Poetry is a gateway to salvation
Where day is subjugated
And darkness reigns
Where dying drains
And spirituality, illuminated.

Tongue is derived
From striking feel
Fusion of words
Portray the deal.

Poets whether inferior
Good or great
Unload the gratifying freight.

A loving touch of a lion
The spark of a smile
A sudden burst of laughter
The paintings in sky
A lone traveller
Bound to nowhere
The drizzling of autumn rain
Stillness, flow
Detachment, devotion
Testament to poetry's motion.

What songs should we sing
In praise of sunshine and
Magic of moonlight
In praise of Nature's beauty
And Animal Kingdom
In praise of solitude
And matrimony
For speech alone
Cannot be captivating
We need Music and Poetry
The twins of creation's kindness
The reasons for hope and peace.

Poetry fuels the fire of fairness
Preserving humanity in life.

Of all walks of life in the world
This is the most undemanding
And it carries a sense of fascination.

Prophets, otherwise known as
Soothsayers, or vaticinators
Or prognosticators are rare in true form
The ones influenced by
Transcendental reality
The ones endowed with balanced duality
They are obscured from the eyes of world
And only operate in sheer privacy.

But the other kinds,
Let's call them imitations,
Are scattered around in numbers
They satisfy their so-called calling
Through fear, fraud and hellfire
Think of it, if such multitude of prophets
Were benevolent in words and actions
The world would be in a better shape.

To prophesy simply means
To foretell future events
There is no hocus pocus involved
No claptrap about it
No need to swamp
The conscience with guilt
Just tidings whether good or bad
To release the emotions pent-up
Due to anxiety, doubt or dread
The fact remains that no prophet
Can always be right but even when
True prophets miss the mark
Their non-success should be regarded
As blessing in disguise.

True prophets never promote their gifts
For they do not value worldly possession
Their profit is spiritual satisfaction
In helping others to better understand
Themselves and the world around them
They fulfill a lofty purpose
Rooted deeply in their nature.

Limpid waters reflect
The shadow of sunset
Chase has long been interred
In catacomb of dreams
And roar of thoughts muffled by age.
Stripped of but all verve
The shriveled fingers dip in
To ripple the reflection of night
Toward the fringe of life's purpose
Toward destiny's flowchart
To galactic conglomerations
Or a shaft of light
That carries with it
Aeons of dictatorial abundance.

Colored clouds furnished the sky
Pink, yellow, orange and white
Imparting mystic images
Stimulating the view
The messages my heart decoded
To be from fire eroded
The gods and goddesses of yore
Rejuvenating my calor
The caress of passing breeze
Seemed no longer mundane
Flock of birds wafting above
Deity formation in disguise
The rays of Sun a rapid river
Flowing into ocean of air
In high plains i heard a song
Soothing my wounded crown,
Inebriating my spirit
Such calmness i had never felt
Such state far beyond pain
As the moments began to last
Intensifying my soul's goal
Time admonished the Earth to roll
And diminish the light fast
Where day endured becoming past.

I'm sitting alone nostalgic
Kettle's been boiling for a while
Water nearly gone
What was it to be made
Coffee, tea or brew of quince
With a touch of tarragon
In your antique pocelain mug
A windfall from college days
You called it a talisman
Cast out of immemorial lands
A sign you must take to heart
And chase your feelings
With reckless mind
Without help from anyone...
Feelings that show you the way
Toward Elysian fields.
The water is all but gone
A drop or two for fond memories
We might have beaten the odds
Planting love in ******* mold
But enchanted by dreams
You chose to contain your love
And follow the singings of your heart
Though you have long been gone
Your illusion still lingers on
Tempting me to feed your love.

Only you are more beautiful than you
Thousand flowers can't beat your bloom
You are a mystifying marvel soft as down
An awakening airing the gift of dawn
Gods must have been high or highly fine
To fashion something incredibly divine.

With lips of rosy gold and emerald eyes
With dusky hair and shapely eyebrows
With sonsy face and alabaster skin
With chisled nose and voice of serene
You are the lone star in the sky of mortals
Shining with fantastic materials
Your flaming aura captures vanity
Topping the height of urbanity.

You are a work of humanizing art
That keeps your mind open
And enriches your heart
Your spirit wanders like the breeze
Spreading the wonders of your kiss
They would lay silver, gold
And diamond at your feet
To inhale the fragrance of your heat.

When twilight settles and shadows rise
To assail the magic of your eyes
Your guardian dragon spews ancient fires
Extinguishing all iniquitous desires
For you are the epitome of natural glory
Portraying Love's genuine story.

