I
A flower that smells of pure bliss keeps an ear to the ground
It's a serene one sitting beneath the stars down on earth
The moon, far, far, seven seas away, loves to drop into her lap.

The Bay of Bengal billows, music has gotten beneath the skin.
The leaves furl out off the deep wood with the birds
singing out to the top of the trees, rhyming with the leafy dance.
Heavensent, that was in one sanguine day in the spring.
The Mother’s Language Movement in 1952 sprouted like this
on the eighth of native Falgun month—oh magic did it unleash!

On that day our beloved brothers were shot dead
They could swallow the bullets with smiles but won’t give up
demanding the official status for the Bangla mother tongue.
Angels wrapped round the martyrs amid lamenting mothers
Laid them on Falgun’s perfumed ground bleeding corpses
Seas of roses bloomed and blew them out red, red kisses!

They are gone not the stone wall of consciousness they raised
Ah, at the sprout of the spring what were they echoing?
Ingrained deep in the soil the pre-designing voice in the planning?
Who can tell? The world gels on February 21 in celebrating!

The angels then snapped up our martyrs’ souls off the land,
placed them on a piece of Heaven where they can hear the jingle.
Down on earth, a nation springs up, has gotten its wake up call!
Stepping on the sweetening arc of the mother tongue melody
the stone turns a flower, all in a butterfly moment soaring to victory.
Thanks to the movement - Bangladesh itself later comes to be!

II
The sun comes down to the rose painting on the land
In the heavenly Falgun hues it nibbles some wild summer dreams.
“Serene songs of earth stirring the water,” like it comes into play,
rowing the cloud bubbles singing in southern breeze.
Ah, a walk on the sun-kissed kaleidoscope land is a pure bliss.  
Every blossom spray of the wind is soothing sweet
Hop on and play straight to the ruby heart, as if it's a flute.

Mother tongue means speak free, fearless, in full streaming.
Speak the heart to the world without the fear of losing the cloud
that will listen, bouncing back on the brink of the sky river.
Then what did one say, hear, or was awed by in the blooming Falgun?
Could it have been the spring humming in her native lingua
or King David singing in mother tongue by babbling brooks
what in any other language, even with a silver tongue, isn’t possible?

Allah has listened to our martyrs’ crying mothers and fathers
The martyrs’ souls whisk through the galaxies and starry fair.
Soar high over the clouds, take the rainbow's *** of gold away,
like a hue turns 360-degree in the colourwheel bask into the colour.
still, dip the toes in Bangla mother’s soil salted with perfumed art
like Himalayan water swirling down melting deeper deep down
this magicland is polished for everyone be it you, a fairy, a star
or off the ploughed-out barrow a walked out wonder!

A pristine voice duo’s voiceprint gleans to the spring in muse,
Pops in a beauteous scurry and speaks in the mother tongue!
Hidden within the earthy depth, only emerges with time,
only dances in tangent, that day slipped out with the butterflies.
And finally the blue nymphs take the plunge drop down the sky  
that day the mother’s voice triumphed, whose is the most original!

My heart I bequeath you
O’ stillness of my universe
I bequeath you my sanity
Spreading this cloak of being in your dust
I bow to your twinkling stars
To the waxing sun and scented grass
I bow to your springing rivers
To the parched grain and blossoming flowers
I bow to the warmth of my lover
And want of my beloved
I bow to your saccharine figs
And honeyed nectar in chalice filled
I bequeath my mortality to your transiency
Blinded by this light in game of ruse
Into your cohesiveness, I fuse
In blinkers to win the race
Espying a king in glass
Presage of being a slave

Yet when darkness falls
I furl my cloak and solemnly rise
For I bow not then
To your barren fields and waning suns
I bow not to your garish colors,
To the cloying drupe and wilted blossoms
Bracing my feeble transience
With my tenet and trail of faith
I bow to the King of kings;
Whilst I beseech for emanating hope,
In my tigers clasp, my God’s rope
I beseech,
Till the noise becomes music again
And as I gaze in the glass now,
All I espy is a beseeching slave

A is the Alphabet, A at its head;
  A is an Antelope, agile to run.
B is the Baker Boy bringing the bread,
  Or black Bear and brown Bear, both begging for bun.

C is a Cornflower come with the corn;
  C is a Cat with a comical look.
D is a Dinner which Dahlias adorn;
  D is a Duchess who dines with a Duke.

E is an elegant eloquent Earl;
  E is an Egg whence an Eaglet emerges.
F is a Falcon, with feathers to furl;
  F is a Fountain of full foaming surges.

G is the Gander, the Gosling, the Goose;
  G is a Garnet in girdle of gold.
H is a Heartsease, harmonious of hues;
  H is a huge Hammer, heavy to hold.

I is an Idler who idles on ice;
  I am I--who will say I am not I?
J is a Jacinth, a jewel of price;
  J is a Jay, full of joy in July.

K is a King, or a Kaiser still higher;
  K is a Kitten, or quaint Kangaroo.
L is a Lute or a lovely-toned Lyre;
  L is a Lily all laden with dew.

M is a Meadow where Meadowsweet blows;
  M is a Mountain made dim by a mist.
N is a Nut--in a nutshell it grows--
  Or a Nest full of Nightingales singing--oh list!

O is an Opal, with only one spark;
  O is an Olive, with oil on its skin.
P is a Pony, a pet in a park;
  P is the Point of a Pen or a Pin.

