Rain song in the deep, spiraling
camels down the hazy dunes
mystery of birds in the early sky

glimpses, working on inner space;

I caught the shadow of your smile:
scribbled across the skin my soul
the mystic syllable of your name.

Secret scaffolding erecting
tier upon tier

emerging beauty of my life.

Rush-stream of memories
concealed in the bush as the
morning fires die,

the flags are waning in their zest
festoons are withering

ambling along empty streets

yet the story is never done.

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

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

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

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

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

The night is a deep well:
stalks fall and echoes resound
as if out of an abyss.

Flash a lamp in, lose the light.

Braveheart awake in the late hour,
is there a solution to anything?

Events unfold; Always unplanned.
Reason an afterthought.

Still we dream. Dreams dreamed
all night, for a newer dawn.

To achieve something, something
that can make me more than you.

Are you cut out for that yarn yard?
Who decides when

a weakling mortal
breaks out of fatal space?

Flash a lamp in, lose the light!

Stalks fall and echoes resound
as if out of an abyss.
The night is a deep well.

Slow dance of filings on parchment peace
savouring the beats, my percussion hips.
Look the rampage like other man's wife.
When the dark flag bites, hymns cease
and millennia entomb; heaped heads,
tented eaves, latest art in the desert souk.
Shik-shak-shok. The sharqi goes.
Flooring it to the rhythm of dunes, as
fires spew snow into the vale of prunes.
Chaos of magnets pirouetting a ride.
Bomb them, when nuisance gets,  some
hundred women, few thousand children,
not bad price, securing the heathen trail.
Shik-shak-shok. The sharqi goes.
Veil the faithful, jail the *****. Chaos
is hope. Kaleidoscopic, cathartic taupe.
Riding the tiger, picturing a goat.

A father who has conquered all
that is in space,
here and among the stars
and the higher worlds,
begot Her as his child,

She of an essence beyond time:
aeons of vaster joys,
sundered now from the world
so sorely imperfect,
must yet come down here
to lead us back to the wonder
beauty of the blank spirit
the basis of all;

We can bottle up fragrance
in choicest the vials of our whim:
but released, it must fill all space, no less.

So was She the freedom
shining in the stars
flowing in the rivers that raft through the hills
in the winds that beat down the vales;

Protected, She grew in his home
among others lustred lesser
shining forth as his darling
who would keep aflame
the glory of his name;

That you are compelled so to
walk amongst us:
this gives us the faith to find
meaning in our lives,
we who know not if we are to be
as beasts or spirits blessed.
We who hesitate not to ****
for loot and lucre
as much for our disbelievings.

Not to be trifled, a babe eating mud,
creations can be glimpsed in its mouth.
Impish pranks of childhood days
forebodings of pastimes sublime.
Nobody will dare spar a cherub,
for the light shines through caves and prisons.
Nor slight a woman noble.
When it rains and the river swells,
always a thirst to see miracle partings.
On fields reddened with blood, the
call of righteous battle.
And awe, at the enveloping Supreme.

And to love, is to be divine,
that when love dawns, no need
for theories and proofs otherwise.
Truly on dust-laden dusks, the westerly wind
tugs at the heart, that you may yet
return with the cattle.

After long the terrible night,

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

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

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

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

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

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

humming in the wind breaking,

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

The bridge for our plane
to the wisdom worlds across

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

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

I. Gray

In the dim light of the dusk
fading through the sky
an exhibit on a canvas:

a single strand of graying hair.

The arcane gallery housed
by the serpentine lake of memories.

What an awful lot of balderdash
shrieks an elderly gentleman ahead.

What a masterpiece, I think.
A masterstroke, in fact: just a strand

stuck like a line across the canvass,

this is it: time is catching up.
mortality comes calling
in pieces and strands.

II. Red

What embers, my dear, lie concealed
beneath those heaps of burned
logs deposited in your soul?

