I'll follow you through
sunflower cranes, stood
straight up on one leg,
tiptoe-heads above. Thick,
trunk stems support eyes

as though a field of giraffes
came to Loiré on holiday,
a tower of swinging faces
basking in a summer breeze.
Sepia yellows peg out

like eyelashes, shine
against that blue wave
of ocean sky, barely
frothing a cloud. Atop
your shoulders, I'll try

pinching a bud to keep
for home, looking back
a thousand suns echo
a staining rust, autumn
reds sinking as they set.

A memory so old, turned to sepia
From the pigmentation of Time
Losing all defining boundaries
As the album pages become dog eared
Due to long years of reminiscing
The moments shared together
A happy snapshot, now fading away
Can’t recall anymore on introspection
The album full of memories
Black and white turns to sepia
And ravages of time discolors
Once colorful moments
Captured only in black and white






© Amitav (Radiance)

childhoods are forgotten
mere bonds simply left to rot
bewildered and betrothed to the very idea
of a more golden sun
and glistening moon
but not all the planets in the solar system are close
and are in fact very far away

words are to mean nothing
nothing
left with the wind
blown away
good bye! adieu!
I shall miss my friend!

and where is the blossom
whom I met so long ago
on Mars
on Jupiter
the promiscuity of proximity
reminiscing
within the shallow walls of the cave
that drips drips drips
to the past

and history becomes bloated
with subjectivity and
a sepia undertone
so how can we see what went wrong?
how can we learn the implications of each movement
made by our lips
fingers
each deep breath
that coincides with the galaxy
underneath a waning moon

I wish someone
would sketch
me in, a sienna
thought with
cornflower blue
edges, during
coffee, chai tea
and bagels.

As I call upon the night
To have a conversation
Darkness gives way
And night comes alive
Conscious mind at rest
Sub-conscious takes over
Memory box is brimming
So many anecdotes
Not afraid to emerge
Confident around the dark
Shying away from the day
Night has a life of its own
Feeling antsy and inundated
Quivering hands open the box
Full of pictures in sepia
A retrospective of events
Which were long buried
Sleep has abandoned me
Old memories keep me awake

the world is too bright.
i am blinded by false smiles and laughs strained to reach that falsetto note.
that preconceived notion that paradise of the land brings paradise of the mind.
sand is still sand, and water is still water,
less we quantify their quality by purity and color.
sand is still sand and water is still water,
and i am still me.

the world is too bright,
so i filter it into sepia tones gentler to the mind's eye and swim to where the water meets the clouds.
i am drowning,
but not from the ocean's relentless caresses,
but from the world's relentless stresses:
beauty that is measured and calculated,
saturated with standards that burn like the sun and are as intangible as its rays,
a paradise built on sand as quick as it is to judge.    

so i swim to where the water meets the clouds.
where the water is still water,
and i am still me.

Remember when
We took a daycation?

Waterfalls
For days.

Milk bottle
Sepia vinyl.

Ice cream and
Truck drivers.

Ballerina buns and
Bare necks.

Waterfalls
For days.

Oblivion, the
Falling leaves.

Backseat
Views.

Gravel paths, we
Walked.

Waterfalls
For days.

Blue, blue
Skies.

Crystal
Springs.

Damp red
Leaves.

Waterfalls
For days.

Apples
Were just in season.

Photos
Wagging tails.

Honey tea
Quilted snuggles.

Waterfalls
For days.

Maybe it was
Just a dream.

Next thing
I knew.

I was throwing
A textbook at the wall.

Waterfalls
For days.

I was
Okay.

I swear, for
One day.

I was
Myself again.

Waterfalls
For days.

Remember when
We took a daycation?

A cupid with a golden head
A smile on his angelic face
I had to shoot him dead
Before he put me in my place

Because I've been a bad girl
I haven't loved the way I should
My paper heart began to curl
I burned it so no one else could

But in the laws of love and lust
Such things are punishable by the death
He was sent to arrow the unjust
But I was waiting, eager breath by breath

Sitting in a rose garden, quietly debating
His light foots steps began to ring
Every move I was anticipating
He reached for his bow, as I drew the string

And I killed him with his own arrow
A shot right through the head,
I've never had to love again
As soon as I shot the cupid dead

Can I trust the eyes seeking mine?
I want to
Because they look like home
Through sepia tones
A bittersweet nostalgia before
We learned how easily people break

I want to trust your arms
They look just big enough to hold me
When I know the only way I feel safe
Is in the shape of a ball

And if you were any more beautiful
I’d be *******
Much like the ten beers I should’a
Said no to
Before you
And they
Had me sycophantic and stumbling
And already
just a little bit
*******

I want the smell of you to linger on my clothes
The same way fire does
After a book burning
Just a little bit shameful

I want you to stop my stammering
With a kiss
To preoccupy my mouth
Long enough to subdue my stupid

