Conches and cymbals rend the air peering
into the mists of time vast like the snow-
clad peak, ancient that shines in the cells as
in the stars, matted whose locks gather the
sky-river in their folds, bearing the moon-
shell on his brow, merged in etherial that
datum where shine neither the moon nor stars
still like heavens that serpents slither lone
the one beyond all dual, red-hued like
the glacier anointed nigh at dusk

When the pall of sullen smoke recedes,
and the rubble long rummaged, after
the nightjars all return home to roost,
and tear-wells in the heart dry up,
the hour,
when the wails of sobbing mothers muffle,
broken
the silken dreams that we conjured up.

Under the vaults of the darkened skies,
who uncovers the faces masked,
read the blackened hearts of hatred?
Not the siren of death we heard then,
stirring the empty wells of our being:
but the song of the hopelessness of life
in the company of our shadow selves.

When our tears are dry on the shore
And the fishermen carry their nets home
And the sea gulls return to bird island
And the laughter of the children recedes
At night
There shall still linger here the communion we
Forged
The feast of oneness which we partook of

There shall still be the eternal gate-men
Who will close the cemetery door
And send the late mourners away
It cannot be music we heard that night
That still lingers in the chambers of memory
It is the new chorus of our forgotten comrades
And the hallelujahs of our second selves

T'is a silence that summons the Gods

past the swan lakes, skies
pondering deep in the stars

floating in the clouds, homes
of distant them dreams

past this temple that was ever closed
un-noticed as we walked past
the teals, hand in hand

when the horizon is lit in hundred
colours, come wading to me
past the milling crowds

our words echo endlessly
on the wind-swept streets
by the lamp-shades
and autumn leaves

in the old book that was never opened
the fragrance of a red rose
pressed dry to this page
that spoke the story of love

night of the evening suns

And then
I held your hand:
where have you been so long?
Our worlds intersperse, but seldom
we meet.

How has life been since you
had gone over? Does the horizon still
shine where you look from ?

A statue have I made of you,
and I sit reminiscing
every morning, sun-kissed.

Do you wear bodies the way we do?
Do thirst and hunger bother you?

I have so many things to ask,
but first, let us
go strolling in the park, years, since
I saw you in the dusk, dust-laden.

The morning when the waves recede,
the low tide, when all was gone
consumed in desire now emerging -
bare the wet sand that we walk on,
shells to your soft feet, a puddle there,
minnows scamper eager, gone
the wave that now tides at horizon;
Winds, playing with our clothes
fluttering hair, beating hearts,
we are here, in ****** land, that was
all water before, just before this hour
every mis-step drowns ankle sand,
but here we are hand in hand,
reclaiming life, walk waking back

When the moment arrives, it arrives like this:

Dark, like the hour of the silent stars
the hour of the shrill crickets,
the hour of waning hopes,

when all is dark
in my soul:

Friend, at this moment,
I cease the world;
At this moment,
just you and I in the entire universe;
Silent companion, guardian
of the door to all mysteries,

the cause of all causes,
if I must reason like that,
or an unknowable vast,

unknowable, as I am, now,
but an essential knowledge
in some mystic part
of my own hidden,
concealed being,

if I am of sterner stuff than
the pyres that churn out the stars,
if I am of firmer strength than
the cutting arms of time,

reveal this now, friend,
for this is my dark hour,
the loneliest hour
before the eclipsed dawn.

Those ripples
spreading hope among the waves
in torrential despair

foreboding

right behind where I toil away
with all her ships and sails
hidden in her receptacle soul

broken them rudders
we're sinking
as I hold out a palm
for some cheer
to gather. Macabre.

