Even plastic collects dust
Bright fibres of pink become dull magentas
From the countless years and endless days of Still life Sharp lines and smooth contours of artistically machined plastic toys become fuzzy as hazy dust
Piles
Heaps
And overflows
From one
Single
Fact
Inactivity?
Unappreciated worth?
Discontent?
Laziness?
No
None of these
The dust collects
Piles
Heaps
Even overflows
From USELESSNESS
The things that the dust is attracted to
That the dust clings to
Are the things that in comparison to the things that are imparitive to our existance and our health
Are useless
Are plastic

In anticipation of the too-few precious hours in tandem, we divulged our carnal cravings at each others’ hands, but omitted fragments, saving them for some other day, finding them too truthful.

When you hold your body to mine, as you have told me you will, I want a flurry of colored breath, peach and magentas and crimsons slipping translucently from every part of me and wafting in and out and between us like a graceful fog, and not just the force of fingers that have waited too long to touch, but the electrostatic brushes of life’s restlessness falling slowly into their own gravity as we learn to trust the moment.

Our lips are full of nerves and that is why a kiss is so much more than symbolic. I placed my lips to the skin of an orange and I was met with the sensuality of the whole terrain of this world. Intimacy then, is the slow press that reassures humanity – the invitation into a world with no walls – the rush of blood that comes from being completely receptive – that is the kiss I want with your soul.

After all the epochs of lovers, these are all the same words, but they are lanterns bouncing across the plains and sparking anew in the way that the naive are always entranced by the lighter in their hand when they first learn how to light a cigarette, elated and dizzy from the *****. Twinkling.

Sometimes all it takes is a breath and I am light and wind and red paper confetti and the moon and a golden orb that turns all it touches into a shining constancy of what’s called love – and I visit your heart knowing that you can’t tell it’s me, and then I must leave– and I know that I was not in my body, but that it must have kept existing while I was gone because I always wake up in tears, and someone had to cry them.

Conventionality dies between us and there are no titles or promises to speak of. I once found security in labels, only to find that they leave no room for the inevitable growth and weathering of time. So I ask little of you – only that you are always true with me, and that you occasionally put your hand in mine.

every year she cut the biggest and brightest
keeping them in a brown bagged pantry to dry out
reaching in to crumble them at season
winnowing the chaff to wind
like her mother and aunties before her
back home in their island paradise

a magical notion
jostling seeds in slow motion
looking like crests on the ocean
neither too high nor too low
broken petals fly free
as seeds fall back of their own gravity

the kids would come ‘round
as projects kids do
to watch and maybe try something new
she would pass them an old melamine plate
a small handful of crumblings to ply
tossing and scooching to catch them again

crimson reds and magentas
lemony yellows
monarch butterfly oranges
violet and lavender purples
crowning petals layered
resembling elizabethan collars

they caught the morning
protected by snail and slug repellent
people came from all around
to admire her oversized zinnias
occasionally picking one and running
garden’s variety of dine and dash

we gifted them to mourners
small packets of zinnia’s seed
extolling them as one of her favorites
soil, water and sunshine
all you need to sow and grow
and watch the memories bloom

Greenhouse
Scaling flowers
A buzzing for pollen
Pinks and magentas stroke the space
Growing

If I could paint the skies
I would paint it with the links of my mind
I would paint it with cyans and magentas and limes
Reds and oranges and yellows
Blacks and greys and white
All sorts of colours
I would paint it with sorrow and happiness alike
I would paint it with the voice of my soul alight
I would paint the sky with my emptiness...
And the result
Would be the same night sky I see.
Stars shining bright
No hint of any other colour but
The midnight painted with white spots.
Galaxies invisible
Shooting stars veiled
The moon irrepressible
The stars afield
Their lights not powerful
But gentle on the eyes
Caressing the soul
Of the weary and tired.

