noon-time nap by the river.

Will you not sit down by my side?
The world is hurrying away
like the floating lights on waters;
I will make for you a tiara of
forgotten flowers, and a garland
of evening songs, and say
many stories of larks and lamps;

It is dusk, now but not here:
center of my world, my refuge,
I'll plant a kiss on your *****,
give me those mist-wet feet
let me shelter them to my heart
this warmth will redeem me

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.

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,

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.

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.

And there, ascends the seraph winged of fire
into realms azure beyond ours
that here lighted our lives
with courage and dreams:

what humble the beginnings, that
we see not in humility of conduct,
what joy of the spirit
that does not come flooding into our hearts
and dream, that does not lift a people

that millions rise, ignited
heeding your call,
O King by demeanour,
in palace but a pauper with books,
and the rhythms of our souls

when parched for some,
wandered we
by the mirage wells of a nation
dessicated of hope,

oh Thou dispenser of our destinies,
did you not send a message
scribbled across a smile
that connected silver curls of age

that now leaves us broken
for we shall never be the same
until we meet you there
in realms azure beyond ours

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

withdrawal

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

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

renounce.

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

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

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

A puff of cigar in, mist, out
on the street, shrouding the
tracks and missed heart aches;

this morning, time,
is not kept by the ticking clock.

Only one vehicle has crossed the road.

Mellow sun warming up the snow
forever burying the tracks out;

The stubble's scruffy, and heart,
as dishevelled as the sheets;

Empty cups, full of memories -
and stained of the night's wine;

In the corners the embers still crackle:

leaning back on ease chair,
wondering
who it was that left early
this misty morning;

The night is a creeper bent laden with brooding meditations and the mists of time:

Tonight, the moon is a distant jasmine bud; nascent fragrance waiting to pour into the world.

I've seen your work, magicienne, how you roll the stars out from your hat.

A wand wave, and the celestial chorus of chants and hymns pours out from the skies.

I've walked with you, on the old beaten steppe, pole star,
I've seen ships dock at ancient inlets of water
engorging in parched lands - they were reed boats before;
they were catamarans later, rafts and sailboats;

This is how we rose from the mollusc, seeking you in the stars;

When thunder strikes the lonely peak and rains wash our plains,
I've seen your footsteps, half-erased by the swelling riverbanks.

I was in your womb, and never afraid of the primordial waters. Yours, an umbilical love.

The clouds part for your evening sojourn through the western sky,
where the larks go forth spreading cheer.

I am the wood, the last refuge of all mysteries.
I am the clearing where a solitary home hangs in time.
I house all the antiquities.
I am the subtle space that hosts bubble worlds.
I am Hyperions.

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.

It is the taste of the old water
that is at the bottom of the tongue
no not now this rancid season

of then, that blue of the sea
gradient brown, black in the deep
waving, like your hair in the wind
dashing the shores in passion

now long past that season

blue of the late sky, overcast
and vulnerable to the ruddy
invasion of love from all corners

it was them golden kites
flying away to distant lands,
who knows to which far terrace

it could be magnesium, potassium
we are the salt that has lost all flavour,
we are low on that one bit

of sodium hidden somewhere
frost-packed frost-bitten twice shy

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.

The slow winding years sliced up here:
Your birthday: that memorable year
New year O'seven,
that festival of lights,
Sulis,
Brussels;
Years that rolled like mellow waves:
Receding, returning;
Slices of joy.
Photographed here.
But pain, is all curled up.
Jarring notes, unfitting angles
caged like birds
grieving in the corners of our souls
where we return, each time
the bass is strummed at the string of our hearts.
Half-drawn breath, part-held lungs
Moist pain I see in the corners of your eyes.
Let go, let go, let us let go.
This hour of receding darkness,
let them fly away
free with babblers that ring in the day;
Freed, freed of the burdens past,
let's walk in the wind
into crimson tides
to tipping waves,
dipping skies.

These moments of calm reflection,
Undisturbed peace,
Quiet acceptance of all that is to be done

Like the first golden rays of sun
Sweeping the face
Amid gentle summer morning breeze

Like the brief lightening of the
Blueness of the sky
On a grey winter London afternoon

Love gushing into the heart
Soothing, like a spring
Silently flowing away in a deep forest

Makes all this living worth it!

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.

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.

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

Rings of light lowering from the skies I called my faith Godly and A universe is birthing somewhere; Transporting peace into this world everyone else infidel. Now I going extinct Dinosaurs in There! Ant-eating stick,

I emerged have divine rights to pillage all.