The Ocean, she came to me
and sat silent in the jar
not a whisper of a wave.

lives, palimpsest soul
stepwell storms
revenant, re-sonant

An evening comes wading through the clouds
crimson the feet wet in mists unfurling

silences whisper hushed in shadows and leafless
stalks, tangled hair, moist in the mellow winds
foreboding the hour when minnows sleep

it will rain tonight
                   soft on the lotus ponds
landing by the dancing canvas leaves
                   painted in hues of cream-white
                            birthing buds of pink
                                     smiling shy

robed in the regal hues of the moon
blushing behind the mourning palms
painted against the skies
solemn

whirling, whirling like a dervish

it is the hymn of the skies
it is the early moon
it is the late koel
the pond overflowing
in longing


I will swoon rhapsodizing

Saying your name in syllables
whirling, I rise levitating
You are there in the distance
You are here by my side

Bells in fires higher the realms -
rise winged from cocoon sleep!
Hymns:
aoens that endure,
rise friend of all life,
benedictions
in all the heavens and hells;
Of flame the garment
dyed of the earth
birth, loss, decay and age,
suffering of even the Gods;
Find means of peace that lasts
find and broadcast across
the worlds seven;
Rise winged from cocoon sleep
that it may rain grace
on the wonderlands.

I was walking in the desert.
The shadow was long
when the dunes went silent
and I sank to my knees
staring at the skies.

Past an abandoned drum
wailing in the winds,
where a half-buried mask
peeps out of the sand.

When the rain came
it poured out in torrents
and I had no place
to hide my soul.

Forefingers to thumbs,
I strain my eye to look through
the rummage of life.

Or on the tree
in the river island?

But it is like the song
that you know you remember
but can't put words to:
looping in and out,

Where did I leave my heart?

It's hard to tell,
when the love dried up
like the river in the desert.

I hear your footsteps on the clouds:
and I waited for you,
but you sliced the skies, and
vanished in a haze of crimson.
I am the insolent waves canoodling the weeds.
I am the rock-resolve that is dissolving
unknown to leaps. I was waiting
for you and I got drunk.
I will be everywhere, mourning in the winds
and lisping in the depths.
Though they said I shouldn't.
The chorus of gulls announces now,
that I lost you, I lost you. A whirl-storm
is rising in the desert. But that is
so far away. Evil is always far away.
I must earn my bread now, though
I am waiting for you. Half-whirl.
Half-whistle. Pestle-pounding my soul
Looking for pebbles in the flour.

Four of them thirteen times lashed this land
and three; As the skies wept over
our sullied homes, heart rending in Indra's roar,
teary eyed, wearily waited these desolate gates:
Where the cove that shelters you in rain?
Whiplash on our backs, the mid-season
Mantharas, we who sent jasmine Janaki's feet
to the thorn-laden paths of the jungles deep,
where dwell the soul-snatchers vile;
By the fires of the winter, storms raged,
when word came of her loss;
As the quarters wailed thumping their chests;
Was this why we brought forth the Sesha down,
to keep vigils under the wind's unending flutter?
Folorn with every leaf falling into the Sarayu,
shrunk now to a stream in the burning pangs
of this earth for the touch of your feet,
this holy night, when we await you
with rows of lamps, that now swells in spate:
prince of our hearts, woe begot for all times,
that we sent you to the bush on the night
of your ascension. Now the heavens hymn
bursting forth in joy, that you are with us,
withered, fatherless this Raghu realm!

There staring at us bare is this truth -
Don’t window-dress it, friend,
this world is indeed of suffering made:

Birth is suffering,
And growing up,
Friendship is suffering,
And love and loss,
Time an affliction and
Ageing

There is a kernel of sorrow concealed in joy
Victory and defeat are two sides of a coin

We rise to fall and fall to weep

The rich man sleeps in his mansion on the hills
Because a urchin is awake empty stomached
Sweeping the street
A full belly here is a meal
Snatched from the hands of a child somewhere

We conscript and send to deaths young men and women
Ugly and blighted is ok as along as
we profit

And so we go seeking a moments joy
In this world of suffering

Face it bold don’t conceal it in hope
The sad truth of our suffering world

seek the roots of suffering deep

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

It's in the air, that kind of art
the rant hour -
khaki shorts come to roost,
sour dips for jibes,
venerable turns up the Oak:
and lo, from Mecca to Dacca,
it's raining theories
conspiracies, of how
in the days of yore
even the golden birds's
poo smelt pure;
It's all our deed
from the Saucer to the Sky;
Heil Leader! Now
lathis to the rescue
then long speeches and
many grins - (x)ollywood
the much hated,
whose songs cannibalized;
It's chai samosa time,
it's pakora time,
Bermuda triangle time.