Waters healing were poured out
ages ago: was the love

too diluted, that even now the gale winds

of raging events bring those embers
burning from your depths?

I can see them burning in your eyes.

III. Black

Oh his gulf between you and me.
That you carry what is of me
before and hold what is
after I am of the ashes,
I know, in your oceanic vasts
bloom our fleeting island lives.

But what were you, before
you were of flesh? Did Aleph
bring you forth too? Tell me
friend, for this is my quest,
my mortal angst at finding you
nailed on the cross above: or
I must be a necromonger.

Are you the one who does not exist
as we know, or are you who also exists
as we can know: what are you?

That blood flows on this earth pondering
on this question.

In this is concealed the answer
to the question raised by that strand.

Tav is not the answer. Nor is it in the cross.

Airwaves awash in the new gospel barrage:
calling forth the neighbourhood hack,
Abe Lincoln toon in towering hat,  
the corporation is coming -
will you not
collaborate my friend?

Everything good that you ever dreamed of is here:
Marbonite floored flats with self-terraced roofs;
The swankiest of cars, in imported hues;
Your arm candy drools,
now, brands, bigger brands!

All in your grasp, now, in community gates
shut safe as society decays.

Skies spitting frogs? Pestilences amass?
Listen to the Gospel according to Bane:
in the desert, smell octane. Hallelujah,
everything we make, from watches
to headscarves - your underwear is cheaper
sourced from the next so-lala-land.

Forget your sources tiny of incomes varying:
Bakers, cobblers, tinkerers, we also have
a uniform for you. Oh you rustic
tradition-bound bandy bumpkins!
Abandon your alleyways, and
welcome to the ghettos...where

What you eat, to where to retreat:
we cure everything from heartache to panache.

Wash away your sins in wonder medicines;
Waters can part, yes, see how the Pharoah
is disarmed; Big city dreams, dream
global manna beams. All that is needed for
salvation, is a little bit of classification. Are you
left-wing or right? Center-left or center-right?

The powerdrill tearing down edifices
resonating through noon. A crane arm's shadow
hovering high by the moon. Tablets from skies
now proclaim the new gospel for the land,
the airwaves are awash
of the miracle of Witwatersrand.

The corporation is coming, to a store near you:
Amen! Will you not, then, collaborate, my friend?

Voices, broken in the boughs
sleepwalking on nulled roads
echoing in the rain, and
the swings, empty rocking in the winds:
dry withering to budding, scenes
we never saw, until now
the everyday season;
Long since time stopped and
vanished behind the screens;
Then, can I call you, 'The Day'?
Echoes in the alleyways and
the dreary skies all the same;
But I must mark The Day: now
I chore, then endlessly refocussing
juggle as broomed go we muggles;
Know who's lasered on next?
Worry not, as big realms have
no pockets but ours;
For the ledgers must roll on;
Unmarked, we may go, like this
The Day, BUT: now work galore

I. Éclaboussure

I drew a handful from my bag of words and splashed them across the canvas of life painted dark, dark, dark. (oil colour: shades of pain, and purposelessness).

I saw stars splattered across the night sky. And misty spiral halos.

How do I know this light is for real? This bright star here, might long be gone - ancient light.

All events are done before we are aware.

Who is the witness? Is there a canvas?  

II. Montage

How do I know. Splattered across. Misty spiral halos. Dark dark dark. I drew a handful. I saw stars.

Gone - ancient light. Who is the witness? Canvas of life painted. Before we are aware.

(Oil colour: shades of pain. Is there a canvas? This bright star here.  All events are done.

And pain and purposelessness. And splashed them across. The night sky.)

Might long be. And. From my bag of words. This light is for real.