A galaxy few light-years away, A tool-making ape. And gave the Shoreless ocean knocking the heart. At this very moment, life first
key to St. Peter and walked, walked That I locked away behind a
door. peered at

the firmament of stars. Bequeathing hopers,

A light called forth and I walked forth A supernova ***** all light. memories down epigenetic lines. out a mollusc to the future But peace was alive all along. An arc. Epic. Exodusish. enroute a transcience
called man; Now

in the fear of a mushroom There is a God.

Too bland for our Tossing around in a centrifuge. clouds, she graces
the world in taste, lighting all hearts in peace-fires. Giant wheel. Merry-go-around. her dome-shrines dotting the wide
shores. And now

we like them, deranging conflagrations more.

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

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

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

Throb, that pulsating beat,
this beautiful eve,
now this throng of the bass

three, the nuggets of pain
three shots and this throb in my nerve

this is different - gone

gone, erased from this world
blight, darkening lights,

vive le Bataclan, adieu

boom, the booming guns raining fire
by night, sobbing heart
seething eyes, dark this hood
that's come over my city,
where the Caliph reigns

Who is the lesser evil now?

Danube divides artery and vein.

Vive le Paris!

I am late, flying the long detour
blocked my usual path this morning
another scaffolding
rising to grab a pack of the sky

entering the building for work
I see a thousand blinding lights
each emblazoned
with many shades and colours
of the same words

'I want' 'Give me' 'Done yet?'
'Deadline'
'Give me' 'Give me' 'Talk to me'

echoing many times over

I cowered into my cabin
crawling into the cave
dug in through the wall

and hung upside down
like a bat

this is a yogic pose
mindfulness meditation
I'm seeking out solace

when did the week end?

Swaths of air answered
in a language of hushed silence,
spat down by a giant Catherine wheel
hung from the roof.

I want to feel the breeze on my unveiled face
and my unlocked hair, this morning,
I am walking barefoot.
I want to feel the earth on my feet.
How she has gone warm
under the anger of the days.
Or how she shivers in the days
of agony, the cold winters.
Before the night was done,
I plucked and hid some in my pocket.
There it stays, the darkness,
close to my heart. Sometimes
the stars smile, pomegranate cloves,
bleeding sliced under my knife.
There is a wave receding,
stealing the earth under my feet away.
A projectile flew with the birds,
racing them a while, but it drops now
into the water in a thud.

I.

A beat pulses through the song
rising like a plume of smoke
across the ridge.

The night rolls on.
A love languishes.

I can't help but
self-destruct.

The scattering clouds.
Heart-beats to the head-song.

Do you even exist?

II.

Arms upraised like those of a
tote bag. I surrender. Fold
up, like a gunny sack.

Not this, not this.

Stars flicker mourning my
slow disappearance.

You must, when I ask like this.

Dead man's procession. Every
***-holed road is a graveyard
of dogs. Dead, unsung.

III.

Milk spreads in the tea cup,
shooting out, widening,
tentacles, like fear.

IV.

Why is your voice this feeble?

My face, flatter than is usual
in this mirror?

You mean, you are me too?

I mean, does that even like
supposed to
mean something?

V.

I'm an Olympic hero. All of us.
Hubbub. Throb, to
the music-plume.

Mysterious plume.

Deluge tears, the storm clouds engulfing the wide world,
none to steady the canoe on the Galilee;

This the dust-path yoked to the burden of our deed,
beaten for teaching love, up the hill of penitence:

for here we traded the Spirit for passing gain,
calumny for mercy, who showed us the mirror

bearing witness, the wind heaving in the silence
we handed him over to the lash and the crucifix,

Yet, inscrutable this love for an ungrateful world
that parts the seas, and calls to life our faith dead,

pouring down, a heavenly stream though undeserved
carrying us across in arks and covenants

Four flowers bloomed this morning at the horizon
and the world is drenched wet in tears the skies
wept for joy, maiden of the dawns, I saw you pluck
stars for your basket of prayers before the hours
and now you are gone, past the windswept edges.

I see your presence that has filled the peals of light
peering into my chamber this hour before deed.
Sombre noons when the koel cries for her beloved
I hear your footsteps jingle in the distant wood.
When the lamps of longing are lit at dusk, send

rains that soothe the valleys and the winds that
caress the river weeping  for the sorrow of loss.