एक हमारा सत्य परस्पर, जो
रहस्य बन छिपा रहता है जीवन भर

This is our one mutual truth, friend,
that remains hidden a mystery all life:

खेलते रहते हैं  हम, टालते,
कसरती मेहनती हैं, कसरातों
महनतों में खोए रहतें हैं हम

we are busy playing, postponing
the question, and we are workers,
we remain immersed in our
efforts and struggles all life

पर कभी कभी, कल और आज
तक का हो सकता है अंतर, कि
'मित्र' बोलने का नही मिलता अवसर

but a day comes, when the difference
is but between the morrow, and
there's no time to even call out 'friend'

आ जाता है वो बुलावा, तो
व्यूह में फस कभी
लौट नहीं पाते,

when the call comes, so caught
up we become, that return
is not an option from the maelstrom

अचानक सा वो दिन आ जाता
है जब आ सामने उभर कर

suddenly, that we have kept hidden,
comes alive emerging from shadows

ये है जो हमारा सत्य परस्पर,
रहस्य बन रहता है जो जीवन भर

This our mutual truth, that
remains hidden a mystery all life.

The auspicious chorus of birds announces your regnal arrival
at this hour, as the morning unrolls itself like a sacred scroll,
and everything around comes alive in her ancient symbols.
Trees, topped in ruddy hues, objects in this room, the tower
lamp, the mirror, the table, all joyously content in the glow
of their acquired aura. All strung together in a sublime hymn
sung in some tongue more archaic than phenomena, yet more
familiar than voices in the head. You stood here by my side,
golden mist spreading from your feet, but I remained asleep,
lost to morose worlds. You walked across into the living room
before vanishing into the abandoned well by the backyard.
Alas, I wake up smelling the scattered fragrances of your
silken footsteps. And I go tracing the peals of joy wafting
across these spaces, empty and mourning your departure.

long that distant eve
when you bore the torch
flaming
into the horizon

every lonely hour,
weeps the sky
mourning your loss,

when the palms in the searing season
sway blown in your breath

our forlorn world:
anguished the ululations;

The hour when
the darkness lifts,
deep in the soul
when the moment comes,
rise rise,
secret power of the world,

knows not the demiurge -
Who lies curled in the cell and root
that rises up in the sprout,
long after the wildfires,
that the saw and axe cannot log
the sap of life,

scattered but not lost even in the
pits of the night, the light
that shines as the stars

now setting the eastern sky
on fire.

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

Torrential downpour-
Dry, morose, barren buildings;
solitary tree.

I followed the line of smoke at dawn:
Smoke from ebbing fires that
burned all night, leading to
some unknown end
past the horizon: eagles
circled above and crows
sliced the hum of the wind,
as I walked on,
shadows
of a buried life emerged:
Laughter, cries of joy, who is that
running after severed kites?
Colours splashed in merry
summers; that corner refuge
hiding during scary fights -
Memories like a river
roaring out of the gorge,
ruins
of a buried life,
emerged out of the horizon
beyond the line of smoke,
figures that retreated into shadows
and corners beyond approach,
memories of buried, forgotten times...

My girl don’t like
To read these line,
You see, she like me
To talk straight,
She like to see rain
Not jus’ cloud dance,
Me – am not
Impractical,
Though, cloud, are
Beautiful:
Rain, no rain;
But I need to write,
‘Coz I mus’
Anguish soothe
Love stir and heart
Overflow,
Emotion: I pour
My heart out
In these line –
Nobody read’em
But:
Beauty in echo –
You gotta see,
Yea, silence smile.

And then She goes by this way
silken past the dew-tipped grass
in the company of the morning winds
still blushing in the caresses
of blooming buds of the mountains
hewed in the distant silence
Nobody knows where to
but she walks knowing;
sometimes smiling, looking back,
hair flitting past her poem eyes:
and the valley gasps;
and when She's gone with the sky
and smoke, I gather myself,
life chugging away.

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

Starting to erase the complaints,
spotless this morning, spotless this morning,
that is thawing the snow: surely,
there is fire somewhere, fire somewhere! *

Resolved not to fly, now
even the birds have learned fidelity,
and taking darkness in her arms,
light has set up home
repaying what was stolen!

