Far FAR from the world.... WORLD...
                       whorled my world

HERE condensed here con CON
                             con-densed dying densed

a **-HOme mmmme-me hewn in stone

Prison for prison pri pri pri sonnnn

here a drop of silence echoes
                          si lence sisisilensilensilense

pins pins pins dropped, trickling distant water
                                             trick-ling

in the pud-dle a mud-dle cal-led li-fe

a cave home, far away from home, is this

a noise of thoughts, rushing past
a gorge of silence.

how it was meant to be?

consuming homes in deluge, after the rains,

trickle silences, replaying lives, screened
all around in silken mists

lightning bolts prising open recesses dark.

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.

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?

The stillnesses of the aeons before
the world-times which stir in Him adorned of
skulls of all the forms that ever arose,
who knows of what age when first He walked here?
Staff in hand, for who walks His path is but
Him, garlanded in beads native to heights
of the times before time, clad of the ash
burned of tenses, master of dance, in whose
drunken steps rise, these universes vast:
auspicious, three-eyed the Lord of all.

At the newshour on the TV station,
beamed to my lounge sofa tonight,
the vignette visual of peace:
a child being rushed to triage,
all limbs bound in bandage -
now, we are safe.
Our soldiers too, from the skies.
No casualties.
Only collateral damage
signaled in the sobbing siren.

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.

Mother, I won't go to America
I don't want to work the desk job in the high-rise
at the edge of the city, waking the nights nesting code.
Mother, I can't buy you the dream home.
This is how I am. This is who I've become.
I weave a nest for the birds of dreams
to roost in my soul. I'm a poet. I'm peregrine.
When I come home, can I sit by your side
and not talk? Not talk of marriage and children
and property and bank balance?
I folded my kites up and my boomerangs
and studied the nights. The glass filings
on the manja cut sores in my heart but I succeeded,
through university and adversity.
But this is who I am: a poet.
I weave a fabric and print tales of shadow and light.
Here, they come to roost, the birds peregrine.
I don't come home to eat what you cook.
I don't come home to hear about struggles and
disappointments. Yes I have failed in some sense.
But there is so much to say that is better said unsaid.
But this is who I am: a poet.  I'm peregrine.
Can I just come home and sit by your side at sunset?

There is a Polestar in my head pointing
constantly to you: wonder woman, I can
smell the fragrances in your unfurled hair
fluttering in the winds drunk of the earth
wet with the promise of coming rains.

Though all coloured shadows, these be,
images that I dwell amongst, cut rough
they are, my fingers bleed at their edges:
I am in a kaleidoscope of a distant viewer,
the secret turner of the wheels of our fates.

I keep searching for you by the banks of
a lake draped in receding shroud of mists,
at the place where the river bends, teary
eyes moist in memories and where the
the whole world's upturned in her *****.

It must be the wood, that waded into
our home one spring and snatched you off
into her depths; Or that I am a conjurer -
I conjured you into my life desolate in
springs; I conjured you out in the rains.

All the eddies are time-warps that hold
smiles and tears, embalmed, hugging one
another like old loves, that you hop on
crossing spates and reaching for the caves
that line the edges of the horizon hills.

How shall I hymn you,

majestic presence? Shall I

be the wide sea, and

weep, overcome in your vastness?

or, evaporate, seeking you?

x/x/14

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

x/x/13

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

x/x/13

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

x/x/ 12

O faint streak of hope
on this godless night!

x/x/x

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

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.

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.

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

Creator. Nature.

Existence?
.....Relevance?

What about peace?
What about it?

That passeth understanding?
Precisely. Oxymoron.

Reason, confusion. Religion, delusion.

Footnote, background, legend:

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

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.

There a dawn before the dawns
the first of the Gods that drunk of,
that we have a world
to cherish for:
light beyond all death,
hymn that hearkens to wisdom
a vast beyond the vasts:

oh our anchor past the
storms of lives,

this morning, Regina by love,
may we be of peace
drenched in Thy infinite
presence!

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.

paper boats of hope running wet in the rains,

in the dimpled puddles closed, them odd schools

unstopping cheer

after that long hot season rain, rain


first we take off return in rain heavy rain

meetings and business and eating out wet

cloudy mourning before pale mornings,


then the lakes brimmed another spell

where the water flows, but we did not see,

too busy our lives, we did not see

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

Healing like the moon, you,
and jilted like the night am I:
paired in the heavens,
my darkness to your dream;

A cloud-patch of the downpour, you,
and I, a moment of the wait:
our meeting was written for this year;

The only passway:
your name,
the beat I live by.

