"cremations" poems
Myself caught in the heatwave sunlight, brown eyes
furrowed in the sun, scarf loose on my neck/
the transcendental Denpasar morning-birds
are playing their melodies in my head still,
three years post-Indonesia.
All of my soul to India now,
sky the pink of painted elephants
on Jaipur dawning,
my afterlife was somewhere here
perhaps two generations ago, chances are.
Vijay Raghav Rao and Alla Rakha
playing the Tabla/via earphones/treading the
Funary Box City (Kashi) future Spring
hands held together keeping calm pace.
Looking about, my twenty-two year old face
catches humid wind
S
I
L
V
E
R
S
H
O
P
tattered bike leaning on the gated guest house entrance
PERENNIAL AZURE SHIVA SITS CROSS LEGGED/
COBRA NECKLACE IMITIATONS ON THE GODDESS THROAT/
MEDITATING SHIVA/
dulled from years and corrosion.
Brahmin center of the market street
flapping it's tail,
sweat beads from my forehead bleeding
to oily pavement.
At last the months have come for the river Ganges,
April penumbra/savage thunderclap
while school children uplifting the heart
AND MIND
are ROARING in their laughter
the CONTINENTAL DISCORD OF JOY
sleeping with their eyes open
while others are too tired for the Earth.
Sidney Bechet floating swan songs during
the black hour cremations/
“Bechet Creole Blues”
CATERWAUL IN THAT VOID
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF DEATH/
LUNACY OF LIFE
(I've arrived at the simultaneous crossroads
of both)
searing flesh in open air pyramids/
Manikarnika Ghat,
Asia F
L
O
W
S
through dreams
like inevitable prophecy
and as ash blends with stars
the CITY seems fulfilled
and mystifying
in it's
(((((RESPLENDENCE)))))
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 3:40 PM UTC
*we are carbon,
ashes,
craters,
two towers,
after.
rubble,
mist and manholes.
your eyes on a
cloudy day.
the aftermath of destruction.
we are leftover scratches
on gas chamber walls,
corpses,
cremations, and gravestones.
vision without glasses,
abandoned buildings,
the residual newspaper ink on
your palms.
we are static, crumbling nihilism,
aged hair, and dust sifting through
frost bitten fingers.
cavities, apathies,
blank television screens,
sketches, ghosts, absence,
dust, collapse,
driftwood.
we are driftwood, not enough
for a life-raft,
sometimes, where there is smoke,
there is no fire.
i guess it’s where we were always heading,
dulling, deconstructing, disintegrating.
after all, every thing
reduces to this.*
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 10:42 AM UTC
Hallucinations in life"s desert accompanied with my unquenchable thirst
Lacerations fade to scars to prove luck"s point that it wasn"t near the worst
Temptations conspire with times inevitable push as we all learn we"re cursed
Plantations wear us down as we are all slaves until our souls have traversed
Fascinations are shared before we hitch a ride on the grim reaper"s dark hurst
Elations are defiled like a child"s smile transformed after the last bubble"s burst
Cremations are compiled as ashes drift away off cliffs and are forever dispersed
Vibrations guide us through the universe so please join me as we dive head first
Take my hand my friend and lets go be free
No need to worry about having any eyes to see
trust me as our souls dance in the wandering sea
And accompany me through this glorious eternity
We are Universally linked paralleled to every degree
Soul searching for the destination that they call journey
Brave souls are blessed with this human shell as a test
A life materially possessed leads to a lonely empty nest
So don't waste time depressed on this short epic quest
You"ll forget all the rest when our souls have coalesced
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 6:16 PM UTC
The discs have been
thrown in the air
and arrange themselves
and repeat themselves
bombarding this score
into a dozen or more
equally unsatisfying cremations
A glimpse of a temple
gave several new designs
for which I never intended
to borrow:
and the whipped up dirt
and broken reels of tape
have multiplied
and piled themselves
upon a stake
When awake,
I grab the shards
of horizon -
or try, anyway.
Jul 1, 2010
Jul 1, 2010 at 7:14 AM UTC
At Warehouse I wander
As light seeps from the sky
Among the cold, grey tombs
Of the ancient dead
In this timeless landscape
So remote and lonely
Forgotten tongues whisper
With the wind through the heather
A harvest moon
Not yet quite full
Is the only witness
To the truth of these stones
My spine tingles
The mind races
I smell the smoke
Of my forebears cremations
And as I leave
The moon a guardian
Over these distant graves
I sense communion
Written after visiting the Warehouse Chambered Cairns on 26th August 2015.
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 1:11 PM UTC
you know, I have always wished for that kind of love
that fed the heart,
the one that I thought I had such a grasp on,
that faced people at face value in such a
eye-rolling, sea level way.
that could reach the stars and constellations and planets
at arms' length.
that opened my eyes and arms and mouth like a crash
bound to happen, leaving me open and scattered in
public view.
the kind where I say, "baby, let's have a screaming
match 'cause we don't do that much and it will lead
to us touching and using words like 'baby...'"
The kind of love where when I find you and you find me
our two universes will collide so that the earth will see
the illuminated fires above.
I want to see your heart flutter against my eyelids to
easily say I'm not blind anymore.
I want to feel my body take flight, kind of like
dandelion seeds spinning, dizzying,
plummeting to the ground.
I could supply your lungs with oxygen
if my guard is down,
I will swallow air to inflate your cherry red balloons
til they pop,
because life, isn't simple like that.
we never take notice of how our bodies love the taste of
atmosphere.
I guess we crave it like nicotine and coffee filled to the brim,
but it's nothing like the big love theories and whale tales
in the depths of the ink night.
I always wanted to talk to god through the white holes
in that night sky, to ask him about the finances of this
sort of thing;
will I be in debt with loose threads and dead ends?
whether it has messy dynamics, I still wish for it.
and so I begin folding and creasing the small part
of one thousand cranes, but that's when I realized,
it was only a
myth.
with that, I ignite the paper ornaments to crumble
into our little universes gathering to the seams
and stitches at the wrists covered in hopes to
guide our emotions through the ridges of our hands.
so I put those cremations of wishes in my piggy bank
for a rainy night, where god isn't available to answer
my questions
until the next morning.
Mar 8, 2011
Mar 8, 2011 at 3:17 AM UTC
The beige grass is calling out.
To raindrops that drip.
It's dying of dryness, it begs for relief.
After the sunshine, the dry grass calls grief.
The danger that comes from a being with a match.
As all nature's magic dispatched in a flash.
Trees all blazing, look amazing.
Conjured up pictures.
Destroyed habitats.
Ruined in a flash.
Forest homes and camp sites.
Fires, cremations.
Accidentally by wombats.
Not obeying.
The beige grass is gone.
(c)LIVVI
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 11:08 AM UTC
A road runs down Harvard called Massachusetts Avenue as if
we own the whole state. Because we do. We took the land
from its people. Violently. And who is we? Ambulances
burn red nightly-casual outside the window of this pale yellow
building opposite the smaller university hospital. The red
reminds me of a different kind of burning. Of bodies.
Wonderful cremations of us down that tree over there next
to the libraries that now belong to us. And who is us?
I am reminded of the burning because the red is part
of the white and the blue and the sirens and the men
launching out of their cars with faces saying, in strange
tongues, strange indeed, And who
are you?
Nov 9, 2018
Nov 9, 2018 at 4:54 PM UTC