Playing with words
Flirting with thoughts
Hiding behind metaphors
Seeking an expression
Prancing in the past
Down memory lanes
Reliving the joys
Relieving the pains
Painting a future
Winking at the possible
Gazing at the probable
Sighing at the impossible
Poet is at work
Creating a uni-verse.

I want to dance until
my feet go sore
my anklets break free
and I faint on the floor.

I want to sing until
I lose all my senses
my lungs tear apart
and my larynx comes to
a screeching halt.

I want to laugh until
tears pour out my eyes
the darkness around me
gets dissolved in my
laughter's floodlights
and all the existing walls
shatter and break
by the sound of my guffaw.

I want to be like that
singing dancing laughing, mad woman
whom we like to stop and watch,
shake our heads in disapproval
and then secretly think –

'I wish I could be crazy like her!'

She would
borrow
the words from
whispering winds

She would steal
the tunes from
singing birds
and would
create
a world of
songs around her

Indifferent to
the shackles of time,
unaffected by
the fetters of fate,
she would sing
many songs

Songs of hope
songs of love
songs of joy
songs of freedom
songs of songs

Today

I saw
her wandering free,
free from fetters
shackles and all...

I saw
her singing along
with those birds
from whom she used to
steal her tunes,
and kissing the winds
that used to
lend her their words...

And I heard
the sky whisper
to the earth:
'She has
enchanted
her dreams
into life!'

~

i know, you thought it just a bow,
a pretty band from blues to red,
’cause that’s all we were told
in sunday school for kids.
think it myth or truth or mystery,
the story’s incomplete,
if outside the lines of childhood
we cannot grasp or think.
for a bow is but a weapon,
’til its hung upon the sky,
but its symbolism's lost,
when we take it down to fight.
its band of colors make
our band of brotherhood;
its peace in men entrusted,
to lead from strife to good.

in colors of the spectrum,
in bow, all skin is on display;
a creator’s ev’ry wish,
let peace on earth remain.
so next we see the bow,
that follows after rain,
consider love and harmony,
a life laid down for friend.
think of laying down the weapon,
the feud, the fist, the fight,
no need to strike the darkness,
we can simply turn on light.
consider colors are all needed,
yes, each and every one;
apart we draw our boundaries,
but blend together, makes our sun.

so be a hunter, be a fighter
be a bowman... every one
but be light dispelling darkness;
we need all colors in this hunt!

~

*post script.

this is likely the first of a few pieces i hope to post about our nation’s color-war; a matter my wife and i have been deeply contemplating with growing consternation as time goes on.  having worked together in heavily, color-blended environments, we are broken by the walls that are being built up, rather than being broken down.  i do not love my sweet wife in spite of her differences; no, i love her dearly because of them!  thus, racial accord doesn’t mean we need to be the same. it simply means we need to learn to love and appreciate what makes us different.  color blindness is not the answer some once thought it; but color awareness without prejudice is a start.

My mother was a writer.
I remember her,
papers spread out upon a bed sheet in the sand,
stacked pebbles protecting her work from the wind
as I made drip-castles at the water's edge
and braided crowns from wild poppies.
I would run to her so she could
rub grape sunscreen into my sandy shoulders
and I asked her once,
“Mama,
is that poetry?”
and she said “No little one,
you are poetry,
this only tries to be.”
and I thanked her,
and ran back to the water
to search for flat stones to skip,
and thought no more of poetry.