So you hurl that at me:
the expletive called Truth;
But you were silent
when they peddled their
narratives
Yes it must be like this -
Truth must have
leafy shades of the Left.
When they ******
it's rebellion and rightful;
When they dissent
it is but lawful;
If they break my bones,
break my temple to house,
their dogmas,
burn me down in sleep,
I deserved it: pagan
and worthless that I am,
whose belief must deserve
denigration.
But you were silent
and did not hurl
this expletive called Truth -
The meek the broken the oppressed,
when they resist
It's then that they hurl
This expletive called Truth

I will walk away tonight,
to the far beyond:
beyond shadowy corners,
and beyond the clouds where
gods gather, witness;

In the shadow of the oak,
where we play, my sister and I:

catching a butterfly, now,
digging into the smelly earth,
it's a worm then curling up my finger
that I go chasing after her.

Laughter breaks into a kite
severed, and flows away
into the distance.

Gods come alive in clay,
that we gather after rains
and give form to and
colour as we like.  Disregarding
where tusks should
and shouldn't lie.

Wild fires were not fun.
Not least for those twins
******* as embers crackle in the rain.
Did the pups die?
Who will answer to their
mum, weeping through the nights?

The sun set fire to the entire
horizon every lonely night
before retiring.

As we gather into our blankets
hearing tear drops dripping in pots
and crickets dance.

Far beyond the skies
beyond the heart of darkness,

I will walk away tonight,
beyond shadowy corners;
beyond the clouds where
gods gather witness;

Rise, rise, out of the caverns of darkness,
through lives, unfolds your immortal journey

Collapsed field         Vast to small        particular                    blabberings
chosen timeline         growing ego        wonder, wonder        to structure

through vales sunny at times, but
through the vaults of obscurity often

Scribblings                 crowd of faces     men, trees,                 flowers
to consonants             to family              birds and beats         butterflies

grounded in the light ancient,whose
descension is all the souls that set out

Autumn leaves          Seasons                      tastes, smells         one of a kind
rainbow joy                of sun and snow      sound of music      for all things

before the dawn of time, branching out
into segmented existences, in a quest for Self.

regimen          run, roll,               infant bondings           slow march of
and play        skip and hop          friendships                 the little man

Mellow season rain slipping by the thunderstorm
oh you have come, unknown visitor,
unrecognized. Lone rose that bloomed in rain,
drenched always in tears, this morning
shaded beams of light and the song of birds
welcoming the respite bend past you.
This is the sea leading to Ithaca. Here I stand
on the shores of the land that was my home.
Who left with hundreds, alone I return like a thief.
The gentle hand that passed last from my sight
out of the multitudes that waved us bye,
A hundred whispers of chants and hymns
from shadows that rise from the corners where
I found refuge from pain in these years:
Whom do those fingers choose, honour-bound
whom I left alone those twenty years ago?
Years that rush like a river streaming past gorges.

Cast to the valley wind,
withering into the element,
the lone rock, forlorn twig,
shivering lake of the late season.

Off he goes, off he goes, the prince,
in search of peace.

That first time when voice breaks:
the agony of growing up
in a transient world; Moments
when the rhythm of hearts
beating in unision breaks, pain
that accompanies sensation here:
of loss when age catches up with hope.

The constant, the concealed ever-present:
suffering, the shadow of life.

Off he goes, off he goes, the prince,
in search of lasting peace
in a world of transient joys.

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

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

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

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

I walked with the hundreds
climbing mountain trails all day
and settling by the pebbles
at the summit, to hear you:

I, for one, never doubted
there was any scarcity of food;
Yes, you were always
a miracle worker.

On nights of wonder, you
spoke to us in secret on
marvelous things.
Actually, I did not care:

Whose grace floods the desert
and in whose law, love precedes,
such a one was with us and that was
all that mattered.

And now, by moonless nights,
when I stay up, alone and orphaned,
in struggle and privation,
I wonder, my friend, why is your

coming again set in the future?
Do you not come for love alone
than to keep the law? Do you
not part waters for our deliverance?

What gives you, who gives you,
you,

who've exchanged your humanity
for a senseless existence
and desire for death -

this right,

to come and **** and maim
the unarmed and helpless,
innocent women,

and children?

you,
armed to your teeth,
against the defenseless weak?

is this strength?
is this a religion?
is this how you attain heaven?

