When moon like an empty plate
mocks the hunger
the famished bones hunt for a morsel.

Clinks of cutlery fires the belly
aroma of meals calls like a melody

there's a table full of happy faces
chewing and chuckling and chattering
picking eating dropping and littering
their plates are full aha never less
food after food over food always
a fire in oven a bed of clean sheet
never they're they're never short of heat
eyes that are heavy droop easy soon
behind tightly shut windows to the moon.

Snuffed out will ***** out all traces of light
they break into wails rending the night
nothing now moves over the dead town
except the bones with moon as the crown.

When we were eighteen
sang the three women in chorus
and the bus burst into Spring.

When we were eighteen
they giggled and sang

the bus was a garden
the seats swings in the wind
the passengers angels and fairies

When we were eighteen
sang the three women
men beamed and the women blushed
as they broke into chorus
when we were eighteen

the ride was free
and they all stood up
their bones bellowing the chorus
their skin shining in the Spring

the child grew into eighteen
the old descended into that golden year
never knowing when their stoppage came
when one after the other they got down
and again it was a bus on the road
but with the whiff of Spring
eternal in the crimson blush
of the sun setting and rising
its engine and axle and tyres whirring in chorus
when we were eighteen

Huddled in the lantern light
they sing of life and death
of love long lost but living
in the ashes of time
a yearning for home
walking the long roads sunburnt
in blistered feet
in the knowledge
healing of pain
is only a rain away
and life is too short
but never too short
to bathe in the power of god
that makes a pauper
be a king
under the canopy of stars.

Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

He hasn't buried the baby within
but today he buried the ashes of his baby
crying like a baby
as the river devoured the bone dusts
and all the remnants
of the cuddles and kisses
hollowing him to remember
the guest of his blood
that would feed on his grief
for the rest of his life.

Don’t come to the cemetery at night Peter Xalxo would say
If you are so inclined make your visits in the day
For often in the evening when exam worries were gone
I would go to the cemetery and sit on some tombstone.

I think boy the ones from the other world make visits at nights
And they would not love to find living souls upon their sights
Why intrude their peaceful home and not leave them there alone
When the time after the sunset they think to exclusively own!

Having said this with a grave face he would lower his voice still low
While on nightly posts at the graves I’ve seen in the dark some glow
And at moonlit nights on duty’s round heard footsteps around me
I would advise boy not to step into at night at the cemetery.

He used to tell more such tales to instill in the boy some fear
But come the next evening and at the cemetery I would reappear
For I loved the moon bathed solitude the trees’ darkened shed
The tranquility of the place in quiet company of the dead!

All said I wouldn’t leave out in this account one truthful fact
Uncle Peter’s stories had some effect some impact
They colored my times at the cemetery spent at nights alone
I seemed to feel they were moving the graves’ marble stone.

Then one night as I was coming out around nine o’clock
To my horror found the gate closed with an iron lock
Bewildered I stood there knowing no other ways to go
When there appeared a shadow heard the voice of Peter Xalxo.

I told you boy not to loiter here not disturb their peace of night
This ground here the dead walks now though beyond your sight
Run home and never come back his voice in whisper talked
Some more words he mumbled before got the gate unlocked.

That night at the dinner table my father told mom this
He was such a good man and a great friend to miss
But God only decides in his garden which flower to pluck
Peter Xalxo died this evening suffered a heart attack.

Up the steep steps
as you reach the age old fort,
you breathless behold
the green valley down below
and that magnificent mound of rock
by the name Robinson Hill.

In the sweet silence of birds' chirping,
the winds reek of rifles and gun smoke
and you hear not the rustling leaves
but bullets echoing all over the valley
one more down, another down
as they held the fort till fell breathless
passing into tombs and memorials
you read to pause for a breath
up above the green valley
where the grasses grew over the blood.