gather flowers
to burn your whitish
corpse—

(flashes of
you, the sand, warmer
waters: floating in the
blue

I’m letting it hit me
Like a wave
Washing over me
Wet soil on a grave

I’m letting it burn
Like hot coals
Beneath my feet
Thought myself so bold

I’m letting it suffocate
Like a dark plastic bag
Pulled over my mouth
A marble statue made to gag

I’m letting it take control
Like a fortune teller
Whispers of possibility
What if I hadn’t met her?

I’m letting it sicken me
A twist with no hunger
Flicking me, eyes closed
Like sleeping through thunder

I’m letting myself fall
Far down the rabbit hole
In hopes I’ll land and look up
To my name being called

graves are silent in passing;
stone withers like snow
cracked and weathered: the horizon
pales in shades of blue.

Some days you can only paint in blacks,
midnight, sage, mulberry sometimes—
the shades of rotten meat. An artist
can only make of what is given.

Some days smearing violent
Crimson, scarlet, florid visions
is not enough. A painting is a mind
captured by a moment. But moments pass.

One day riotous chartreuse,
vermillion, the full spectrum waltzing
across your iris will not fatigue you. You
will brush dawn across your skin.

pointedly blurring in colours
and tones, you captured your
strokes in brittle clay fragments

we were consanguineal—
we were blood and oil—the

whirl of
your canvas sounded like a thousand
raindrops.

On golden shores on white sands,
Stands a blue catamaran.
With toil, love, skillfully made.
Though paint chips off, colors fade.
It's built from logs of hardy wood,
A fisherman... his livelihood.
He sails each day, with hopes new,
His life, his love on a rippling blue.

On calm waters when sun shine beams,
When the shimmering bay glistening gleams,
When waves dance, in tandem sway
Where sun rays wink, hide and play.

On vengeful days when waters mock,
When menacing gales toss and rock,
When dark clouds engulf the bay,
When the world anchored safely stays.

But the sun kissed fisherman,
Sails each day his catamaran..
Never tethered on safe shores he,
For thats not where he's meant to be.

As he sails the coastal bay,
I see him fade.. far away
Singing songs, in the distance he,
His love, his life, his hope..the sea.

1.

Each of us like you
has died once,
has passed through drift of wood-leaves,
cracked and bent
and tortured and unbent
in the winter-frost,
the burnt into gold points,
lighted afresh,
crisp amber, scales of gold-leaf,
gold turned and re-welded
in the sun;

each of us like you
has died once,
each of us has crossed an old wood-path
and found the winter-leaves
so golden in the sun-fire
that even the live wood-flowers
were dark.

2.

Not the gold on the temple-front
where you stand
is as gold as this,
not the gold that fastens your sandals,
nor thee gold reft
through your chiselled locks,
is as gold as this last year's leaf,
not all the gold hammered and wrought
and beaten
on your lover's face.
brow and bare breast
is as golden as this:

each of us like you
has died once,
each of us like you
stands apart, like you
fit to be worshipped.

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat--
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.