You need the low angle for the camera
to zoom in on my frame: I can scale
the skies, jump down cars, beat
the baddies and romance girls
by age by half: I'm the hero. I defy
everything. Age included.

Look up close, there are no wrinkles;
Muscles, better than gymbuffs';
Hair, not a strand grey, and
skin, as elastic as young. Yet
I've been around for a good quarter
of the lives of you the commonfolk .

There is no start or middle here:
I know no crises, I know no end.
Touch the screen, feel
the sparkle! I'm the polestar
of the ordinary life, I defy
everything. Life included.

In the secret chamber of my private
existence, I sometimes peep
out of the looking glass, but
the glimpse you saw of my eye
blown up, is all you can catch
of the tears that line their tips.

there, the lone swan at night
at the edge of the lake
has a story to tell:

in the track-whisper of the
first morning train,
the bell ringing
in the apartment below,
in the whir of the bicycle

that flew past the channel
wetted by the tears
that well up within

those are the words
you have heard
and laughter
ebbing forth
from this echo chamber

Did you call for me?
Reach me then, as I
grasp my own hand,
past where the Lee bends:

I'm curving over
hollow the years
that life plays on
like the reed flute

Yes No Yes No Yes No

Dribble!

No missed passes there.

Yes? Yes. No? (equally, emphatically) Yes!

Cancellation then? Annihilation then?

Sometimes, may be,
all the time, may be,

but, there, subterranean,
somewhere lingering,
sub-zero, a fuzzy something

that we can't make sense of.

invisible, the scaffolding that
erects the edifice of our life.

Yes Yes Yes. Goal!

.

Rain falls on the windscreen
in shades of grey brown and fogged-up blue,
car become boat in the rain-clogged road
floating away like in a Monet,
into the evening mess.

Frayed nerves, rules break, as dangers lurk.
The wiper slow tells its tale own.
Irrelevant discourse, irreverent songs,
the FM trend for DJ fame.

And we have two 'rivers' in our city,
swelling in refuse, bolstered by the rain;
And we have two beaches in our city,
soak in the surf, if you can ignore the rubble;
And we have many parks in our city
where litter garlands our heroes daily;

The last patch of green, cramped between
rising heights all around, accursed of
dump and construction junk,
steals a dying look at the moon late.

A walk in the woods, by the mist, by late evening.
A stroll, warm, through a field covered in snow.
Nice paintings on my concrete wall.

I'm told, the money plant is good for one's health.
Trees, a luxury for our wealth.

These are all good developments.
Hyper malls round the corner.
Home prices, soaring to Kepler.

Please pour in more investment into my country.
Guaranteed, riches grow in multiplication.
The markets are all about manipulation.

Of long an aspiration, secret, that rosaries
don't quench, unexpressed, wells of old,
that anguish burning the deserts, seeking
in austerities and exegeses, an assurance
in tablets and tabernacles, and mourning
the star shooting empty in the sky at night:

a love protects vast, even when what Is
is not this that we worship, and descends
grace, ordinary so to seem obscure, that
wisdom from far must fathom its depths.

Refuse we to believe so, that say who our
father is divine, that so are we too divine.

That which we seek enduring past our
graves, holding dear in our fists clenched,
through torments and tempests and
tenements and temperaments, can
smile at us too as a babe in a manger,

that the King we expect who, to deliver
us from affliction, can a simpleton be,
a Tekton among us: that the Levi and
the Cohen, are risen too amongst us:

and to love, no birth high nor needed is
the learning in law, but to feel as show
those sisters with the heart, who anoint
him in myrrh and in tears, his feet wash.