Our house is far away
Beyond barren deserts
Behind unexcitable mountains
Where golden meadows thrive
Our house is other side of sorrow
Other side of restless waves
It's behind cypress forests
It is in dreams, in sleeps
Near that sacred garden
Past pear orchards and vineyards
Our house is beyond the clouds
Other side of hopeless pains
At the end of moistened roads
Behind the rain behind the sea
Our house is rich in story
Tales of sour cherry and mulberry
Our house is amidst
Assuring laughters
Full of drowsy souls
It has ponds with patient fishes
Alleys with coquettish cats
Our house is warm and sincere
Old pictures hanging on the walls
Picture of paradise on the veranda
Picture of shoreline in summer
Picture of that day under the rain
Eyes full of tears and a suitcase
Leaving loved ones behind
Leaving kindness behind
Our house is far away
Hidden from world's despair.

Poem is a thing of devotion
That rarefies mind's aperture
To captivate the reader's emotion

Through the winding lane of lines
With unparalled tincture
Matter manifests its mines

As the words waltz in detention
To mold the motion of thought
Rhythm ramifies perception

To reach the crest of credo
Via the voices that rebut
Poem elevates by veto.

Truly gifted poets
Straddle their crafts early on
Some even in adolescence
They have been cursed or blessed
To be kings and queens of utterance.
I never dreamed of becoming a poet
It was furthest from my mind
Then in a sudden twist of eardrum
It happened in my mid thirties.

Out of the recesses of Time
Came the lure and a hook
Shining in enchanted brook
And before i knew it
My heart was snatched
And my movements flustered
When i bit on ambrosiac bait
Drenched in Muse's wine
Drugged and drunk
On sounds and images
I struggled in a pool of words
To assemble what held me infused
To make sense of orphaned views
Swaying between shade and light
Like dancers deprived of audience.

My poetic rapture began
In frenetic rain of ink
preposterous in direction
A poetaster rapt on vapid rhymes
With sounds of poetic crimes
But my craft developed
In piecemeal fashion
And rendered my pen composed.

A minnow of long ago
Has grown into a mackerel
And longs to become a whale
In the ocean Ars Poetica
Though it seems a pipe dream.

Blanket of poetry
Shelters all
Be not coy to clamber
The semantic wall
Like a drop of dew
Indigenous insights brew
In lonely and dark places
The star-studded skies
Carpet of evidence.

Poets are strangers in roads of life
Turning hither and thither much
Striving to even the odds

The tale in their gift of hours
Unfolds verse by verse
Trickling their insightful airs

Off which heaven falls the light
That straddles their perceptions
And hooks a halter to their rides

Some reach the realm of stardom
Some swallow the pill of obscurity
Some meander in limbo of words

Would it be worth their while
To buck and unload the reasons
And abandon noble cause

Would it be worth it to discard
The strings of lingering lyre
In favor of earthly cards

Would it be worth it after all
To chase the wind and not catch it
To rig the wings and not match it.

There is an urge behind this beast
That sends it forth to tangible places
Where profundity drives outward
Drying out the wells of thought.
Like a passive dog barking inward
It sways the soul to some failing end
And remedies of it trap the crowd
Who become bound
To its changing faces.

Sometimes without faith
Things work out fine
Sometimes even God
Can't unravel the vine
Sometimes wheel of Love
Arrives on its own
Other times century of priming
Won't tailor the tone
Love launches without introduction
Myriad advice make it ill-sorted
Sometimes a thousand prayers
Fall prey to breeze
Sometimes without a word
Fortune finds your lap
Sometimes you are a total beggar
And luck is not your friend
Sometimes the whole town
Petitions you
Sometimes I miss the joy of laughter
And my heart becomes
Metal shavings
Sometimes our clear blue sky
Turns suddenly turbid and colorless
Sometimes my breath
Becomes sharp as sword
Sometimes I become fed up
With all of life
Our youth passed away
As if in sleep
Sometimes how soon
Our chances are late
Not my business
Where you are and what you do
Don't go on without Love
For your heart shall grow senile.

By the dawn of day
This parson pilfers
The tongue of its prey
And flutters it at will
Till the shades of evening turn grey
And if fact is there,
All the way into caves of twilight.
It deals with opposition
Quite different way:
A sudden wit, a swift play
Followed by hypersonic heed
And that's it
The enemy is shed
And maintained by lightning whips
Or sweet succession of
Lilliputian leaps.
Don't oppose its sermon for too long
For it stuns the breath
Heaven's assigned it a sign
Lovers can read
And beasts endeavor to destroy it
Welcome its weightless landings
For it never rests
Until nestled by fate.

