New, the form. Awareness new.

Now I am all the lilies
sailing into the expanse
of water, lake mourning your loss
this misty morning.

I am all the birds calling to you,
frenzied.
Birthing consciousness new.

All the trees drooping.

Crimson haze on the eastern sky,
you passed this way:
I am wailing with the winds.

Time is a strand. Channel, tunnel.
Among many burrowing through here.

Who picks this dust path for me?
I call her destiny.

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.

How is the night treating you? I am asleep,
but not. Half awake, but not. I am hope,
but not. I want to scream, but don't. In this
half-morning, I want yesterday, but don't.
Tomorrow has poured in, but hasn't.

Now these itchy feet. Itchy tips of hair
that rub the cheeks. Itchy heart where
love smoulders. Some sweeter itch:
but, itch, nevertheless; itch in my sleep.
I want to know if this is an itchy night?
The rain falls like an itch on the rooftop.

This is some funny farce of a farcical night.
Tonight, I love the teals more, but don't.
Coots seem darker than the sky, but aren't.
In this deep night, I am love, but not. In this
last 'but not', the 'not' part is small, I mean.

I have no words to say
I will have no words to say
what words do I say?

one word is all needed.
and it's a verb.

not not a name for something.

artesian
deep within us -
you and me

in there where there is no
you and me

and no other word matters

say it to choking throats
say it to the evening birds
say it to the withering flowers
say it to the corners at night

no other word matters.

it's a verb
when we've found it
there's just
no need to say it.

it's a non-local field
collapsed everywhere

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.

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

summer of reed-boats when
dreams meander
in the puddle streams

Unbeknownst where
parts of whose strings die,
what song
does that violin string?

running figures past the
empty braille notes
in deep recess

what song does that soul string?

pirate song of the drunken ship,
as hale as the winds alive,
but parts of me are'nt!

now string a song for the jammed soul

dying in bits.

I hold the torch deep and
find traces of your presence
here: footsteps that show
you passed this way.

This is my Janus face:
confounding who to heed:
Señora, I who call to you,
or I who harbour all
the muslin shades of dusk
in my shadow soul?

Now the wind is blowing
wild, biting the hissing fire.
The hour when waves recede
and thoughts retreat,
the slow winding hour,
when I commune with you.

Light begets light and so
come finding me, for
wavering, I may never
head any further here.

And darkest the night when all seems
lost, parts thick the blanket of fog;
Desiccated to the bone when
moonless in agony,
go emptied of Spirit the skies,

Broken in Her temples,
desecrated in the shrines
veiled, chained, burned at stake;
Scattered lays She,
as hope among the stars.

Among a thousand tribes risen,
to burst forth again,
Diana and Ishtar, Athena and Brigid,
crimson the rays that flood
regnal the horizon in waves;

Who casts time in the thrall of Her dice
fire cannot burn, nor weapons hurt,
who measures worlds in Her strides,
the black rose, Mistress of the night,

Garlanded in skulls of a thousand such
who know not Her might
whose hands sewn Her garment great
trampled death under Her thunder trail
Here She comes the ancient One:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm kneading a complex thought now:
too amorphous, this, but,
too much mush and it's mess.
Why are you smiling at me a
bunch of multi-colour bell-peppers?
No, it is not potato season.
But I'm searching for roots of
our association. I need a congealant.
You are quite a handful though.
Sweet, but not sugar kind of;
Cinnamon, may be - served best
with chocolate warm. Too strong,
alone. I will serve you some cloves -
hot, but not the chilli kind of. Chew
on it. I have a kitchensink to clear.

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;

December 2005; January

2006, Summer that year.

           2008 round the middle - no not the crash.

          2009, yes the muddle.

Tell me about how May 2010

was axed by December 2010.

Palm, palm, date palm, ash cloud.

February, April, August 2011 and
that dreaded December.

last grasp of the kite string,

off goes the dreamed of high
far far away the anchor moorings

when transmission stopped, all white
noise since then, empty

prattle chatter of the key board,

two millennia and counting thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, march, October, March!