Then, when a pin-fall echoes ringing
in the enveloping darkness,
and muddied silence eclipses all light,
spreading all around
the mistletoe
guards the path forward,

we must know, it will all end.
For a greater power than all we know,
than even the greatest of Gods,
a secret is enshrined within
the very fabric of existence:
a mystic voice echoes,

from the mists, a boon-giving hand
reassures us lost here:
Whenever in trouble, wherever you be
call and the help shall swell forth
from within the wells
dug empty in the crusts of our being;

Like the last light of the evening
the image of clay disappears
into the waters, that in mystic union
connect earth and the heavens,
appearing again year after year
in yet more lovely forms:

A river of love that swells forth
at our suffering, the cradle
of our weal and woe, the Mother
of everything that ever is.
Nine there might be, the darkest
of nights, but the tenth is

the day of victory for sure!

The many voices of the evening

                   gramophone the sky voice the cell phone
                   the tablet  the notebook, that monotone
                   observer of mutations purveyor of maladies
                   the persistence of memories, pale pink light sink

burning in the fires lighting up the skies

                   an old pang, smitten clang, the pain balm
                   mug-life, pen-knife, kettle-strife, all the sheaves
                   them echo-songs that haunt the drill-wells
                   that are cut wounded and wear fetching

chants, to an yearning oblation

                  bay leaf, curry leaf, yes, them colander coriander
                  there's a rhyme of charlies, looping from
                  our holy wars to now our holy hours with
                  the ombudsman, the omniman, the only God

who used to thunder for the ****

                 old Zeus, the Lord of Betelgeuse, him who we
                 called dead, exhumation, exculpation, exaltation
                 an ancient loneliness that calls from the nether
                 depths, now science, now freedom, now pagan.

Shadow keepers and whisper-mongers
dressed up in hallowed head gears:
An eternal flame weeps
that leads to the heart of the republic.

Fly-by air drills and tableau thrills,
mighty state on display,
don't delight anymore;
Who's the guest of honour
taking the salute this year?
Who cares - this is
a republic in distress.

Dusty statues of heroes past
that gave their blood for a vision
that freed, spruced up today
weep in their silhouette.

One stands accused
of subverting law for partisan ends
Another owes everything
to a last name and what else since?
What choice - this is
a republic in despair;
Crisis everywhere.

But sadly, no one seems to care.
Happy republic day.
There's a new pub down the road.
Exciting malls on the way.
Drink, brother, to wits' end.
The republic don't care.
The republic in decline.

Now we are past the age
where fireworks make sense, when,
colours and sparkles mesmerize.

Let us sit down, friend,
and reminisce the wonder nights:
when the moon came visiting
and stood silent by the palm leaves,
the still leaves sang a song
to the passing winds
to the rhythm of dripping dew.

Everything is finished in a moment
here, like the sparkle-***.

Ages pass before we see,
the whirl that follows
in the wake of the Catherine-wheel
of time is in our eye.

Yet a night comes, lit by rows
of joyous lamps, when of long
lost, our soul returns.

That which we sought in objects vain
is forever our own, enshrined
forever behind the throb of sensation
here, is our undefeated kingdom,
closer than the closest.

A streak of light flashes past the late sky.
It is the distant future.

Or futures, may be?

A knot at the junction of possibilities.
It's a space vessel. Intelligent life whizzing by.

# 1.
Nobody notices the decrepit rock.
Doddering about its axis and orbit by the sun.
Inwardly consumed.
Like Mars.
Long drained dry of all her life.

# 2.
Too hard to resist, the
mysterious peace radiating from the surface -
Contact:
and Earth,
enters the union of worlds.

What road it is that is not to be taken:

for all our righteous protestations
and blaming of the Gods or Daemons,

don't we know the futures unfolding?