Starting to erase the complaints,
spotless this morning, spotless this morning,
that is thawing the snow: surely,
there is fire somewhere, fire somewhere!

You are victory, and I, loss:
and the string that joins them both,
you are victory, and I, loss!

Reminding, then making one count mistakes,
whenever the stars sing,
setting thieves in charge,
it is a matter of fate, it is a matter of fate!

This is the story of the heart,
this is letting go, letting go!

Starting to erase the complaints...
Resolved not to fly, now
even the birds have learned fidelity,
and taking darkness in her arms,
light has set up home
repaying what was stolen!

This object from high followed me
all evening. Sometimes, hiding behind
giant reeds shooting from the earth,
sometimes behind mist sprays.

The sea surging in the firmament
conceals it in her tresses now,
She who weeps her agony out
late every season in bereavement.

Her tears have filled up the valleys
on earth, with brackish waters.
Tonight the grilles that paint
the distance grey are wet by them.

I took a secret look, turning away
blushing on sudden reciprocation.
In the broken mirrors strewn
all over my lawn, it dunks winking:

ripples on the mirror, awash abashed:
light playing with shades of
delight, dejection, elation, suspension,
pulsation, susurration, salvation.

O Lord of the hosts!

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

O Lord of the hosts!

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

O Lord of the hosts!

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

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

O Lord of the hosts!

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

O Lord of the hosts!

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

O Lord of the hosts!

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

O Lord of the hosts!

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

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

O Lord of the hosts!

Glory, glory to the dear one adorned of peacocks!

My heart rate, sine wave usually, goes
sine squared when I see you,
sine cubed when I approach you,
woh, Dirac-delta when I hear you!

How do I heal this singularity?
Now how do I extract the real part
from your complex valued smile at me?
Euler says, it all goes in circles anyways.

So, I decide to cast a phasor P
that intersects the line H bisecting
your heart plane, such that H · P  = 0.
Can Cupid tell dot product from cross?

Daubed wet, the horizon blue,

featureless:
three stripes of wet green
ascending in

wet sands of the bank river
winding, dancing ripples

little red rose smiling shy
behind rows of wet grass

rain is the smell of earth
cast wide, love is

staring at the impossible gulf
wanting to cross puddles

The butterflies, they’re all over, painted
in the colours of autumns distant
falling leaves rain a little and a lot of grey sky:
rain in my soul, and now, I smell of you;
Before the night of dissolution,
I came to your shore and sat silent,
mulling on the meaning of me;
And it was all you - I was you before,
die scatter and be you again -
and the me in between was
all bluster and no rain;
but - it is raining now and
I smell of you;
this is how it must seem before
the night of separation;
Don’t go tonight! I say clutching
the edge of your garment -
I need to learn more of me that is you;
Harsh nights of terrible cold are upon us,
and I want to sit by your side
as it rains in my soul and I must be
smelling like you:
long this night of desolation,
comes foreboding
distant moon frostbiting my feet of clay;
Don’t go tonight!
Rain in my soul, and now, I smell of you;

Find me on this page, here
I don’t lie - here I’m what
I want to be:
When it is over and when
you flip these pages
find me here
where I am always light
always loving
beating heart and burning
bush and the 'I am' ness
no not in the other book
but here where I write
the story of life
in the ink of blood;
Don’t you worry wearied
carrying my cross
on your shoulder -
you will find me here
on this page where
I don’t lie and I am what
I want to be

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.

Streaking past, a momentary cloud,
there goes hope, a severed kite;

Rain-grateful the stream: but the dunes,
still menacing, forlorn all around;

Hanging over our world, the inevitable:
shivering among a hundred stars;

Will we go blighted, Chenrezig, without
the Polestar through the darkest night?

Crimson-crowned, the snow-peak, now,
the end we shudder to think past;

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm just this much to you:
nuisance. disorder.
threat to lives
of all colours but mine.

this hue of earth
wrenched from my kind,
herded across seas
to tend your lands
as your bondslaves.

raise but an eyebrow
be killed and maimed
and chained in prisons
My anger is illegitimate
**** as you wish
and I, take it lying down

Yes, I know of the whisper
in the secret chambers
of your shrines, where speaks
your god double tongued,
all men are made equal
but some of colour
are no men at all

so **** me with a robot
and a bomb, I'm this much
to you, a nuisance, a problem
to be silenced, to be finished.
any means is fair.