January 2016. A new landing.

late cab, where do you go
slicing through the silence
this damp hour?

it must be the night, for I'm
not worried-
though my phone's on

do you work late?

this is the worker's fate:
from father to son,
that we work to work ever harder ,
to break the tether
round our necks
invisible, but slavery -
when did it end?

it was the plantations then;
cabs and the keyboards now:
sugar grows on the brow
wet of the beaten man's sweat;

and oh we all want to rise,
far above from this shanty town
tither on that hill past the neon sea

so we dream, endlessly:
the reel
broken by the sound of rain
dripping on the roof

there are shadows that talk
very leaf is a witness

Last of a beloved set
of bone China plates
just developed a lesion.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

oh the late gull that shrieks past the silences.

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

Tell me, friend,

is there life after death?
or death after life?

yes, it bothers me:

endless existence

interminable.

is life a gateway to death?

or death a doorway to life?

you must know, for you have
risen from the dead.

I. Dawn

Dark, before dawn
asleep but
for some wandering souls
ask the winds, where do you go?
echoing destiny

II. Youth

friends we meet, those
companions on the thrilling
highway of life
past revolutions
and revelations
prisons and promenades

III. Love

beats the heart this way
but once.

IV. Anxiety

life, that master architect
chisels out our visage
inflicting pain and sorrow
betrayals, that
of least expected
disillusionment

V. Grace

always here
waiting,
with those winds
with those friends
veiled in love
not lost in betrayal

This late hour, when
I empty myself of all experience,
you shine alone
like a pillar at the center of my being.
You arrive like a shadow at night:
silent spring of love, you flood my being like
moonlight flooding the room in darkness;
Silent snow of the drowsy noon,
you cover all my wayward tracks
and I see only your benevolent
steps guiding me on
from the door of my solitary home.
You are the lighthouse to my soul
lost at the high seas of life;
I live by your banks and draw pitcher-fulls,
Señora, you animate every love
that nourishes me.

Sing, my friend, for there is light
wading through this marsh I called
all the names I knew, all but
nameless that fire in the bush,
shining smoggy at the edge
of this the endless tunnel of life
playing, pirouetting at the bristles
spilled oil slippery on the vinyl,
at the edge of the canopy a way out
of the labyrinthine mangrove,
on the dreary night a surly tinge
on the horizon gone cold dark blue
here is the edge of the thicket
here is the way of the ancients
now I call that: I am that I am,
Sing, my friend, for there is light
at the edge of this trudge called life

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

Enemy, enemy, felt mutually,
wrung wronged and wronged by and all the love was
anomaly. In twilight moments of
emotion, only scars, finally, and
all the joys of gardens and fountains mourn
forever the forests that burned for the
city now in ruins. This is how it
was meant to be. It was for my father
before me and my grandfather before he.
Yes mankind was made to experience
to live with the enemy 24/7.

Then I must long for you, mourning
like the lark long after light -
fires shivering in the distant night,
shriveling bush in winter,
for her warm wings of green
aflame in a sacred time;
There go the buds that never bloomed
dug in the earth with the coffins
waiting for redemption;
Senora, breathe into my neck
like you are nowhere:
let me swim with you in those
phantasms that your eyelids conjure
past the whorls and eddies and currents
up the hills where in blood
are painted tales of the past,
daggers dug up the heart
treasured, it is mulled, mutual
the sour pressed red;
And then with wings gliding
past the valleys long after light
unuttered the hymns of the heart
that sing of you, flooding
and swallowing the embers
lingering on in the shadows of
the withered rose, long gone;
Then I must long for you, mourning
like the lark long after light.

Thoughts
splash echoing
like pebbles into a well.

Confusion.
Woven like a web all over.

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

Echoing.
Returning.

Plumes of obfuscation.
Rising, spreading everywhere.

Frustration.

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

The rickshaw slices the expanse
speeding away from my grasp.

A query rises into the wilderness
of a hundred distractions.

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

The firmament is camouflaged.

Am looking for a direction;

Confusion. Obfuscation. Frustration.