If I could paint the skies...
And if only I could,
I would paint it all colours alike
With a thick paintbrush
Soaked in a water airy as can be...
But, that is,
If only.

for the false, convict, predilection for insane mumblings to cease into a void of hell, Nero indulges in the waters of the lethe, to forget life, the void, god.

to burn our cities, temples, is to drink, but to eat.
eat, mind you, the key to our temples, and dare not drink, least burn thy gods before unlocking their secrets, delectable enlightenment.

eat, and let the void's blackness of death be lit with the magnificent magentas, mauves, and cyans,
hue of inconceivable reaches of the potential of empty.
the psychedelic ****** frolic and feel,
pain sensual and dominating.

to the banks with Nero and his abyss of black,
let the cruel absence be filled with the blood of Nero, and the spectrum of our minds.

eject that horrid emperor for your self and your self's liberation from yourself. the ego, burns with Nero, in the fiery waters of the lethe.

Firestorm
The ticking stops
And we look around, astonished
To be in a forest, surrounded on all sides
By charred trees
Victims of wild energy
At one time or another

It is in this corpseyard
That brilliantly colored
Paper clues lazily drift
Down upon the breeze
To tangle in your hair
And cover my eyes

But not until much later
Would I realize
Had I opened them
And not remained fearful
Of these new lenses

I might have seen through their voices
The vibrant hues you brought with you

But as is
We merely circumvented the beauty
Made our way slowly to the gates

And, unknown to us
The magentas and forest greens
Wilted in the darkness
As we left.

The American people are lotuses
Grown out of the murk
We’re periwinkle pretty, but we have residue on some of our petals
And one could drain the swamp, but we’d still be in it, withering in the harsh sunlight
They could select only the fairest lotuses to be preserved, but nature would be disturbed, mutated
The indigo birds that drink our nectar would be betrayed
Then they too would leave us
And leave the aphids without prey
In the absence of deep pink flowers nature would start to cave in on itself and white-hot turmoil would fester and procreate
So invaluable to us is our gradient of flowers
They were meant to be part of our roots, their magentas and mauves keep us balanced
Keep us from turning over into the muddy water where sunlight cannot grace our petals.

there's green all throughout
the silver droplets,
coiling about the warmth
of powder-blues and roaring magentas.

there's green all throughout
the golden threads,
winding around the jubilee
of cream-whites and vibrant citrines.

there's green all throughout
the copper clays,
swirling between the renewal
of xantic petals and extatic lilacs.

there's green all throughout
the joyous weeping
of spring.

In harsh arid air, dry as the Gobi,
Sits an old man, weathered and worn by the sun.
Silent, before a fire that dances and jives,
Looking effortlessly beyond the eternal blue sky.

He smiles, toothless and benign,
No words escape but he passes a carved jade pipe,
Embers burning bright as I breathe heavy the orange glow,
'Paradise flowers illumination,'
So speaks the smoke that falls gently from my mouth.

I am immediately stripped of my body and my mind now soars,
Far beyond the sky and moon,
Yet present I am,
Flying on the sands of time in a desert that harbors no life.

He looks to me as a statue,
So sturdy and stoic,
yet gentle like clay he is frail and I fear nothing.

The earth shifts beneath once more,
Enveloping me in bright reds and deep magentas of a realm that buds like the blossoming spring,
Before me he is no more, yet you are in his place.

Intimately the fires rise, flickering now in your eyes as you stare with flames of passion that burn bright,
Your linens ripple and flow with ease in the whispering wind.
I lean in, reaching as you do, yet I am taken away once more.

Surging forward I fall back into the depths of a dream,
Where hazy figures whisper; oh how effortlessly do their woozy words charm,
Like the river I flow, they chant,
But know not where I lead, they urge,
Speaking in tongues of riddling madness, I am captivated.

Yet their wise words heed no response as I speak but say nothing, lifted again into a golden white oblivion that emerges from the depths of darkness. In this twisted haze you return to me, caressing my skin with silken tendrils.