# 1. Of long here was once a glorious world.

# 2. Peace in our lands and the universe to explore.

Is it the wind that is wistful, or is it the mist,
slow suffusing the air tinged in the scent of longing?
The leaves, they are mourning the coming days,
the earth all flowers in their teary grief, and
the birds, calling for you, in a hundred voices:
the lamp was lit here of long, but lives bygone yet
when comes the tidal wave - the affliction,
that phantoms they can never be caught
all forms in the ken of my sight, and it is you
that I truly am? there is yet an alluring song
that the siren has in her bag and though warned,
that we cannot tell apart, you from the shadow,
it is the ever-peace and not of the moment
one unseverable not islanded thousandly,
here founded on the essence yet ever unseen

The day when the jasmines embossed on the glass
were stained, nobody ventured into dust-laden streets
from where even the day was retreating.
Shadows, grew tall, four-headed monsters in the lamps
flickering from all over. Chasing a form, I ran
like a child after a severed kite, into the eye of the storm.
Bare footed, numb to pain, all the shards of broken
glass did not matter. At the end of the alley
disfigured receptacles, no doubt dead, lay greeting.
The sirens blared but I did not hear. The oaks
were falling by tomes, but  I did not hear. When
eagles were all that haunted this deathly hamlet,
I did not hear. When at the end of the alley
I fell to my feet and my hands were dyed red
from touching my feet, my eyes were too moist to see.

I walked a spiraling Stare back at the abyss: Leaping forward walking I see the rage of a Cross, four-dimensional Pebbles shattered stained To the side, spiraling back,
cut-up and found what if I walked on them giant drooling drunken mirrors obtuse staircase haunted confusing gravity,
nothing up from mushrooms woman lighted flexing looping,
at apex; a mirage? that can cry; all around; tesseracts; infinite; at quantum.






Lead kindly light, vigil
voice, enlightened
woman,  
angel face.

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

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

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

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

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

Going crimson, the distant sky:
ebbing-evening-like gold-tinged
shades all over; Streaks of blue
fly by the clouds in the breeze
topping dew-wet tips of dried
grass, grown late-autumn-tall
into the pallid arms of winter: a
form, a figure, emerges radiant:
half-covered in the ruddy hues,
blessing hands, flowing robes, lips
in half-smile, oh, the eyes of love!

Will you become the wall and stay silent listening to my wails today?
I count every drop that wets your edifice brick by brick in this rain:
This day of prayer, the festival that comes only once in many years.
Today I stand kneeling before the skies that fumed in thunders
I have weathered life to walk up to this shore where you stand,
Your watery eyes the lighthouse that guided me lost in the sea-storm.
Polyphemus could not stop me, nor the Sirens, not even Calypso.
Here I come, your pilgrim in my hood, I who accepted war over love
The war in which I lost everything: friends, comrades and mates.
O Athene, have my sacrifices been in vain, will you not bring her to
speak? She who has gone silent like a wall, wet in this wailing rain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The year that went by
was interesting:
very interesting,
and I did way many things,
and didnt
do many other things;
Among them,
this one little thing
that I know I should do,
do more, much more, I know,
this tiny little thing:
that like the blue blossom
little hides beneath the bush
mingling its fragrance
with the morning wind;
Who knows of it's existence?
Neither the sun, nor the moon
nor the stars, certainly not
even the birds and men that
move about there:
but it exists, this tiny little
bundle of delight
shining beneath the bush;
Yes, like that little blue blossom
this thing that I must do:
I blue-velvet know it:
saying I love you
yes, I'll do it more, more and more
now, this year that comes
pouring in the rains,
Now when I wade out
into the light.

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

Thorn and flower though of the same stalk -
I'm the earth and you are the sky, vast;
Together, yet so far apart,
You hold in yourself numberless stars
and the cold of the night they shiver in,
the radiance of the moon
and the searing heat of the distant sun;
In my ***** dwell endless tears
that well up in tides every
sultry night when you arrive,
decked in your shimmer;
We are, since reckoning
together, yet so far apart,
thorn and flower though of the same stalk;
I'm dancing in ecstasy spinning topsy
lost holding you in my reverie
I'm a mendicant ambling on
among the sparkling lights
that adorn your visage
We are together, yet so far apart
I'm the earth, you are the sky, vast.