With an old secret
I sank into her endless eyes
Pondering over laws
That effected such marvel
And leased me to madness
Words were melting in my mouth
She, refraining her turn of phrase
A tear rolled down my cheek
Stirring passion's tongue
A tear rolled down hers
Wielding my soul ablaze
I rejoiced in silence
Lest i betray my confidence
She handled my eyes
Spotting my inference
I could no longer bear
The fruits of my fear
I leaned over and touched
Her sculptured nails tenderly
Freeing my emotion
She smiled coyly
Sealing my devotion.

I'm  free of religion, politics and law
The triad of corruption
The rein of my body and my mind
Rest in the hands of my spirit
I'm not above anyone
And no one is above me
I was born unique
Like everybody else
I've kept it that way unlike most
No superbly skilled mastermind
Can infiltrate my being
No cutting-edge mechanism
Can alter the course of my craft
I'm a drifter in the land of mystery
Magical birds shall sing my history.

If the truth is to deny
The agonies that love invites
My heart shall insidiously aim
To ****** her, days and nights.

But as she agrees to bind
And trust in my constant song
I credulously attend
To care for and court her long.

The lost love returns once again
To plow the fields of credence
Moon's divinity  sinks
In sun-baked desert of emotion,
Unearthing buds of rebirth
In the jaws of reason.
What lunacy boils
In the ruse of treason
As the rhythm rigs
The corporeal bliss.

Good deeds and bad deeds
Whatever they brought
To the hostelry of Fate
Another page turned
In the book of life
Another leaf tumbled to ground
Off the tree of Time
How often
In the midst of graceful shadows
I have been tempted to trail
The vagaries of a moonlit mind
How often
Amid sobering sorrow
I have been led to shed my wings
The road is unknowable
And not knowing takes me home
May your days be springtime
And your spring eternal.

Perfection almost
Paralyzed my psyche,
Should have been a monkey
My head of intentions.
There would have been though
Incarcerating beam
And guilt thermometer
If I had static ego.

Praise to Modesto members
Of this radical society
This medicinal space
That tolls the bells of fellowship
And heartens creative release
Tribute to stalwart members
For each a cog
In a global clock
Turning its handles onward
Toward a loving world
Each a cyber tallow
Melting morsels of care
Keeping the wick of hope aflame
Each a feather
Of a mystical bird
Lifting its wings
To pleiades presents.

Think not
That the journey is fated
For the work remains
And the future's serrated.

I'm not a seasoned poet
As standards go
I have neither the will nor wit
To assemble words that exhale
Sensuous truths of beauty
I have been tossed in poetry's net
To serve and protect its fate
I'm not sharp enough
To detect Moon's climb
For I'm not Archibald MacLeish
I'm no master metaphorician
To equate yellow fog to a cat
For I'm not T.S. Eliot
I'm just here to release the waves
That load my pen to barrage
Their organic ammunition
I cannot delve into the dark show
As smooth as Edgar Allen Poe
I'm not one to sing of love, of wine
For I'm no Rumi nor khayyam
I can't settle music's dust
For I'm not Robert Frost
I can only write what I'm taught
By the shadow rulers of Art
If Yeats is awake
And Shakespeare watching
If Whitman, Dickinson, Keats
And the rest of the sublime ones
Happen to be espying
They would regard me
As an underling
And that would be a win
For I shall never reach
Their poetic spin.

To survive simply means to prolong life
And for what?
God's plan or the Devil's program.

I survived many plights
Many traps I escaped from
Though I didn't know why
Was I supposed to be doing God's work?
Or was it the Devil's device
That kept me alive?
I might have been acting on instinct
Or doing the bidding of some
Unseen force interested in my survival.

I can honestly say
That I'm liable for misfortunes
Arising out of my continuity...
Why couldn't I just be laid to rest
And avoid all displeasing circumstances?
Well, such is the way of the world
One is totally unaware
Of creation's objectives
Though some may argue that the purpose
Is the flow of all living things
If so, then how do they justify
The extinction of certain species
And what about a useful tradition,
Belief or culture no longer extant
They did not possess life but
Certainly gave rise to a way of living
Others may say the intention
Is to live a long life
To reach a ripe old age
Which effects expansive experience
All the same, old age presents
Many complications
Not worth putting up with
Besides, so many young ones
Experience the butcher's knife
Through no fault of their own.

It is a given that some are born
Luckier than others
And the ratio favors the unlucky ones
Some of whom fall short of surviving
Despite their earnest efforts.

Oh, the agitation of survival.

I can straight out say that I'm a survivor
That I have passed the test of evil
And to what end:
Desertion of beauty
Exclusion of excellence
And the application of chicanery.