Q is a Quail, quick-chirping at morn;
  Q is a Quince quite ripe and near dropping.
R is a Rose, rosy red on a thorn;
  R is a red-breasted Robin come hopping.

S is a Snow-storm that sweeps o'er the Sea;
  S is the Song that the swift Swallows sing.
T is the Tea-table set out for tea;
  T is a Tiger with terrible spring.

U, the Umbrella, went up in a shower;
  Or Unit is useful with ten to unite.
V is a Violet veined in the flower;
  V is a Viper of venomous bite.

W stands for the water-bred Whale;
  Stands for the wonderful Wax-work so gay.
X, or **, or *** is ale,
  Or Policeman X, exercised day after day.

Y is a yellow Yacht, yellow its boat;
  Y is the Yucca, the Yam, or the Yew.
Z is a Zebra, zigzagged his coat,
  Or Zebu, or Zoophyte, seen at the Zoo.

There came an image in Life’s retinue
That had Love’s wings and bore his gonfalon:
Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
When birth’s dark portal groaned and all was new.

But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
Then plucked a feather from the bearer’s wing,
And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
And said to me, ‘Behold, there is no breath:
I and this Love are one, and I am Death.’

Locksley Hall

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 't is early morn:
Leave me here, and when you want me, sound upon the bugle-horn.

'T is the place, and all around it, as of old, the curlews call,
Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall;

Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts,
And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid.

Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime
With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time;

When the centuries behind me like a fruitful land reposed;
When I clung to all the present for the promise that it closed:

When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see;
Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.--

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;

In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turn'd--her ***** shaken with a sudden storm of sighs--
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes--

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong";
Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."

Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rush'd together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?--having known me--to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy; think not they are glazed with wine.
Go to him, it is thy duty, kiss him, take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand--
Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's disgrace,
Roll'd in one another's arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule!
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool!

Well--'t is well that I should bluster!--Hadst thou less unworthy proved--
Would to God--for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?
I will pluck it from my *****, tho' my heart be at the root.

Never, tho' my mortal summers to such length of years should come
As the many-winter'd crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her, kind?

I remember one that perish'd; sweetly did she speak and move;
Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?
No--she never loved me truly; love is love for evermore.

Comfort? comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,
In the dead unhappy night, and when the rain is on the roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall,
Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Then a hand shall pass before thee, pointing to his drunken sleep,
To thy widow'd marriage-pillows, to the tears that thou wilt weep.

Thou shalt hear the "Never, never," whisper'd by the phantom years,
And a song from out the distance in the ringing of thine ears;

And an eye shall vex thee, looking ancient kindness on thy pain.
Turn thee, turn thee on thy pillow; get thee to thy rest again.

Nay, but Nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry.
'T is a purer life than thine, a lip to drain thy trouble dry.

Baby lips will laugh me down; my latest rival brings thee rest.
Baby fingers, waxen touches, press me from the mother's breast.

O, the child too clothes the father with a dearness not his due.
Half is thine and half is his: it will be worthy of the two.

O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part,
With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

"They were dangerous guides the feelings--she herself was not exempt--
Truly, she herself had suffer'd"--Perish in thy self-contempt!

Overlive it--lower yet--be happy! wherefore should I care?
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.

What is that which I should turn to, lighting upon days like these?
Every door is barr'd with gold, and opens but to golden keys.

Every gate is throng'd with suitors, all the markets overflow.
I have but an angry fancy; what is that which I should do?

I had been content to perish, falling on the foeman's ground,
When the ranks are roll'd in vapour, and the winds are laid with sound.

But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honour feels,
And the nations do but murmur, snarling at each other's heels.

Can I but relive in sadness? I will turn that earlier page.
Hide me from my deep emotion, O thou wondrous Mother-Age!

Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife,
When I heard my days before me, and the tumult of my life;

Yearning for the large excitement that the coming years would yield,
Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field,

And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn,
Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn;

And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then,
Underneath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men:

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm;

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.

So I triumph'd ere my passion sweeping thro' me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;

Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint:
Science moves, but slowly, slowly, creeping on from point to point:

Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.

Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.

What is that to him that reaps not harvest of his youthful joys,
Tho' the deep heart of existence beat for ever like a boy's?

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore,
And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast,
Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest.

Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn,
They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn:

Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulder'd string?
I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing.

Weakness to be wroth with weakness! woman's pleasure, woman's pain--
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain:

Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine,
Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine--

Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat
Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat;

Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evil-starr'd,--
I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward.

Or to burst all links of habit--there to wander far away,
On from island unto island at the gateways of the day.

Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise.

Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag,
Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;

Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree--
Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.

There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind,
In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.

There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and breathing space;
I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race.

Iron-jointed, supple-sinew'd, they shall dive, and they shall run,
Catch the wild goat by the hair, and hurl their lances in the sun;

Whistle back the parrot's call, and leap the rainbows of the brooks,
Not with blinded eyesight poring over miserable books--

Fool, again the dream, the fancy! but I know my words are wild,
But I count the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

I, to herd with narrow foreheads, vacant of our glorious gains,
Like a beast with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains!

Mated with a squalid savage--what to me were sun or clime?
I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time--

I that rather held it better men should perish one by one,
Than that earth should stand at gaze like Joshua's moon in Ajalon!

Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range,
Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.

Thro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day;
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.