Hold me
for I am yours:
outside, slow mountain rain
damp the hill-song of the soul worlds
now split.

Dissolving under my feet,
as in a tidal ******..
slipping hand, don't let go!

Here by the wood
by the hill under the sky,
under the stars,
dark, lies a world curled up:

fly, fly to distant realms,
never away from home.

Look, friend, now there is already
the fragrance of spring in the air:
Pin-hole it may be, but, behold -
light has found us in the dark;
Now distance does not matter;
Now the end is near,
when the sky is moist in tears;

Circle of smoke and fire up high
winds of the late eve
dispersing, crimson tiara
of gulls and gusts

Captive bubble, I saw tears
on your cheeks, and let you free
oh the transient beauty
that exploded
tears on my cheeks

Sing peans to the upturned life,
possibilities skimming past
endless the stream of thoughts

that rush by the little selves
that rise and ebb in the vast

go go, Gustav free, setting clouds on fire.

I.

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

II.

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

III.

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

IV.

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

V.

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

VI.

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

VII.

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

Stay well, table, inviting me
to sit by your side, sipping tea,

stay warm, books, wrapped warm
in your covers, steeped in Spirit,

stay well, koel, sing the same way
every stuttering morning that
comes lisping in the winds
and the tongues of the swallows

stay well, gulmohar, ever
alive in a glow of blooms
warming bare the summer heart

stay well, pens, ever meditating
this way, conjuring up
all the stories I tell in verse

stay well, my droid phone,
go on, recharge yourself in your
morning asana tied to the mains

stay well, web, where I plug in
and broadcast my thoughts
and receive blessings and grace

The stillness of the noon;
Of the sky, of the sea,
late after the stars retire,
amidst unceasing waves.
It's about stillness.
Being still. It's about that.
Silence. No that is
not stillness.
Silence is still-born.
It's about those days when
you wake up when you wish
you don't have to.
and nights when you sleep
when you don't want to.
Dreams come undone,
castles on water.
It is the days when
the still small voice
is silent; goes dead, signless.
It's about those days.
When stillness matters.

When them leaves they don't stir
under blanket of winter snow
there an angel keeps
his hovel warm. Cherub
melts in arms by
mornings still. Lost in
tangle of her hair, and them stars
glowin magic on necktide
long after night retire.
But he set up to lose her.
Yea, this the way he made. Fear
he gonna be loser. Heck he
set up to be one.
Stop her, stop her!

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

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

saucers in the sky,

as I wait for the bus

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

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

I have a dozen in my purse.

All of them gifted by you,
collectibles, kissables.

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

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

So I hurtle back. and loop forward.

Folding memories neatly into my
back-pocket.

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

I want my nj's.

I could drown in those dimples.

Midnight thrall:
middle of the road, fingers
tucked in long full-sleeves
but for floodlights
emerging off mists:

An event. A memory. A bell.
No end in sight.

Silent night. Mad owls prowl.
Confused crows some still awake.

Milk clogs the kitchen drain.
Hour of the shadows.
Nothing ever lasts,
nothing ever lasts.

Distant clock. Pitter-patter tap.

Stupid evolution.

The gene pool flows on
to utter unknown ends.

Meanwhile we dream up
heaven-like unions and revolutions
and coronations.

Stupid night. Confused crickets.

Spider and insects. Enter
the lizard. Half a telephone ringing.
Man at the summit.

See-saw, swing. Dying distance.

Supernal abodes ours where we be as
soul-sheaths more transparent than we aspire

in abodes we of
self-modification more transparent than we petaled hope

of here, realms where bloom delights, beacons of
petaled hope, amid the rhythms of ice-pins

amid Supernal beacons of delights
space, sensation soul-sheaths expansion of ice-pins

in expansion space, sensation light and
self-modification all perception

*be as bloom ours where all perception here, realms where
aspire light and the rhythms

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