In your wake,
In your silence,
a subtle soundtrack
swarms my head.

The melody of beeping monitors,
The rhythm of knuckles on bed rails,
And the verses, pitched in pain.

They only grow louder, still.

But, grabbing at the void
for any last sound of you,
I hear the wind rushing by
as the world just keeps turning,
I hear the cackling of atoms
that never stopped their motion,
I hear the grass strands
rudely displacing your plot’s dirt,
And reality itself popping
as it rips apart at the seams.

Truth is, I thought I’d feel silent without you,
But it’s grown louder, still.

Dance with me,
One last time as the daylight dims
The smoldering heaps
Substitute for candle-lit walkways
A final ritual in romance as we revolve
‘Round we twirl to the music of crackling embers.

The sun above is being choked by the smoke of the dead
The earth itself is blacker than endless nightfall
Nothing grows, as even the dead oaks rot
Their desperate limbs outstretched, begging for salvation,
But the orange glow catches your creamy face,
You haunt me, in a world where beauty is dead.

In a sea of flame,
Surrounded by the nameless remains
We waltz and twist,
Contort into one,
Asking the skyward palisades
“What have we done?”

Obsidian rain reigns down
Cutting your perfect porcelain
As the red flows like waterfall fountains
We find ourselves on the verge of the abyss
A single tear mixing with your wine,
Could not stop how sweet you are,
We found an epilogue,
Befitting our dreams,

Dance with me,
One last time,
‘Round we twirl to the sound of shards
Even now, bared to the world,
Reach out your hand,
And now it’s yours.
My heart.

My god,
What have we done?

The inevitable death,
once, only momentarily, dies—
just for a pause,
like a blink in open eyes—
then passes this
whooping, precious,
deathless garland
over to her.

Just in one single sip,
you drank it in—
that painstakingly unique,
imperishable elixir of being.

The timeless time sprawls,
spotless and fine,
across the ages—
echoing through undying rhymes,
tuned into countless tunes
on this deathless-dead skeleton
that breathes, that hums:

"Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Aalameen."

The note before the sun sings,
in the Night of Creations—
within, and without.
Translation...
is never enough.

The nexus of time
burst across the ages.
The dew left the rose—
not to fall,
but to stir
the ocean’s deep heart.
Credible, nature!

The blue peahen of the sky
scurries down
into that innermost drop—
it flows in the soul,
in a thousand and one rhythms,
in the swell of song,
a perfect, complete drop.
As if sound itself remembered its beginning—
The melody-nymph,
in the orchestra of the sea,
lifts the flute to her lips.
Oh, that first music—
mind-blowingly perfect.

There — in that single drop —
floats the sea,
floats the full moon.
A blue lotus shadow
rests on the ocean’s deepest floor.

Clothed in blue upon blue,
sky-hued —
forever shading the air.
Her panache, midstream,
remains out of reach.

Who could ever touch
that forever peerless ******,
that numinous, untouchable water-nymph?

Into the vast,
sea-wide goblet
of Tahura’s wine,
all the thirsty warriors
drowned deep.
Even time took a deep breath of Ma,
knowing not what was coming.
Then you arrived — wondrous Shaaqi,
from the far side of the eternal shore.

And in a single sip,
Your Highness —
you poured death
full of immortal sweetness.

Start to finish,
all in all,
everything came
to soothe the eyes —
even the grave-dirt
was placed in your hands.
A single fistful of loosened soil…
You became life
to this death-struck soul,
yet never did you let it slip
into life’s final flow.

How can I ever forget you —
in life?
Or in death?

Famished languished fingers reach skyward
As parched sea-salt-dried mouths open
Barely even a whimper escapes into the distance
Bemoaning in unison like gulls calling.

We wished for a future,
Devoid of reality
Avoidant of the derelict
Consumed with digital consumption —
While soiling the very veins of tree roots.

We make gods out of flawed humans
Who sings siren songs or plays the part in plays
Collecting praise and earthy riches,
Gold coin amnesia to sell their bodies for a hit of applause.

Meanwhile, our churches are empty,
The pews collect dust,
No one remembers his name
No one praises in fear or love
It’s pedestrian, mundane, a common act
Meaningless like Valentine’s Day
We took the magic and turned it into paper collage art.

It happened with a crack of the world,
A thunderous voice anguished across black clouds
And strikes of lightning showing enraged veins
And birds, like angels, fell from the heavens,
Crashing upon the rain-stained and wetted soil.

We should have heeded the warning.

As the fires are burning,
Scorching skin to cement
Melding bone to iron rod,
California is lost, gone to the water
Drunk from the ocean,
Sand storms from the Valley of Death
Filling their orifices
Swath away the faithless in a single blow.
And behold the rising of the deep below.

Ashes befoul the air like a rainstorm
Choking oxygen from the lungs,
We bathed in the currents of poisoned waters
And bore children in chimeric horrors,
Cosmic old ones stir under their beds uncomforted
As the earth stirs, and breaks her silence.

Death would be a simple act of grace and mercy
If only to watch along purgatorial veils of fog
As we sing like beached sirens.

A hymn to the skyward palisades
Where no one is there to listen.

Branscombe blossom
fair and light
coats the grass with pink and white,
mossy branch and apple breeze
stirs the limbs of dancing trees
orange tips and foraging bees,
no sweeter does the blackbird sing
than in an orchard filled with spring

As the embers rise from magmatic tides
The life we lived, loved in lusted lips
As we slid our pride between her fertile hips
We birthed the ******* of our own demise,
Now we can’t see beyond the tears from
It’s acidic eyes!

What have we done?
What have we done?

Oh father on high
Do you even hear us whimper?
The days grow short as the fires grow higher
Burning to find salvation,
Congregate the ground and let me dance within the sea of flames
Burden us no longer with misery,
Ascend us on high leave us not behind!

O father, what have we done?
What have we done?

Dark as black could ever be
Caught in a lungful plead to bury me
A thought dithers, as the light withers
Flesh flayed to the roasting pits
As the echoes linger,

She reaches from her core
To engorge on all the parasitic hosts
That rot her, treated her essence like a *****
We spoke of natural beauty,
As we ripped the limbs of her trees.
We spoke of natural beauty,
Piling high our heaps of **** —
Suffocating her shores.

The sky went black,
His voice struck,
Percussion in unison,
Opened wide the gates,
As unclean ones came,
Carry off the weak,
Carrion feasts from open graves,
This forsaken place,
God has left this waste
Weld shut the gates!

O father,
What have we done?
What have we done?
Oblivion!