Mother-Age (for mine I knew not) help me as when life begun:
Rift the hills, and roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the Sun.

O, I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set.
Ancient founts of inspiration well thro' all my fancy yet.

Howsoever these things be, a long farewell to Locksley Hall!
Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the roof-tree fall.

Comes a vapour from the margin, blackening over heath and holt,
Cramming all the blast before it, in its breast a thunderbolt.

Let it fall on Locksley Hall, with rain or hail, or fire or snow;
For the mighty wind arises, roaring seaward, and I go.

I let the glow of the headlights
and the glow in your eyes
guide us home.

Faint chords of an old rock song
drifting out the radio,
your breath
fogging the window

You, me,
a billion points of light
hanging above our tired heads.
And then you whispered quietly to me:

"These are the moments I remember."
The cream of your voice
Dragged me back from the clouds
and I turned to you.

"these are the moments I live for."
The slight furl of your lips
and the reflection of the moon in your eyes
hurled me back into my daydreams.

And then we were silent.
And the world felt right.

i.
the Hibiscus is the paradisiacal
armistice of quagmire and wind:
leave it there anchored to Earth.

ii
when it rains, it bows to no one;
when it genuflects to no bird,
  it trills on the red of the moseying hour—
nobody sees the Hibiscus.
  only the children of the vandal.

iii.
last summer we had makeshift
bubble machines and in the high-rise
  of the twilight's cradle, we ran
viciously against the humdrum town
  blowing bushels of laughter at
the dreary populace — the brooms
  to a sweeping rustle, unsettled dust
mounting the ether.
         we hurtled across the
infantile roads like they owed us something finitely attributed
     to our locomotives.

iv.
  the Semana Santa had gone by
and the season, no matter how promisingly redolent with emollient brush
   of wind and laboring silence, held
no reprise — the Hibiscus,
   it is not alone in the quiet verdigris.

v.
  somewhere amid the hubbub of city,
there is a pendulum of line biting
   the shore of waiting repeatedly.
only steel scaffolds erected and no
   flagrant scent aroused. peregrinating
in the haloed hour, the nascent furl of
    belch from vociferous iron-clad beasts
in all of EDSA

   and when i look at people around me
they look like gumamelas, finally,
    yet i am

        not coming home.

This is the last time I write about ships; the mighty seafarer, clasping in the deep. The last time the esoteric tides capriciously change their erratic minds, left torn between rousing up to fight and solemnly crawling into the shapeless night. I’ll haul, I’ll haul. Outward bound, I’ll haul away from the safety of the buoy, through a thousand spiralling knots, batten aground and set anchor upon the recondite bay. I’ll avast the journeys where the compass takes an unprompted turn, where celestial proves consort to nautical woes, awoke awash amidst the darkened shallows.

This is the last time I go back and fill vast depths, bearing right, then left, across the beating breadth.  This is the last ring of brash audacity resonating in chime with the gull’s hooded pride, the last of the salt and sway commandeering the longitude of each tumultuous ride. I’ll roll, I’ll roll. Hanging on behind, I’ll roll with the salted souls of Nelson and Hook as they furl and collide, hand over fist, drawing the curtains from their chariot’s majestic height. I’ll gybe and set back to sail, quarrel with the rushing sands, and grace every fractured notion that tooth and nail can siege the devil’s rest and forge currents capable of hustling both vessel and man.

This is the last of the gallant endeavours, set adrift from buccaneer’s voyage to a solitary pulse at the end of storm’s tether. This is the last stern embrace of Poseidon’s harrowing howls, the last of the rapturous applause mordant as it rises and swirls, the last time I wrestle away from his scaly hold. This is the last time I change tack and set course into the path of the sound, where finally, the tides settled

I’ll release control of the helm.

When the dark comes down, oh, the wind is on the sea
With lisping laugh and whimper to the red reef's threnody,
The boats are sailing homeward now across the harbor bar
With many a jest and many a shout from fishing grounds afar.
So furl your sails and take your rest, ye fisher folk so brown,
For task and quest are ended when the dark comes down.

When the dark comes down, oh, the landward valleys fill
Like brimming cups of purple, and on every landward hill
There shines a star of twilight that is watching evermore
The low, dim lighted meadows by the long, dim-lighted shore,
For there, where vagrant daisies weave the grass a silver crown,
The lads and lassies wander when the dark comes down.

When the dark comes down, oh, the children fall asleep,
And mothers in the fisher huts their happy vigils keep;
There's music in the song they sing and music on the sea,
The loving, lingering echoes of the twilight's litany,
For toil has folded hands to dream, and care has ceased to frown,
And every wave's a lyric when the dark comes down.

Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
From life; and mocking pulses that remain
When the soul’s death of ****** death is fain;
Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
And penury’s sedulous self-torturing thought
On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
And longed-for woman longing all in vain
For lonely man with love’s desire distraught;
And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness,
Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
Beholding these things, I behold no less
The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
The shame that loads the intolerable day.

As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
Of life’s disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,
‘Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;’—
Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:—

Even so the World’s grey Soul to the green World
Perchance one hour must cry: ‘Woe’s me, for whom
Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,—
Whose heart’s old fire in shadow of shame is furl’d:
While thou even as of yore art journeying,
All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!’