That's how you break it
now you are alone
and I am alone
but that doesn't
make us of each other

the universe, starry night,
from the ringside view
of a puff rising;

let it rain, for
I must not get wet
out in the fury,
I've lost all adhesion

hymns
of nightbirds
rend the sky
this lonely hour

this hour of smoke and mist,
stay still, for all the stars
glittering here and the moon
sliding down your back
bare to horizon worlds

pressed to my *****
the vast sky glowing
in unnumbered mysteries

soaking in the fragrance
as dew settles by your hair
this surly hour
flowing over your throbbing
heart, soft as the breeze

streaming silent by the curtains
unfurled, the sailboat of our lives
on dreamy waters

let them cease, creations
of the faltering mind
dissolve, all the sensations,

cupped to an ancient warmth
lives lived of long whose lights
reach us now
here, I hold you, to the
rhythm of timelessness

When the whip cracks
bare on the back,
the earth scorches tired feet,
and shoulders cannot
carry the burden anymore,

In that moment
when the world merely
watches on silent,

and those you loved
are too bound my oaths
or wallowing in doubt
or too weak to do a thing,

In that moment
when blood mingles with sweat

you know you truly have no one
here, but for Him the Lord,
who shines in the heart.

In adoration, an army
can be drowned pursuing you.

In love, an unfathomable
well is given away
to bleed to death.

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

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;

What's in the first? What's in the second? Ancient heirloom, toothless smile. What's in the fourth? What's in the fifth?  What's in the sixth? Seventh?
A ring. What's in the second? What's in the third? Papers worth millions.
What's in the fifth? What's in the sixth? Seventh?
What's in the first? A key to fortunes. What's in the third? What's in the fourth? What's in the fifth? What's in the sixth? Seventh?
What's in the first? What's in the second? Keyring. What's in the fourth? What's in the fifth? The holies. Seventh?
What's in the first? What's in the second? What's in the third? What's in the fourth? Old Bangle.What's in the sixth? Seventh?
Gold, gold, it's gold. What's in the second? What's in the third? What's in the fourth? What's in the fifth?What's in the sixth? *Faith.

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.

So time to and move on and goodbye.
Like the strangers we were
in all the time we sojourn together.

unemotional be
for all it is a wistless life,
aeon in aeon:
meetings and partings

****** be the vogue,
mallet-smash the mirrors
them in the halls of
spirited dreams

barefooted walk  on those shards then
red be they tinged, **** if they do
for there is a pleasure in this pain

always like this, rivers that rise
high up in the hills, swelling in the rain
die dry in the heartless dunes

and a piper sounds out the songs
caravans on horizon
that them streams carried
here into their graves

for deep somewhere
subterranean buried
lies a clothed casket
broken heart, sunken dream

so let us move on. you, on,
and I, to my dance
to each their own.

I.  The event wall:

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

Reverent circumambulation
by tradition, is done clockwise.

II. Reading the tiles

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

III. Prospect

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

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

Rest in peace!
We'll wait for Christ.

Like the story of mists on these hills, no one knows where it all begins and what it brings to bloom, when and how. Life, this mysterious journey of mirages and miracles.

Growing up, falling in love and marriage. Years that rush by like the moss-laden corners. The joy of cherubs that descend and grace your lives. Some late summer rain tears by the river on these gorges.

One-way ticket to go live rough like the winds on these bare slopes.  The cherubs are out on their vast journey of discovery. You hoped, but it was all crumbling, bolt in the sky tore your lies apart.

You are here, amid the lilt of the hills and the music of the stars crackling up into eddies late in the nights. The ageless loneliness of life, and you have no one. Mute in this new haven, speechless in your unfamiliarity.

Should I sing like the shepherd Should I weep like the clouds parted from all their be-longings and tossed about by the stark stubble on the aged mountains? The air smells of rebirth. never another sunset winding into the valley, Does the river jump in the joy easing into the clouds, carefree like there was that I know this people. Now I am the sky. this snow-cladded dusk I am all the stars. hanging over the world? of the the flints that scratch effervescence of the moment, or does she weep at her heart laden in endless procession? Clouds, swirling dervishes, exodus of the sheep fire in the bush

I can take marshrutki by the dozens, heading out into the no-w-here.
Humanity, your only hope, and kindness, your only god.