Dressed in a bandhni pair,
leaving my father's lane will I come,
for you bringing,
sixteen monsoons together:
hold soft, for the string is sharp
for now starts the journey of seven lives;

I, at this end of the string
and you the other:
many the agonies before they come together!

The only passway:
your name,
the beat I live by.

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.

That season again; familiar fragrances:
of flowers and of emotions.
On shortening evenings
graying skies paint the earth in shades of
anticipation; Snapshots,
joyous memories, of
distant years roll out of catherine wheels
and sparkle-pots, rare
treats and new clothes
for the year; rolling wheels of time, how
loves change, people's
priorities change, events
drive everyone further and farther away.
But memories awaken
from vaults in the heart;
Familiar fragrances, blessed resurrections
always chase
all the doubters away
Yes, this season again; blessed fragrances.

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.

You die every day, like this: you choose a life of slow
Death: through long nights, you burn away
Like the slowly fading lamp
Mourning some sombre memory,
Does it matter to know, you love me?

The mist dripping from the roof and the slow
Wind of the deep nights play to the dirge
Of a buried life, buried behind
Walls of smoke, unfathomed crypts,
Does it matter to know, you love me?

You sit for hours like this, silent like the moon
On an unwavering pond on a windless
Night, your eyes express so much,
But say nothing, like a valley of flowers
On a silent summer afternoon:

Does it matter to know, you love me?

Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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.

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.

Surrealist Cut-up

    boatman       Purple haze
contemplative pouring
the sky as lone
              rides the horizon.
       islanding
into the lake,

Cubist

Arc to the horizon
apparition, brooding figure,
a form rides in twilight haze
junction of the worlds
into a slither of light.

Literal**

Purple haze islanding the sky
pouring into the lake,
as lone boatman
rides contemplative
into the horizon.

Surrealist Cut-up

vanishing illuminated darkness
enveloping    into figure              
Faintly       

Figurative-literal**

Fain­tly illuminated figure
vanishing into
enveloping darkness

Surrealist Cut-up

      lotus pond lonely on the bridge
verdant in spring    still in the    garden

Literal Figurative**

Lonely bridge on the lotus pond
in the still garden verdant in spring

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.

Surrealist Cut-up

            them of drooping
perspective        them blue water lilies,
    branches      boughs,    the blue      wavering
illuminated that window  is causing These the stars
                      in moonlight, to shiver;   late in
a ripple,     then, blooming
The clouds, sky,    tither.

Figurative-Literal**

These the stars then, blooming
late in the blue sky,
a ripple is causing them to shiver;
The clouds, perspective
branches of drooping boughs,
that window them
blue water lilies, illuminated
in moonlight, wavering tither.

the night sky, empty of all stars
arose from her rug of clouds
and whispered in the ears

nothing means nothing
echoing endlessly in the valley

nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing
nothing means nothing

there is a peace of emptiness
that passeth all understanding

empty of all sensation,
that lies bearing everything,

silent witness of the stars
the mute survivor of endless deaths.

When the winds got to the depths
they came alive, them embers
that I let smoulder
deep in the sacral chambers
bathed I returned in grace
but not before

I shouted out into the well
a fiery hymn
a flaming rant
empty now my soul
drenched in the echoes
each more tormenting
than before

this is how you lose it
this is how

On a shore flooded in the tide.

Now     on a         flitting            log:

Rain,     trying     to fill up
the ridges white,

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

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

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

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.

Asked the family upstairs,
if they knew:

2. guard at the ATM
3. flower woman across street
4. elder who sits by the road
every evening
5. the corner shop guy too#
6. the books of my time and
7. papers and portals
...

8. Asked my mind at night:

nobody knows if I exist
nobody knows,

I don’t even exist

#he knew by my face but not name

These faultlines we tread:  
of island loves, we dread.
On the crests, lie parked our loyalties:
siblings, friends, parents and loves,
every love, bounded by sadnesses;
Faultlines that carry buried
embers under piles of smoke; and then
once a while, a paper wheel that
was still, revolves in the slow wind -
and embers come alive;
Suddenly unrequited attractions flame
over: O the lure of danger-laden
pathways on these faultlines that
we dread, yet love to tread.