The pale lips are smashed together in a fake smile, the teeth not wanting to show in the little pod of the mouth, hiding like scared peas. It’s frightening.
The eyes crinkled just right so that it looks so plastered on that you can tell it is fake, the folds overlapping again and again in an unnatural way. I blink.
The cheeks covered in makeup, splashed on in spots, smoothed over in others, splatter painted to look realistic. It doesn't work.
The fingers resting oh so stiff on the stomach raised a bit so that they are hovering above the skin, like he doesn't want to touch the dead fabric. I wouldn't.
The suit, so neatly pressed that not a wrinkle shows, except for on the collar where nobody notices. But I do.
The silk lining of the box he is resting in is shiny and overly polished, like a cherry wood dining room table with an overload of Pledge. It hurts my eyes.
The bouquet of flowers is a bundle of Death’s heavy perfume disguised as a bunch of roses and daisies. The smell is disgusting.
The picture frames surrounding the box are shined like pairs of leather shoes, embedded with gems and memories that are long past. It makes me sad.
The stuffed animals in the corner gaze deadly at the group, mold and dust sapping the life out of their beady eyes. They make me shiver.
The chair I sit on is hard and stiff, the cushion starched to the breaking point, the crackly material hardly comfortable. I squirm.
The vent above me blows a gale of cold air and underlying currents, which whips up my hair in a flurry of brown. I pat my head.
The people around me clutch tissues in bony hands, the wadded up paper soaked through with tears and makeup. It looks gross.
So as I observe every detail of this morbid place, I close my eyes and breath deep. Mistake. The air is ripe with anger and sadness, misery and frustration. Musky lady perfume, sharp man perfume. My hands clench, unclench, furl, unfurl. My throat closes up then swallows that lump of matter lodged in my my esophagus. What is death? What is Heaven? What is God and Jesus and church? What is all of that if it ends up like this? Like a cancerous tumor, like a lump of mutated cells, like a painful death? It is forgiveness and freedom and newness.
With that I open my eyes again and cry.

I am in limbo
      between universes
between stars
I am ensconced
       in my own light
in tangible luminance
stored deep inside
                   tiny
                      glass jars
I am whirling into new orbit
     as I take on this luster,
                 this shine
I furl forth choices
in magic spells weaving
                   and take back        
what was always
so rightfully mine
I now hold the staff
      that will part the seas
of my new way
       in this labor
because, honey, there
ain't no time
to waste
no horse
        no glowing, knighted savior
Until this hour
              I was crawling
         but I now I start to rise
as I have my final say
               and the northern lights
         spew out from behind my eyes
I am through with
          this land of ice, land of jagged spires
It is time to bust up
             all those submissive plans
          and spray the whole
place with arctic fire
yeah time to mark it
juice it up
till it licks up pain, till it burns
release pent up years
              of unneeded conflict,
of tensed up
           twists and turns
so just you try
to break me apart
as I try to navigate
between tectonic plates
on two lands
The only knight here
          is my own true self
the situation neatly
in my
     hot little hands

For Denis Joe*

Alas, poor Pluto
I knew him slightly
Dangling out there
On the sun system's edge
Unsung by Holst
Who knew him not at all.

Furl browed tribunes smack their gavels
And in a nano - second
Planetary glory dashed to asteroids.
Mighty Pluto busted to dwarfhood!

[Brief moment of silence]

Well, the dwarves will have to have
Their own music now -
Nothing Earth shattering
like THE PLANETS.
A humbler essay, say a trio
For tuba, autoharp and cello.
Modest but catchy tunes
For little orbiters and shakers:

XENA (warrior princess)
CERES (goddess of grain)
PLUTO (mythical silver smith)
CHARON (underworld boat jockey)

Oops, almost missed the big send off.
There he goes now with Charon at the oars.

          Arrivederci

                little

           ­           fellow.

                              SNIFF!

“How can I get you to go down on me,”
he asked, without preamble.
His voice, nervous,
laced with strength
hums through her form,
summoning
a tatting of ***.

She moves her entire form
Across the room
pushing solar plexus
With index finger
The wingback chair collecting
His form – assuaging her intent.

Retreating nine steps
To gather
Her acumen in dripping her clothes off
Adroit pivot
portent gaze
locked
exteroception - engaged

His exhale
executed succinctly in shallow lung
puckered alveoli - clenched
resonates as her own.

Pearls scooped catatonic
atop lingering breast ascension - alone
Remain –
Summoning brine.

She tastes his pulse
Derma puckering sweat globules
Redolent aeriform vapor corpuscles
declaring his need.

Fingers supporting her upper weight
she glides - crawling
pressing half inch spurs into the carpet

Lackadaisical dactyl dance
Seizes
muscle calf to thigh
Invoking listless leg drape

Pausing
Warm breath – rendered
Upon knee cap parallel
Framing shoulders

Engorging - in aching silence
Pulse thick, wrought in shaft

Kneeling
Primed
Proud

She flicks the button
From slit fabric recess
Cupping palms under thigh,
She renders garment to puddle

half-in – half-out
whole
chthonic shaft to palette

Sliding exhale
to mound
lax jaw
focus
Iris entreats -
narrowed corneal withdrawal

Oblong lip array surrounds
Supping the creamy, coppery,
Smoky, saline inoculation.

Latent dribble invokes tongue
Furl about lip cusp
Absorbing globule
Into slaked smile.