Deep in the nights, your silences more sonant
than the footfalls that waken the grazing deer.
I saw your smile behind the untended fires
in the heart of the cavern, but I did not hurry.
And now I hear myself echoing in the quarters.

After long the terrible night,

flaming as hope searing the eastern sky
one with the dawn, she rises:

Now quenched of aeons
a soul-thirst of the suffering world
for realms of unending light;

Sing now the Gods in the hymns
of a thousand cherubs
flying past,

dancing among the ripples
in a hundred lakes and petals
awoken to the victory of joy;

Born of the flesh here mortal
now a Goddess no less
miracle end of a love
birthing across cocoon lives,

adorning her beloved vast
like a vermilion dot
the gong of the syllable high,

humming in the wind breaking,

hair streaking clouds across the horizon,
and yet a human She is like us,
but for all the cells,
transformed in the alchemy of light:

The bridge for our plane
to the wisdom worlds across

ascending past ought and nought,
into the arms of her beloved
the ineffable base of all that is;

And thus went the first of us
a daughter of the mountains
that ascended from here,
uncovering for us the paths
to the realms of unending light

On the banks of the river of time, I walk alone,
On this journey of life; Sorrow is my staff;
It gives me strength. Long ago, on a misty day,
I spotted you, your beautiful eyes visible
Through that veil, looking at me, across the river.
The fragrance of the promise of love wafted
Through the air, across the banks and even
Touched my heart; But I was impetuous. Too
Uncut my heart, to recognize that soft nudge,
I walked on, on my ‘mission’ alone, myself.
Alas, faith you did not have, in the power
Of your own love; that fragrance of love did
Overpower me, moisten even my hard heart.
But I lost you. When the mists cleared, I found
You nowhere; vanished, like a shadow. With
The haunting music of a joy that was not to be
Playing on the waves and my staff for my
Company, alone I now walk, on the banks of
This Endless River of time, on this journey of
Life, to some destination unknown, unknowable.

This screen of mists waves down by my side, this dark night:
Shadows, lighted by fading lamps on the street, half-hidden
in leaves, playing out events in silver-shades, sometimes
emerging out and drenching you in many hues of darkness:
Flashes of numbers - jumbled digits from lost phones of long
ago; of a home by the moon; on a distant bus emerging red
out of darkness; This deep night, future emerges out in
waves that envelop footsteps traveled of the past, still wet,
still impressed amidst raging winds, into the ******* of time.

By the shadowy waters of the lake in deep woods,
amid owl-calls and shrill cries of crickets,
and croaks of a hundred frogs,
a kindly form speaks a word to my heart.
Clouds blanket the moon from the cold that makes
stars shiver.  On receding nights a warm
corner to bury my head in, from
advancing grey-arms of menacing dawns.
An accepting hug melts all that bothered us bitter
through the storms that raged the night
over. This was all required to begin
over, the morning after. The heart feels
what ears cannot hear. Blessings that miss the eye.

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.

Crimson hope smears the still curtain of the worlds;
Larks slice the silence hovering by the brooding clouds;

Ridges of pain past traced on the firmament,
lingering fragrances scattered on silken hair,
saline tears dripping off the edges of the horizon:

I hear more in your frozen gaze.
Your heart pulsing to the rhythm of a new dawn;

But the discord, the occasional discord.
Why does pain visit us?

A swirling vortex of colours:
At the center, a heart of bluish white;
This vortex called life;

You must die humiliated
carrying the unbearable burden of love
wearing a crown of bristling pride
nailed across the twilight sky,
and hung for three nights;
Before resurrection
into a body of love.

A sink, yes, a salvaged sink.
It is on display.

After your pride has been flushed down
a line intersects a plane
and becomes a dot.

Change your view to spot it.

A clear body of water. Ripples on the surface,
by the last rain. An emergent sun, out of the
brooding clouds in the skies.
A hundred of them
on the waving waters.

Do you realize you lost someone
even before finding them?
In your stubbornness, you never
smelled the jasmines in bloom
in the waning hours?
All life, your words matter most
yet my feelings for once
make you indifferent; The
most un-equal among un-equal
things, some relationships:
tilted the other way by birth,

Let us go to Galilee
that four yard cell in Mathura,
deerpark in Varanasi,

and ask where are we headed?

Fallow the field we furrow.
Lost the harvests of our youth.

And when all's done, this
our fear, that it was not enough,
that it was not enough.

What does it mean to
love, find peace in works,
uncover the joy of existence?

(Mere) myth, delusion, infant
babble of an evolving kind?