How in dark lights, shadows talk and
could-have-been's and how-nice-
it-would-have-been's play out,
lonely paths, where embers
and shadows flutter in the winds, we
walk on. The fair wears out,
the gathering disperses, and
this deja vu cabin flashes
out exactly like those years ago and
hope emerges out into the
renewing fair, with the crest,
in that undivided year
when the sea hadn't reduced this mass
of our loves to these island bits
with these faultlines that we
dread, yet, love to tread

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.

There be some juice. Light, we cannot drink.
Dark our days that trudge on, laden caravan.
There be some song, to the tune of the winds.
Parched, the baked earth thirsting for a caress
wet from the silken lashes of the sky maiden.

Let's talk to her tonight,
the last lotus is in still-bloom
in the folds of her tresses
as she goes about plucking
stars for her worship-basket.
Soon the earth is covered
in the misty offerings to Deities
at the far end of spacetime.

Juice some there be. Drink, we cannot light.
Caravan laden on trudge that days our dark.
The winds of the tune to song some there be.
A caress for thirsting earth the baked, parched
maiden the sky of lashes the silken from wet.

Let there be light, let there be.
Darkness, we have enough.

The sky is a giant gramophone of the valley flowers.
from a brooding repertoire of pin-disks
singing to me in the hymns rumbling out song

This late dusk, I am the last sheep that
got lost from the herd, now heading across the pass
in the hope of finding my home.

All my life is on trial now. You are all the people
here and I am in the dock. All that I have been
brings me here. I see amused eyes, and eyes
of suspicion. I know them eyes, these are your eyes
these are your people, and I know you.
To learn our language? I see dispersal, dismissal.
trying, to learn your language. twirling in the men.
I see disinterest. Girl from the high country
I see your moustache don't learn languages no more.
I see laughter, Yes that is what I have been

Oh my holy heavens, that I see home in those eyes.
And I said, hallelujah. at the edges painted red.
have come misty-eyed And they said, come with us.

There is a hope for home. A hearth here, not on flat.
On a *****, I have to found what I could a fire there.
Now I be over and laughter, all my hopes Moist corners
ancient tongues speaking to my soul. from this far land
come alive in tending to the home, embers break
a Cossack girl where you and the children live.
The rainbow carries, moments of reflections unlocking  
to those distant shores  and tears like mist and rain.

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!

I was not there when it all began
[ there in this fractal space, I know,
    beginnings can nest in beginnings]

but when I peered back in time,
I saw your shadow
stirring in the mists

yes, you measured out the verses,
threefold.

it was all in the pre-dawn hours,
before light

I bowed down to your majesty
and smote them who did not
I bowed down to your majesty
and cursed them who did not
I bowed down to your majesty
and loved them who did not

I bowed down to your majesty
and blessed them who did not

unsure
if it was you, or if it must be you
or if it must be anyone at all,

stirring in the shadows

or if my looking glass went
kaleido, before scopia.

but I know, of deep
where thoughts stir

I've seen your footprints
on the ***** of time.

they too know, the gulls,
the seas, and the skies,
and they know no war and death.
it must be you.

two are the shadows cast
of the future
back in our time
it is of us that we will be
us as in the world

both shades of a dark darkness
how did it come to this?
oh if we did but
contemplate
on us that we will be,
as we wont to do,
as we seldom do

are these all that were on offer?
how if we are not of this darkness
for how else would be know of
dark from light?

privilege and sacrilege of the gentler kind
sets the world on a tinderbox the other
why did it come to this?

now, a wring and a toss
with hand on our hearts
for we cannot choose,
a game of dice,
is what separates
of us that we will be
us as in the world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winds swept the courtyard
washed in the rain,
now the creepers have cast
their fragrant agony wide -
decorated in jasmines,
burning in separation,
like my heart

the thunder is rending
me apart, aren't they all blessed
the maidens who have
a shoulder to hold them fast
cowering in fear?

but you are afar, my love.
in the surrurating distance
my heart has gone plucking
flowers for the worship basket

but all my soul is forlorn
longing for your love
to seep into my being,
your embrace

now this coolness brings pain
now the cuckoo tugs at the soul
now the courtyard
is decorated in vain,
now I wait in silence,
for you, in the rain

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.

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!

Muggy muggy reflection
them canopies warm certainties
this misty morning, tall
brooding over a ray of light
silences all around, for crickets

splashes a worry, a leaf
reed-song of mourning
against grey-greenery rippled
bright painted gay pink
fuzzy fudged hope emerging
floating fleeting deafening
broken hush of the wood

speaking colours, mute, them
thoughts stuck in the web
confounded, rioting rebelling
colours, shoots, many petals
of a resolving healing love