"palanquin" poems
As the sun moves to the western horizon
Colors are skilfully blended in a palette
In an instant the sky becomes an exquisite canvas of art
Making even Van Gogh burn in jealousy
With the last glimmer of sunset
When the shadows chase the light,
The aerial folks fly back to their nests
Like black and white specks dotting the sky
With a dark drape stretched across the Earth’s face
The arrival of the night is a spectacular sight
Cicadas and crickets welcome her with their ceremonious band
And street lamps blink their eyes to catch a better view
While truant clouds still wander around aimless
The cerulean sky signals them to hurry
Stars slowly appear in the night sky
Like sequins stitched on to a blue brocade
The crescent moon smiles down
The empress of the night, proud and regal
She and her retinue keep guard over the slumbering Earth
The unpaid sentries of the night!
A gentle breeze makes a palanquin ride
Wafting in the scent of opening buds
The beauty of the night sends me to raptures
My heart exploding like foaming wine in a bottle
Yet I cannot but keep wondering
How many dark secrets
The night holds
Within her tenebrous folds!
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 12:52 PM UTC
In the morning I heard the Koel’s melodious call
It is a sure sign of Sneaking autumn’s fall
What a striking difference between winter and spring
It is undoubtedly season’s eternal king
I love nature’s green saree
She smiles with an uncontrollable spree
Her saree is full of beautiful flowers
there are very many different colours
Nature’s Bindi is the glorious sun
Her hair pin is the shining moon
She cools herself with her natural fan
Her stay here might be of a little span
She sits with an yellow sarree in the palanquin
The bride groom looks at her as if she were a queen
Her beauty and shyness is her divine pride
She is a newly married mesmerizing bride
the villages are replete with ripe corn
All the birds enjoy this beautiful morn
Mar 25, 2011
Mar 25, 2011 at 6:05 AM UTC
The apartment hasn’t been cleaned for so long and has housed a depressive in it for the same length of time so that there is a glaze of slime-dirt on the floor, made of dried coffee, hot chocolate, maybe some **** or some spillage from a tube of steroid cream to treat an inflammation that never really goes. The rate of ooze changes?. Clean textiles are piled up on the floor, never having been folded, and mix here and there with ***** practical fatpants that make me look like a geologist and white-white cotton blankets that can be washed on HOT with lots of bleach that I purloined from some mentalhealthfacility. The inbox is full of—is bristling with—remonstrances from Programs for the Nondoer—you haven’t filed, haven’t turnstiled, haven’t had your hologram chip assessed by central CENTRAL intelligence, what is wrong with you. Upon stepping outside there is a beat during which I think maybe somewonder might swirl and buoy but no, just wethumid and ***** sidewalks cruddy and Haitians and quasi-Haitians muttering “taxitaxitaxi” in front of their Gypsy conveyances with their dubious certifications. I should go for a ride in one, a dubious passenger for a dubious palanquin. I tried the library but it was too hot and decrepit and too filled with Books For African-Americans, which always ****** me off; are only African-Americans going to read Wright or Douglass or Brooks? Everyone is overrated, anyway, movies and theater and the moribund beat of commerce, and as the dangerous autos pass, sometimes not running you over, you can see morechange in the pockets of the shareholders of BeePee and Iacocca Coach-Wirx. Any friendliness exhibited seems to contain an underovertone of You’re Not Included Whiteboy White ****** Ghost ***** all archaic names I’ve been almost astounded to be called usually while balancing on tiptoe on some lurching, roaring dieselbus, grinding past off-off-off brand groceries that do a dubious business. While making my police report I wink at a sevenyearold boy and I get a lustrous wink back butalas this is not enough to beat back those slurrycolored brainfazes.
May 8, 2013
May 8, 2013 at 2:09 PM UTC
There are three important stages
in the life of a man or woman.
Birth, marriage and death.
We do not know about our birth and death
But we enjoy and celebrate our marriage
It may be celebrated in different ways
in different cultures across the globe.
It brings happiness and joy not only
to the bride and the bridegroom
but everybody sitting in the betrothal room
A man and a woman become perfect
only after marriage in any age
The bride sits like a queen
in the Indian palanquin
And the bride groom waits for her
like the spring for the koel.
Marriage is not only to unite two bodies
but to ignite two souls.
The happiest occasion for a woman
or a man is when ***** becomes
a mother and a father.
when the child plays with a toy
the father gets inexpressible joy
and the mother feels like the HELEN OF TROY
Mar 20, 2011
Mar 20, 2011 at 8:18 AM UTC
Black eyed Venus
your lascivious confessions
a voice of thorns
made the priest **** off
and for seconds he felt close to his god
i burn for you on this
iron jawed fire escape
crying on your thighs
as if landing on a dream
like a canon
that could take out the moon
feel me fickled fingers
I am potters clay
prom queen
*** goddess
luminous dusty winds
of the miraculous
everything is about death
even being born
clouds like asphalt flowers
and ancient monks
her mouth
wet like peaches and syrup
her beauty
an arrow in my throat
and the moon claims the light
i consume you a thousand times
before i die by your hand
oh so willing
tired of living in this dead house
of harsh destiny
palanquin of lust and blood
Jul 14, 2019
Jul 14, 2019 at 12:55 PM UTC
Let me rest in the arms of slumber,
For my palanquin has arrived.
Decorated with white lilies,
Let it be carried by its bearers.
Today I'm the bride and my groom is Patiently waiting,
I can see him smile.
In his mysterious smile, I know
I've lived a beautiful life.
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 12:27 PM UTC
He was ready when they came to take him
stepped out to the day as in a dream
and with a face unmourningly serene
entered the waiting palanquin!