No home, no front door to unlock,
a life of roams, tires burning rock.
With powders, pills, and subpar poisons,
I remember your childish face,
the reddish furl of your hair;
your spine-tingling body strut cascading into French heels.
No luck, no fat genie or 7 on the die,
rainy bucks, broken umbrella with sigh.
Like songbirds, sirens, and symptoms
gracefully disappear without a note of gloom,
your smile, the original resurrection,
slides from tangible memory -- into mythos -- into misery.

Beyond all things I ask that thou art true;
take all my love for thy love is thine own
for with no love no error will I rue,
no fault to seek nor grievance to atone.
Do what thou will for I do wish it so
for with my love thou hast a two-fold gain,
with mine and thine if thou wouldst suffer woe
then be not grieved for I will bear the pain.
Too sweet, too sweet are thou for this harsh world
and never was this world fit for thy state,
for where's the rose that keeps its beauty furl'd
and were it so 'twould be a counterfeit.
Be true to you as night doth follow day
or as the rose befitting as it may.

terrestrial siren call out
to me with your irresistible
song, ground me on the Earth
in the clouds, alone, I will go mad
alone without your melodies
to lure me back to a port
where I can furl my sails
and rest in your grounding solace

a song unlike the siren songs
Odysseus heard strapped to the mast
to resist temptation—he had only Penelope
while I have only you

you pull my ship back on course
away from the tangents I am prone

I want nothing more
than to bring
you aboard my ship
I know your telos
is rooted amidst the Earth
to heal and flourish
the ailing land
my telos to sail the sky
charting the heavens in search
of a key to turn the tumbler
of the lock to the universe

it tears my heart to be away
from your terrestrial song…

know: you will always be the port
where I return—for no reason other
than to hear your sweet song

one day, I will
roll my sails
un-step my mast
let the shrouds
hang loose
anchor my ship
permanently out
in the waters
of the celestial bodies

walk upon the Earth amongst trees, plants, and rock
rooting myself alongside you—ears open, listening,
solace in your song, in the port we built together

Unrest sits inside of me. Scratch that. Unrest riots inside of me.
Tonight I knelt face down in a shower hotter than a Sydney inner city summer day. My skin burned. I hate water. I hate heat. In as much I particularly hate hot water. It intimidates me and steals my breath from fear and a terrifying blaze in my lungs. I often dream nightmarish of drowning in an ocean deep with blood red boiling water.

Still. I figured I could burn away this cold feeling that freezes me from my heart to my skin. If this were frostbite I would be a darker pitch of black. Head to toe. Inside out. Charred flesh and bone, sewn over a fevered mind.

I knelt on the pads of my shins, feet flat out behind me, knees scratching the tub, chest heaving with my hands clasped desperately behind my head pushing down. **** up, face down, no grace in this morbid search for self comfort. Trying so hard to become undone. My forehead rested in searing water raining down; that puddled hot and ***** beneath at my mouth. I prayed for tears. I ached to open up. One bleeding stitch at a time. To bleed tears of salt water amongst the fresh. Just to myself. For me if not for anybody else. Alone. Uninhibited. A quiet fury unleashed.

I searched for my voice and willed it to cry out. Urged it to break open and spill, a mess of confusion could at least be cleaned up. Without that mess I was still just a disaster waiting to happen.

I answered myself with silence. The only noise I could make was a low, guttural, throaty whine. The sound murmured in the water, muffled. Wasted. Washed away. Just air and water. Leaving. Draining. Just. Gone.
Salt burnt in my throat. More heat. Tears stung at the back off my eyes so I opened them and let the water in so as to coax the water out.
Nothing. Nothing but heat and emptiness.

Scratch that. This is not emptiness. I know emptiness well. I remember the echo of nothing. I remember non existence and its dumb witted mercy. I recall the dull anesthetised blanket of apathy.

This. Is. Feeling. This is being full and riotous. This is toxic and seething.
Appendicitis yet burst.

Even a toxic spill can be cleared, a burnt forest regrown. Degenerative. I feel like I am both sinking and replete at once. Both burning and washed out. Scarlet bright and discoloured. Alive and exhausted.
I am a vacuum through which no sound can travel. Waves of compression travelling through matter. From particle to particle I travel silenced, with no substance through which to reach a listener.

I am not listening.
I am unsound.
Unrest and riotous.

Even as I write this
My face burns.
My body aches and quivers and my stomach turns over and over and over until I stand and reach for my tobacco and roll to smoke to abate this ache that is eating me.

Alive.

I am a thousand words unsaid.
Five thousand tears yet spilled.
Words fall from my fingertips
But not from my lips.

I am the quiet in the storm.
Stilled, Stalled, Appalled by what can only come next.

This skin. Of mine. Is prickly and If I could just step out of it, for the sake of feeling settled, I would. I would stretch and unwind my mind then slowly furl back into myself, ironed out and calmed. Fresh stitches, less itches and the sense of having been free. From me.

Funnily enough, although I’m not really laughing, when the tears do come, when they bite at the corners of my eyes until I feel like my face is about to tear apart, a mess of salt and flesh, The darkness reaches out a cold and unforgiving hand and pushes down. Until the brackish brine reaches back into my throat, slides into my stomach, dragging with it that fleeting chance of reprieve. Then comes the sick. Then comes the smoke. Then comes the still and ever threatening silence.

I am a stranger to myself.
And this is not the first time.

There’s an after taste
that has been plaguing my tongues
for months now
and my conscience
tells me it’s something
called home.
Something like the sting
of rotten apples
grown along the stride
of Lady Liberty.