We embrace in a lovelust passion, consumed by streams of blue that sway and pulse as we do.
I look into your eyes and see a universe.
What do you feel? She asks in heated breaths.
As I begin to ponder I am pulled from her arms, floating high above the clouds looking down on an ancient Earth.

I feel a beauty greener than the bamboo that grows deep in the forest, hidden in the shade of the mountains, I speak.

What is this beauty?

An air of elegance that course through my veins like a breeze through the vines,
That twists and turns like the jungle leopard who creeps through the trees,
With ebb and flow that sings a soft melody, more gentle than the calming stream,

She looks to me in silence,

I feel a beauty that is you, and you are the world. I take her hand -- and the world is beautiful.

As I utter such words my eyes grow weary and the day soon goes dark. I sleep for a thousand years but wake the next morning with the eyes of an old man peering down on me.

You lead your river's flow, he says smiling his toothless grin.

1951
Manchester in
The North West Of England

The city was broken after the war.
England had won it was said
But it didn't feel like that we won.
I remember the
old smoke stained bricks
of the inner city school.
I remember it in sepia
It had no colors back then.
Nothing did.

Until she came to teach us.
She was beautiful her silks
flowed from her like clouds.
So many colors reds
and magentas and pink and blues

I looked at her and
I wanted to be with her
She was the brightest thing I had seen
since the war had ended.

She said she was from India.
And her dress was a sari.
She had my heart with the
gentle softness of her voice.
Her windchime bracelets
on her lovely honeyed skin tinkled.
But it was her tranquility
that floored me.

She would ask
what have you learned today?
share it with us.
We spoke in a cacophony.
Hush now children she whispered.
listen and learn from each other.
You will all get a turn.

Then when we were troubled
she would drop an important meeting
with adult teachers.
I have an urgent need to speak
with one of my students
She said.

I remember once
i said to her Mrs. Chowdhury.
Why should we work so hard?
there are no jobs anymore.

She said softly but firmly
I know you all each and every one of you.
Her sari swished even louder
I knew I had said the wrong thing.

There is a teacher,
a doctor,
a nurse,
a poet,
a craftsman,
a soccer player,
just in this clas,
i can see it,
I Know this.

Then she opened
the old classroom  window.
and the cool spring air
filtered into the chalky room.
The lilac perfumes drifted  into the room.
What is that fragrance class?
It is Lilacs,
Mrs. Chowdhury,
we sang in unison.
Yes, it is lilacs children.
Last year they all died
with the winter storms.
But now they are back
as sweet as ever.

The jobs died with the war.
But they will be back.
You must all learn as much
as you can to take them.
children.
She never lost a single chance
to teach us something.

I get back to the UK
every now and then .
I am a doctor.
perhaps the one she saw
in her class so long ago.

I call in to see her
in her tiny retirement flat
in Manchester.

She pours me a cup of green tea.
Into a delicate china cup.
It is grown in the foothills
of the Himalayas
she whispers
it is picked young.
so fresh so nourishing.
Never losing her chance
to teach me something new.
Now tell me
what new things
have you learned in America .?

If Romania was a color, it would be a funeral color.

It would be the color of remembrance, and the color of forgetting.

It would be a color that screams to be avenged, respected and mourned.

It would be a proud color.



A color that remembers a glorious past, mostly imagined and embroidered with more victories than defeats.



It would be a color of joy, yet hidden in silence.

A color that boasts of courage, but asks for submissiveness.

A color that speaks of kindness, but greedily hoards.

A color that's been censored.



The color of Romania would be that lack of color, that void that takes away all other colors,

and shoves them down below, under the writhing belly of the thick-scaled beast.

The color that waits to burst out with deep reds, and magentas, and blues.



It would be that color that would not stay dead,

would not stay mourned,

would not roll over,

but hammer against the void and bring forth the kaleidoscope of hope.