How quickly passed his seventy years
he felt having spent not a year even
now on a ride on the bearers’ shoulders
his lips moved in prayer to heaven!
His heart was not weighed with grief
but a resignation deep and tranquil
there comes a day one has to leave
preordained by kind God’s will!
That way he had wanted it to be
when death came to knock on the door
would hear him say *I am ready
won’t keep you waiting a moment more.*
Through the hush when rang last bell
and to the wind his breath was free
echoed through the mourners’ wail
the untamed refrain I am ready.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 10:40 AM UTC
dressed like a Madras bride
all weighted down in gold
held aloft on a bejeweled
palanquin
I search for the Luminous One
in the eyes of the topaz idol
adored by many
my hands are sewn together in
devotional prayer
and my lips are blue from
chanting Your 1008 Names
my heart has grown
soft as your lotus petaled feet
dancing over the hills of Brindavin
Divine lad clasp me to Your
imperishable breast
whisper the words of eternity
into my yearning ears
Om
Om
Om
Dec 25, 2015
Dec 25, 2015 at 9:59 PM UTC
Supposez Goliath mené par Myrmidon.
Le cornac est tout jeune et la bête est énorme.
Le palanquin tremblant par instant se déforme
Et vous cahote au point de vous estropier
Sous ses rideaux de cuir et son toit de papier.
Un monstre n'a pas moins de roulis qu'un navire ;
Comme un vaisseau chancelle un éléphant chavire,
Et vous avez le mal de mer sur Béhémoth.
Le cornac, nain pensif, conseille à demi-mot
Le colosse, et le monstre écoute et ne se trompe
Sur rien, ni sur le gué qu'il sonde avec sa trompe,
Ni sur la route à suivre, et jamais l'éléphant
N'a peur, pourvu qu'il soit conduit par un enfant.
759
In the hush of a fading twilight eve
Heard the passionate crooning of a dove
Under the eaves it sat close to her love
What delight, that sound instantly gave
Sudden was the change it could impart
Brought forth a spurt of spontaneous delight
Lifting away all my sadness and regret,
It fell like rain into my lovelorn heart.
The heavens soon turned azure blue
In joy, my heart began to leap
It generated in me emotions too deep
Before me all beauty came into view.
I saw pearls of bright sheen on trees,
Resting wobbly on the edge of leaves
Felt the scent of opening flowers,
Fanned in bouts of wind and breeze
Watched the evening covering in shrouds
And the day paving way to night
In darkness fireflies dancing in delight
And the moon riding in the palanquin of clouds
In the open I sat long like a sculptured figure
Breathing the scent of the perfumed air
Experiencing a new gaiety in profuse measure
My heart brimming with umpteen desire
Apr 15, 2021
Apr 15, 2021 at 11:43 AM UTC
Looking at the moon,
I suddenly so desire,
That may you descend.
In the lunar palanquin,
May you come to my life.
In the angelic embrace,
May you come to the arms of my wife.
I swear that I have not seen,
Anyone as cute as my imagination.
In the lunar palanquin,
Here comes my cute princess.
By the grace of the angels,
May you be calligraphed in my life.
I swear that for me she is the cutest,
None else is even half as beautiful.
A dream home is being built,
My dreams get moulded.
Let all my dreams come true,
I will decorate the walls with love.
This dewy moonlight is so soft,
My imagination may get real.
Lit by this softer moonlight,
How more sweet can it get?
Jun 9, 2017
Jun 9, 2017 at 8:55 AM UTC
She sleeps beneath the spot where I am standing
This casket is my palanquin,
Decorate it with roses plucked from my garden and thorns from her orchard
Lay me on this red velvet I bought from the market of love and take me to her,
On the shoulders of my friends and kin I had abandoned long ago,
Or in the hearse painted red for the union of our souls
Aug 16, 2015
Aug 16, 2015 at 3:35 AM UTC
inscrutable mountain buddha
you have buried potent seeds
of your passion
in my heart's quivering
wet petals
red robed monks
carry my spirit on
a celestial palanquin
down a strange river
singing bowls, mist
and the flute's oblong scry
silently my Soul
chants your
name
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 10:23 PM UTC
Set you in a palanquin
Decorate it with stars
Steal you away from this world
Steal your heart away
Oh love I seek every day
Her smiles lights my dark
My imperfections sent away
Now the love we embark
Apr 25, 2017
Apr 25, 2017 at 11:48 AM UTC
You try on the white
dress with the blossoms
across your ******* the pink
dress with the cherries stamped
on your body, the purple
stockings peeking from hem
held so bashfully in hand.
When I saw you my multiplied
heart could crush angels.
This cloth, cut close
with the lust of spring,
given to your dizzy shape,
carries me. My heart,
a palanquin for yours.
Apr 6, 2019
Apr 6, 2019 at 8:16 AM UTC
NIGRA SUM SED FORMOSA
*The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it,
for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.*
Matthew 12:42
She materializes
from ancient Marib and the Horn of Africa
to fulfill final prophecy:
Upping the ante of Solomon’s triple six
Erythrean Makkeda/Balkis appears, manifests, descends
sweeps in amidst clouds of frankincense:
immaculate golden sandstorm
crossing over our threshold
having passed through Arabia
in her palanquin;
with retinue of camels and courtiers
spices and incense
invading, bursting into the Baroque,
King George II freaks out:
how to handle her—
arriving unannounced
in England in 1749 . . .
But Sheba is beatific
under a towering white wig,
enveloped in silk brocade;
Lutheran angels uphold her trailing gown…
Handel, inspired, knows what to do.
Saba: We come to the seventh day
we enter her rest—
a greater than Solomon has arrived.
Apr 28, 2025
Apr 28, 2025 at 5:40 PM UTC