Some memories I give her
to drown in dark water,

like an old revolver
thrown into a river,

nights spent drinking
the moon under a table

made of maple and fables
we once believed true

love lost, found
and lost again together

where only the mountains
and seas last forever.

I'm reading poetry at the cremation ghat
amid chanting of God's name
while ferrying and burning the dead.

The noise unsettles me a bit
as sets me thinking of my own death
that by all means seems closer than farther.

Yet I get the relieving feel
reading poems would heal
all the agonies of my flesh
and take me to that spiritual level
where I would take death as
passing into another dimension.

I'm not much of a religious person
but have always felt devoted to my kindred
seeking transcendence through them.

The best thing I'm hoping right now
is when I burn
someone would amid chanting of God's name
read poetry at the burning ghat.

Comes a time
when the mathematics
of the years
becomes more about
- than +,
÷ rather than x.

When wisdom gained
< vitality lost,
and dis-ease > health.

A good night's sleep
and some energy ≈
happiness.

Living is
tangential
to survival,
and not
necessarily
congruent.

Always knew I was light.
Constantly running from prisms

thought I contained the spectrum
if I held on to everything.

Trying to shine new in the old light
till comparison shorted the whole thing.

All my past encounters now a mirror
each gathered around me.

You'd think I would see the truth. But
I'm only left wondering:

how I surrounded myself with so many
and why they are all strangers.

Refracted into forks till I was just going in circles.
Avoiding the breakdown ends there anyways

The universe holds the spectrum and prism
that wishes you to diffuse as a ray.

Know the rhythm of your wavelength,
the universe catches up with all of us.

Messengers bring me no messages,
teachers do not raise your voices,
like a flag I will raise my hand, like
a mad dog looking up on a hill
in the afternoon, I will smell you out
in the dead water where my tongue
is held captive, if it is to be silent
it will be silent in my mouth
where darkness and the scent of roses
come out like smoke, I smoke alone
in the woods to be smoking
so I can say I have smoked,
I call out madam
shall I undress you for a fight,
the wars are naked that you wage tonight
in a bed as broad as a battlefield
as the sword you mock the fallen with
and the angel says what is dead is
dead, I dream what I dream.

There was a girl
I used to swap paperbacks
and spit with, once
I fixed her wiper blades,
I remember the soft dead wings
on the windshield,  pretty
as you please

She was alone in her shoes
listening to something
that kept getting darker
and glowing like morning
on the oil spilled under her truck,
she was drifting through
the rosewater of her soft red hair

She only wanted to be rolling
off a swollen river, sliding
out of a clean slip, turning
over in a deep sleep, trailing
a shimmering thread, hiding
under a pile of wet leaves

Then there she was sailing
in her river of blood,  going
white and smelling like smoke
from a struck match behind
closed blinds on a ceramic floor,
a white blouse red as a sharp knife
collecting the light of mourning.