Resonance of words
Sway to-and-fro
In the dead of night
The deep sea welcomes
Swimming oar
Splash metaphores
Fertilizing the white leaf
With bird droppings
The right is a wrong
And left, stone flower
Heaven lives next door
Her eyes a wilderness
Hell is downright here
Blazing a roar
In stillness of poet's pond
Moon reflects
The passion of Truth and Lie
As Morning star waits
To outshine the darkling grace.

Celestial blessings are abundant
Competing with worldly curse
Which shall be the victor
In tours of Human Race
That entirely depends my friends
On the number of dreams
Sailing the rough waters
Or floating on halcyon seas.

The little bird alights
Near the windowsill
Saturated with
Communing eyes and gestures.
Though she would rather
Lay it all on the line
At best she gets away
With a modicum of her tidings
Knowing the moment's impulse
Shall sepulchre her understanding.
But the magic has been done
And esoteric wheels in gear
To rear the revelation ride.

Chattering of china
Twittering of utensils
The scoop of melting grease
Manifesting the release
The smoke of sizzling meat
Saturating the nostril
And the waitress
Half slavish
Flirts here and prattles there
To dodge the malice of moment
In the ring of endless hustle
Where refills are free
And rewinds obliged.

Days are passing faster
Than I can recall yesterdays
The unobservable speed
Taking its toll upon my youth
Leaving me half hearted
In pursuit of relations.
Is this the way of the world
That strips you of all your verve
For a debt that must be paid
To compensate the privilege
That creation offers?
So what does it all mean
Here today and gone tomorrow
After a lifetime of reflections
I have yet to understand
The true meaning of my own life
Let alone life as a whole
Are we just moving in circles
For the pleasure of unseen forces
Or is there an invisible rhythm
Pulling us like magnet
Into unmistakable finality.
Either way is an insult
To our creative capacity
To our potential as intelligent beings
Then again humans are cursed
With dichotomy of perception
And perhaps this is the reason
For our misguided attempts
To invent utopias and distopias.
Just like water though not as swift
Energy must level itself
Far too few come close
To balanced frontiers
Far too fewer
Experience the coalescence
Of Heaven and Earth
While the rest struggle
In a pool of mystifying policies.

What is a feeling
And where does it come from
Is it a vibration
From the earth of your being
Or a joyous image
Of leaking tears
Is it a ping
In cerebral engine
Or a sting off psychic mirror
Is it a continuum of living signs
Or a spectrum of ancestral mines
Whatever it is
Two things are sure
Once it is owned or disowned
It never leaves you alone.

Where I come from
Is still a mystery to me
By "I" I mean my essence of course
And not the flesh
For flesh comes from another flesh
Going back all the way
To the Neanderthal human and beyond.

It is difficult for me to pinpoint
The origin of my whereabouts
I have only notions here and there
Which are only self-satisfying
And do not observe logic
Or scientific principles
However, logic and science
Are not quite mature as yet.

When I give free rein
To the drift of my thoughts
Letting them be carried here and there
In the sky of identity
I could come up
With a host of possibilities
Each more visionary than the other:
I could be the offspring
Of the Man on the Moon
I may be a bundle of dazzling photons
From Sirius for others think
I have a brilliant mind
My fire may have originated
From the bowels of a mountain
Due to my spiritual strength
And rebellious nature
I could be Nietzsche's Overman
Transmitting Zarathustra's ideals
I see myself as the egg of freedom
At times hatched by Archaeopteryx
I may be Mother Nature's anti- hero
Come to set things aright
I might as well be Pax's posterity
Setting back the circus of Life
My core may have come
Solely from Mother Earth
Or come from an alien nation
Beyond the Milky Way
My nature may have erupted like lava
Out of a falling meteor
Sometimes I get the notion
That I have come from a magical sphere
Promoting the *******
Of some sorcerer's scheme
I might be all of the above
A votary of Universe's infinite philosophy.

Colors of origin cannot be painted
In black and white
Despite Night's image
And diligence of Daylight.

It is the dumb hour of night
Bereft of all maneuvers
Shadows have come and gone
Spending their agendas
The canvas bland as space
Drapes mute and motionless
As hidden truths
Not a stroke felt
Not a single word flickers
Off intersecting ink
There must be a gale
Deep into the mind
Winnowing
Chaffs of memory.

Years don't make wisdom
They just make old age
Generations have passed
Through the turned pages
Yet I'm no wiser
Than credulous kid of past
Who charged everything to heart
Whiling away the hours
No, the years don't make wisdom
They decelerate celerity of youth
Compromising clarity of Love
Years are but bricks building walls
Between factual and imagined calls
Between relations of understanding.