You see,
big cities tend to
stain my my mouth
and I’ve yet to
figure out how
to brush off such
brackish flavors
brought on by
bundled bodies
in train cars.

I am craving
warm subways
and cold concrete.
Craving that sweet insincerity
like candied cold shoulders.

I want to be served
every bit of a
baked BK attitude
in the furl of a brow.
Want to taste
hard broiled Harlem
in the switch of hips.
Mild Manhattan oozing
the stitch of an
Hermes steeple tote.

I am always quick
to order a flight
to my second home.

She’s soft and smells like rose petals
Yet she scratches and scrubs
At blood red skin even though
It’s been washed a million times before
Tired eyes meet their match
In the silvery visage of their oldest friend

Crimson lips part, then furl
At the reflection who’s no longer a youthful girl
Auburn hair tumbling out of place,
Aging actress falling far from grace,
One clenched fist in a lace white glove
Eyelids dripping as she screams above

like a darted journey
the spokes of despair,
sharpend by hazel spears
betray an inordinance of time.
Lost amongst the amber stones
light shafTing twilights furl
we succumb beseaching

Dead Wood
Clear out the Dead Wood
Make a clean sweep
Cut to the cwic
Find the life, the green
Bend like the sapling
Sea oats in wind
Blue-grey sky against green
Clear the way for new growth,
new beginnings
Sunshine
Honey bees
The sweetest sting
This emergence of spring
Initiate the clean slate
Tabula Rasa
The clean brain
Empty heart waiting to be filled
Empty body, purified
Porcelain vessel
This lit house, strobe glow
Light departs & returns
Light Hope
The new, crisp, clean chapter
Leaf unfolds
Unload the dead weight
Remove the baggage
Discard despair;
Teary eyes & brooding faces
Heavy hearts & dark places
No more
Fight the pain, & rotten words, rotten jests
Grating on nerves
All darkness depart, darkness spent
Dry the river, pack the nest.
Clear the dead wood, shove aside
Kick of foot, kick up dust.
This is your new fresh breath.
This is your new fresh life.
Drop the rotten & decaying hues
Bruised azul, sick blue
Burn the wood, the rotten words
Let smoke banners furl & uncurl.
Tears wiped clean
Clearing ashen faces
Tears drying out
All sad traces.
Celebrate the gone & the gain
A new dawn day begins
Welcome in
Fresh new love
Sea foam or yellow-green,
The color of trust
The color of love

Light illuminates
my dis-entombed thoughts
on gilded kite

prodding dust patina
mellow mote drifts lilt

hoping not to puncture the membrane
– I run –
attempted lift

fresh soil turns under foot
tread and gait escalate
pocked path reverberates
my insistence to avoid puncturing

Deceleration
Halted earthen assault
I ****** with machination the aerial apparatus
prior to complete stagnation

Decrepit deceit eschewed
Again – I run –
taut paper snap
sheet lift
weightless message intones
in knotted vertebrae, and closed palm

my chest lifts in unison
diaphragmatic sigh punched hollow
rhapsodic finesse

privy to atmospheric secret
my hand translates the ethereal
smooth fluttering undulations
oscillating tugs, dives, and slay

Calligraphic flourishes echo the linguistic menagerie
Byzantine illustrations
Pellucid canvas drunk with dye

Evinced in muddled thought
The ink bleeds down the twine
indigo echoes of entombed vein 'neath flesh

Translucent pulse haunts taut string
furling arc – tensed tissue
acrobatic hydrofoil
tugs – glides – taunts

Ostensible horror conveyed in clenched palm
The ether curtly responds
Swift redirect

Sliced palm
Tethered scream evocation
cochineal deluge concedes

Deep purple liquid clings
Congealing - between sodden twine and palm

Whispering currents furl saturated line
into fresh groove, disturbing the clot
The wound bucks as flotsam

Relentless onslaught
I yield -
I release you

Your ethereal message tattooed into my palm
Some things were ne'er meant to be restrained

“Swallowing Pearls and Lace”
“How can I get you to go down on me,”
he asked, without preamble.
His voice, nervous,
laced with strength
hums through her form,
summoning
a tatting of ***.

I moved my entire form
Across the room
Pushing his solar plexus
With index finger
The wingback chair collecting
His form – assuaging my intent.

Retreating nine steps
To gather
my acumen in dripping my clothes off
Adroit pivot
portent gaze
locked
exteroception - engaged

His exhale
executed succinctly in shallow lung
puckered alveoli –
Clenched -
resonates as my own.

Pearls scooped catatonic
atop lingering breast ascension - alone
Remain –
Summoning brine.

I taste his pulse
Derma puckering sweat
Redolent vapor
Knotting between each pore – skin taut
declaring his need.

Fingers supporting my upper weight
I glide - crawling
pressing half inch spurs into the carpet

Lackadaisical dactyl dance
Seizes
muscle calf to thigh
Invoking listless leg drape

Pausing
Warm breath – rendered
Upon knee cap parallel
Framing shoulders

Engorging - in aching silence
Pulse thick, wrought in shaft

Kneeling
Primed
Proud

I flick the button
From slit fabric recess
Cupping palms under thigh,
rendering garment to puddle

half-in – half-out
whole
chthonic shaft to palette

Sliding exhale
to mound
lax jaw
focus
His iris entreats -
narrowed corneal withdrawal

Oblong lip array surrounds
Supping the creamy, coppery,
Smoky, saline

Latent dribble invokes my tongue
Furl about lip cusp
Absorbing globule
Into slaked smile.

we make a rickety circle
and the beat takes us all,
bend forward, clap our
hands, sway this way, that,

a bow of arms,
twirl of legs, form
wings, furl, unfurl,
the body confined

in a twist of finality,
the world on a
swirl-round axis
and we curl to

where the planet
began its primal
dance, of scent,
step, musk, air...