I have visited that hall of broken mirrors a myriad times
still seeking my soul wounded and broken: here this
eikonal space where you still inhabit, somewhere;
For you and me, brother, is written this fate toil and dust,
then, bringing mud in bare hands for a well to be dug
so someone else's daughters could drink of in summer;
Those many hours lost searching for dream kites amidst 
l'hospitals; Time doesn't change the dial, our parchment
lives a palimpsest of who we toil for and why. Now
cut them weeds in your garden, go grow the pumpkins,
wondering by nights, empty the full house of mirages.
Yes, we walk this nigh-trodden path loved of the ancients,
alone in the darkness of the distant suns going to sleep.

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

Three cars are parked by the clearing
I find, every night under the faint light
of the dim street lamps. Two of them,
sedans, red and black, while the other's
a hatchback, white in colour. All dusty
and faded before the occasional wash.

The wheels of the white car have dug
into the mud after the puddles caused
by rains cleared. And flowers and twigs
garment it. I thought they were a big
family but, one, they own  a small car,
and two, they seem to use it sparse?

The red sedan, always parked reverse,
is sometimes gone suddenly away and
at other times, stays parked for weeks.
I've seen him in and out; does he have
work out-stations? Good car, I must
say though, for he's young and single.

The black one is gone most days, and
sometimes, for days together, to return
covered in bird droppings. They moved
recently, this quiet couple who prefer
to keep to themselves. May be they go
on long weekend drives out of the city?

I wonder, gazing at them, sipping my
tea, by the window, late every night.
'Why don't you just go speak to them',
says my wife, tired of my speculations.
'Hmm...not today, bit tired. Tomorrow,
May be', I say, as I jot down these lines.

Tonight, I'm talking to the moon:
'You haven't wept enough?
I'm thirsting for your tears.'

Stars, I cannot bear
seeing you shiver in the distance.

How many are the dawns
where I plucked
gossamer dew on grass-tips!

The cactuses,
they've grown tall this summer.

Prisons and palaces I have seen -
Plenitude, loneliness,

riding in my *****,

as you hold me in your arms,
onward, past joys and despair

Señora, there is yet
a thawing desire for the spring.

Totem poles, bare naked, arranged in a row
fiery headed, emerging out of the mists

Mysterious all light and no flame
by some source subterranean fed,

Either side of a path paved of dark
this moonless night, by the flickering star,

walks the shadow of some being with eight
wondrous arms cast symmetric about its head.

oh the flaming lights, dying into the mists,
extending into the depths of the distant night

Are you of the aeons before time,
how do we ken, us forlorn
of this speck of a world?
Blank we saw the canopy of our world
where stars blink in the dark night
and wept for a love caring and kind;
Lost, fatherless, orphaned
out of our childhood dreams
and we went searching hither
Gilgamesh to the horizon and back;
And you smiled, peasant woman,
hair streaking across the clouds
over the hills, across the vales;
In the still depths, an assurance;
Senora, or is time of the aeon before?
So long before that era then
to us forlorn of this speck of a world,
it matters not, it matters not

Hold your palm to my *****
warmth of the stars
concealed under the tresses
this vast night, where my heart
will beat with yours;
In the stillness of the desert
lone song of the dune,
an arrow shot in the sky,
Here we erase the imprints
of jagged paths that led
us far from this haven;
Your dimpled smile,
ripples that rise slow
and commingle end to end
will settle - placid this
lake on the scale of love
that transcends time

Long in the night, when darkness is deepest
I find you, faint in the clearing among the trees
playing with the silver hues of new-moon light.
When fog fills the air moist with rains, you
hurry into the pond on a trail of stalks bringing
lotuses to bloom and spreading in ripples.
Every lonely morning, you pour crimson ink
to awaken the drooping leaves and sing in the
tiny voices of a hundred swallows welcoming
the slow winds of dawn: you, Senora, fill all
transitions; Early nights, I see, your smiles light
the room in the faint shadows of the dim lamps