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

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

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

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

It was a night of sulking darknesses

there in the distance, clouds thunder
raining tears down the shanties

crickets scratch the silences elsewhere
as winds bring the smell of ash home

in their thousands, mayflies clash
for a swab at an orb
hung hazy into the shadows
canoodling the trees

foreboding come thoughts clouding

the morning after, the stairs are awash
in swarms of broken wings
and shattered dreams

a newspaper's thrown across
there are deaths:
heaving at the heart.

Is it the waves,
that heave in sighs this morning,
or is this your heart?

here, these hills have gone crimson
in desire

don't stay head turned away from me

these are the rivers that feed the earth
flowing from the stars,

your silken hair
now in flood

this is the morning smoke
incense, brooding in the shadows

I'm embracing the skies
in passion
beating to my *****

I am you, mea culpa

chorus of
birdsong whispers in the corners

words meet words
before they are born

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

Let us write together, the story of the night:
flow like the stars in the distant river,
hopping stalk to stalk, you of the same plume;
Here I part your hair, and plant a kiss, holy
emerges the passage to the promised land
and the miracle, that rises like
the song from the dunes, from your dimples
and twinkles in your eyes, moon-kissed
the road that forks: this is where we wrong
took the turn, going back to where we started
stuck, deep under, we will peer periscoped
into the wide sky, dark, studded diamonds
and my hands slide into the clouds that
gather gentle the rains behind your neck:
this is the recipe for a storm, monsoon tide;
my forefinger on your lips:  keep silent now,
oracle mage, for your words can land
like summer rain on the roof tiles, birthing
them worlds, that cascade the starlines;
which were as one in the beginning;
shoreless we go, transmigrating star to star

These birds of war that encircle the sky
painted dark by smoke from fires engulfing
events here: every one of them spawns
an illusion, spreading in all directions, until
no twig is untouched: everywhere only
the Mistletoe. Fragrances of the deep night
by the ford under the moon, silken hair
soft for touch under first rays of the golden
morn, images, return broken like imprints
on the ramparts; where now, those oaks
of love that sustained our passion for war?
Years sunk into the quicksands of greed,
After nine winters, now only the Mistletoe.

A drum beat. A distance.

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

Hanging roots of the banyan.
Emerging out of mists.

After many lives perhaps
a meeting.

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

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

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

The roots are hanging strong.
Upside down.

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

Mists un-heeding,
sometimes succeeding.

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.

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.

Reflected by the mountain stream Have the cherubs gone over the skies, When the evening came I was all things and Now when I walk out alone from the mist, long after

the embers kept us warm When you came leading me out, When did I lose you?

my calm warm shoulder. I roll over in the biting cold for will you believe me? we walked in snow I see the early moon, silent and poignant.

If I say mon nom In my sleep searching,

Who are you? The chorus;
Who am I? I was what you said I was. Soliloquy.
The stars are rising for their dusk-dance in my eyes.

I was love, I was a mother, drawing crimson curtains to play in the park? The corners, they are all empty and faint in the mists.

I see only a shadow's arm around me - I was a teacher. clasped clad in love that others said I was.

Now, gone, none my datum and reference.

Have you gone for a stroll my love? celestial light, I walked deeper into the night, away from your green-golden presence.

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!.

A noon-time beat plays in the head
Tea-time brawl revisited now.
Lisping out a song later. 'Really?'
The fridge is empty. The late cuckoo
tugs at the heart; Summer sweat
on evening's brow. Deep down
glow, inner lit springs shadowed
in the woods. Cacophony birds
returning home. Cook, cook, cook.
Filling up sink. 'Ah, am I that bad?'
Insecticide can; Make something up:
the noisy fan; Lady in hood, rising
from the lake. 'Could I have....just
done it another way?' Walking by
the bund as the sky slips away
veiled among the blinking stars.

Locked doors either side of the stairs:
this empty evening, silences are vacant.
Old helmet on the bench by the door,
glass eye-cover raised: illusive presence.
Light from the hall peers into the dark
room, and reclines on the empty couch.
Spiralling shadows of incense plumes
rise snake-like on walls seeking the roof.
A lone spider ranges by the kitchen light,
lizard across the house seeking refuge.
This lone bird late mourns an absence
in her haunting call, this empty evening.