At 16 I met a Man who owned
A sailing Craft a 24 foot Yawl
A Polished Captains Wheel to Steer
Two Main sails a Jib and two Fore Sails
He had an Affair with a girl 18.....
And I was the Beard

He taught me to sail the craft,
Follow the wind with the Tell Tale
Fair Taught, you Kept the sail
Follow the wind till the End,
Swing the sail boom, to tack back again

He always bought Hot Peppered Crab
And a 12 pack of National Beer
Once he took it out the Middle River
He would take her below for whispers
With me at the wheel, I sailed the Bay
My Love of the Boat and he for her,
Were both, Same in a way

The Ship she was my lover
And to him I was his Cover
For a 30 Year old Husband
And an 18 Year old Girl
Sailing in the Summer Sun
I watched the sails a Furl

Taught with wind, she veered to Lee
Sailing till waves rolled up from the Sea
And that's when she Picked up Speed
I would tighten up the boom line.

The only sounds  flap of the Sails
And The creak of the Rope
Beneath the Moon so Pale
On a Warm Summers night sail

A summer I'll Never Forget
And the Tragedy of her Death
As she Drove for home her car crashed
Her hopes for her life Dashed
And that I lost my friend I regret....

There was a man, once, he told me 'you have a wise soul, i can see it in your eyes'. I took his words and held them in my hand, held them til they wore out to dust, and blew away with the wind. It's times like this i tell myself, we're not so wise. I cursed his ****** face. I look up to the horse shaped **** hole of a sky and i wonder where those words, that burned on the back of my eyelids, had flown to. I had seen and been wise, once. I had it written in the night sky as i held hands with strangers and drunk whisky out of old cups. These were the days my friend, ****, why did they have to end?

There is a hole in your eyes, it drowns me to the centre of your be-ing. I will be waiting at home with a pie on the sill cooling for you. I wait for you to come to me with a note in your pocket that says 'these are the days, they will never end'. Someone once told me that we all living on borrowed time, so steal it, take it and run away with it, eat it, stuff it down your trousers, and we'll hide in sewers, you and i. We'll hide until time comes to an end, and we'll eat our words to keep us from starving, and we'll burn our goodbyes to keep us warm.

There is a plant *** in my very core and there grows a lilac, or is it a lily, one can never tell at these times. I feel it growing, its roots, feed their way to my feet. I am ground-ed. I am at one. I am at peace with the earth. My eyelids open and i stare at that horse **** sky and i push out all my obscenities and i cry for the sake of all i am, fall to the floor, that this is not the rest, this is not the, best, that life can give, to me. My arm vicariously feel for something in the wind to cling onto, a wise word or two, something i can turn my hand to? Maybe, this seedling growing inside me, has different ideas, different places to go, wherever the sun faces, i have to be, there. And in the cold of night, i furl into myself, a fetus, of my former self, ready to renew myself for the next rise of the day.

There is beauty in you, i believe that no-one has ever seen. There is a grace from you, that i think your heart exudes. I grab at the air and nothing comes. I lost it all. My eyes, my eyes, my lies, my lust, my longing and my mistakes...burnt and spread across the ground  like ash, underneath my feet. And there you are pulling at the centre of me, drawing me out. There is a rush of wind in the air and selflessly I grab again and again, like a newborn child finding it has arms and hands. I find some words. I find some things. I find some part, of, me. Last thing at night before i close my eyes, i eat my words and keep them, to stop myself from a time i think i might be starved of you.

You know we all live, we all die. But there is something in just being, here, that makes me feel, alive. We can live but can not always be alive. The gravitational pull is inconsequential but the fall is extraordinary in its attempts to pull from me what i cannot lose. I hid those words so deep that it would take a miner a light year to figure out just how to light his torch within me. I hide you from this, i hide you from this, so that you can unfurl and keep me warm when the night has has grown cold from being rejected by the sun. My handsome, son of a gun. You spit bullets as you talk, and i catch all of these, one, by one.

Those hands
Speak more than does the face.
They clasp or lace,
They grip or poke
Hold firm.

They open in enquiry
Or close to form a fist
Or furl and unfurl to try and give the gist
Of some internal land.

Those hands I love
Are square and brown
With rough and bitten nails.
The finger ends are blunt,
The skin is coarse
With work.
Those hands are always warm and strong
And mine in his makes me a child again.

Once upon a time
we were just broken pieces
under false impression
put together
 
shards that clashed
crashed against
each other
 
(and we called that 
love)
 
spilled our our pain
from tarried pages
off empty screens
 
first we'd drink and smoke
so much so our 
serrated edges
couldn't pop the 
precious glass palace
 
I built around our fragile
naked bodies-
around my naked fragile heart
(and called that love)
 
blanketed oblivion
my swaddled shelter
 
out of a furl of smoke
our stories coiled 
in the cloistered air
of your room
 
and I'd cry on
behalf of your secret pain
 
and I 
called
that 
 
love.
 
sometimes,
our rage would swell
out of
a deep
 
someplace outside us
( ?maybe God Yahweh Jehovah The Universe)
something (w)hole
complete swirl
Surreal 
 
incomprehensible 
and we'd lash-
and retract
 
once I cracked her from
a small shell she'd curled into 
like a millipede 
 
she asked
"why do we do this to each other?"
 
Nothing has ever crushed me
so much as love has crushed me
 
I am still just a splinter
and so is she
 
except I am lost
somewhere in a
crack in the floor
 
and she glitters
 
this whole world
watches her glitter
from her small spot
on the sidewalk

“Our characteristics smear through us,
Like colours in a stick of rock.”
He says to the audience of ties and blazers.
“If I cut you open, what shades
Would I find in your cross-sections?”
“If you cut me open,
There’d be a fair amount of red,
I should think.”
I say behind my sharpened teeth.
“And my parents wouldn’t be very pleased.”
Oh how witty I am
With my quick fire of sarcasm,
And petulant spasms of acrimony.
Eight miles away,
Our house is full of September;
Raincoats and Crane flies,
And I water my Guinea Pig’s tumour
With tears I owe elsewhere.
A teacher at my school
Committed suicide, people say,
While we skipped waves
And created poetry from the leaf-light.
They can’t tell us the details,
Of course not – sensitivity is key –
But that tells us all we thirst for.
School clockworks forwards
With a hole in the Geography office
And I forget about remembrance.
He drove a BMW and laughed
Small laughs that coughed with nervousness.
I sit in History, pen-chewing,
Thinking of all these more important deaths.
The school bells don’t hold silences
The year sevens don’t stand
Or bow their heads in room 180
We try making futures for ourselves
And apply ourselves to those things
That still have chances tied to them
Like clover leaves and birthday candles.
We turn on lights in the evenings
And I wake myself from darkness to darkness.
My life consists of the cooling,
Cotton-throated early mornings
And the bike that my brother bought new
Six years ago.
And the drag of my newspaper bag
That claws backwards from my peddling.
The world is blue and grey with rime,
I rip my fingers on letterboxes.
My shoes fall apart from the heels
My ballet shoes fall apart from the toes
My life enjoys unravelling itself
From wherever I’ve chosen to stitch it
And I fray and crimp at the corners.
I prefer to go barefoot
Across the rinsed, diluted garden
That smells of rotting apples.
Ballet tights rolled up my legs
So that my bruised toes get kissed
With grass slobber and the faded zeal of autumn.
Slugs crisscross pavements like surgical tape
Then get stuck and frazzled there
While the sun toasts them.
“Maybe I’d find hopes, dreams,” he says.
“Maybe you’d find organs.”
You’d find me weeping over pirouettes
And geometric lines and extensions.
You’d find a twice-broken arm
And an array of internal fractures.
There’d be shards lodged between each rib.
My parachute lungs, pumping filth,
Would continue to tear and furl
Until they wouldn’t resemble
The things we scalped in biology.
I re-write lists of ‘Things To Do’
In the hope that they’ll seem shorter
But I add all my flaws to them
For amendments and for procrastination.
For some reason people still expect things
From this emptying girl
Who actually thinks
That the one who cut into her
Would be in danger of finding
Nothing but a brittled, bitter hollow.
I highlight my essays
And highlight the cracks
I’m carving in my personality.
I paste impressions of myself
All over my exterior shell
Alongside character traits.
Who knows what lies beneath
The papier-mâché of well-played parts?
My fingers play music on the computer keyboard
More than they practice the piano.
But the songs they make are far from sweet
And rarely beautiful.
My parents think I’m working
On Hume, Bentham and Kant
But really, I write jaded poetry
Which forms its own philosophies.
“Your experiences would be evident,
Spread through your character.”
My brother ate away at his life
Until he starved.
They set him down in a mental unit
For the ‘Screwy’, ‘Freakish’ and ‘Insane.’
So I buried my childhood
In the side ward mazes
Of hand sanitizer and tubes and tombs.
“I’d find what makes you unique –
Your religion, perhaps.”
I laugh away the suggestion
That is actually the truth of how
My Sunday mornings fall under ‘Church’
And the afternoons are ‘Top Forty’ –
I don’t even like chart music.
How can I be ashamed of the faith
I try fervently not to doubt?
The sun drips from the evening sky
Like a squeezed lemon
And Monday cycles round again
I live in a little world of spirals;
Eternally coming back to the same place
Just worn a little further down.
I waste my life on the vanity
Of mirrors and self-deprecation.
Sometimes I think I must be arrogant
To make the pretty little assumption
That I don’t have to wear make-up.
It’s funny that I lay my skin bare –
Always –
But can’t manage to strip myself down
To the crudest, rawest truth.
I can only write for people I don’t know;
I let my parents believe blindly
That I’m a creative prodigy
Instead of human
By refusing them the blessing
Of honest words from ink and paper.
But the truth is;
I am not the faded mystery
That I pose as in my writing,
I’m just someone who sits in school assembly
And tries to make self-portraits from words,
And tries to forge intelligence,
And tries to never grow old,
And tries to be something,
And tries nothing,
And tries –
“But what I’d really want to see
Is compassion,” He says.
I turn my face down to my knee bones
And permit myself to agree.
Compassion, I tell myself
And, just for a minute,
I feel a little less
Superficial.