I want to let go
Of the fever that makes my back sweat
When I see you
And the worry
That your eyes might lose their shine someday

I want you
In all the ways that
I am probably not supposed to want you
But I do

I want our wrinkles to one day fit
Like ****** up Ziploc bags
It’s that bad
So kiss me
Before I tell you that

And maybe
keep your eyes closed
Until I can trust them
Because I want to

Dear Papa,
Yesterday I saw something that I didn’t understand.
They were walking a little ahead of me.
But walking isn't the right word,
because there were two people
and only two feet.
It sounds like a math problem,
But nothing added up in my head.
It sounds like Vikram Vetal, papa,
But unlike the story you told me the other day,
there was no strong king or sly demon.
I saw, however, one ***** underfed boy of eight
dragging his crippled mother across the street.
Adhunik Shravan bal.
A Lilliputian on a Herculean task.
I couldn't decipher her age.
When you're that poor, does age matter?
Do they keep count of the days that pass by
when their aim is to survive just one?
Do they have a mirror to look into
and count the wrinkles on their face?
What does age matter to an eight year old boy
who, instead of attending school,
is hauling his handicapped mother across the road
on a seating board with wheels?
When I was that age, papa,
you bought me a skateboard
that was the exact leaf green
from my 50 colours oil pastels set.
I couldn't see the colour of their clothes.
There was the dark of the night,
yellow of the street lights
and everything was in sepia
like the picture you showed me
of your childhood.
You once told me you were raised in poverty too, papa.
Are there different kinds of poverty?
Did you get toys to play with
or were your clothes in sepia too?
I told you this sounds like a math problem, papa,
And here’s what doesn't add up.
Isn't a parent supposed to hold their child's hand
and show them how to cross the road?
I remember holding your hand,
looking left-right-left
and matching my steps
with your strides.
Fast, but never run.
Who taught him, papa?
Did he have his own papa to teach him?
How did he learn to walk fast enough
and pull hard enough
so that he and his mom made it across the road in time?
How did he find the strength if he was underfed?
He truly reminds me of Shravan bal,
because who else would carry his mother
across such distances.
I told you it sounds like Vikram Vetal, papa,
and now that I think about it, it really does.
Maybe this little boy is a young king.
Maybe he brings his vetal back home every day.
Maybe he hears her talk about her day.
And maybe, papa,
when he succeeds every night,
she saves him from an evil tantric.
An evil tantric called hunger.

my eyes they do wonder
more than you will ever know
will they always
tend to find themeselves in thoughts unpredicted
by even myself
who could probe so deep, mingle so lightly
with touches and sighs not meant to come out they way they do
but even more
so much more
then what ill ever draw with my finger
love dipped sand gripped
oh autumn summer fall
gray September
red winter
sepia summer
under leaves and leaves

ocean

the ocean never changed
where I felt touch as a woman
released my first sighs as a woman
doing bad so bad
under things that were so beautiful

that was so beautiful

I mix and walk back
I must be a woman
to walk this way

and to look into all of your eyes
and feel nothing
and then feel everything

alcohol

white fresh and tastes like spring
under the imagination of so many things
I can go on forever

you know
about cups lovers creeps echos and black *******
that helps me flow

and I still bend to weak minds and words
I still bend to eyes fleeting destruction
to eyes who try to lie about everything
make believe they are something
dieing inside from nothing
bleeding tape around mouths with tongues that are too narrow
for proper speech

i still bend to beauty and love for the sake of -- love
or anything of such kind
meanings lost mixed and revealed through each other
with such discreet difference in between
and I feel the difference
and the contrast only makes me fall deeper into things that i don't know

once discovered

I grab my scarf wrap it around my neck with a thin cancer mutation in between my fingers
select my watch drape it around my wrist
put all belongings where they belong
and check out into the next hotel of
malicious life tones

The moth with newspaper wings sat under the arrow lungs of the eyeless
blood dripped falcon, more whole than the super-glued roman sculpture.

Next door a 50’s con held up church with a roulette table in the kitchen,
and boarded up the massage parlor
downstairs.

The eye of the man was a centrifuge of ducks, mallard and hen, spiraling
outward into evaporated roach-ground
asphalt.

Next door, slits in the picket fence displayed perfectly formed **** & broach,
empty shoes made of feet below, blending
fields.

The marble foundation formed from twine lollipops and fuzzy candy tabs,
ice-etched to the frequency of splintered seashell
angels.

Next door through the forest of knives a spaceship bearing gargoyles peaked
bodies through collages of faces in technicolor sepia
mitosis.

The heiress molted into tiled pieces, her own dog and sunhat caught in blizzard
cuneiform, kaliedescoping again to fractalled inchworms cemented in motion.

i.

i used to only write sad poems.

ii.

you see,
i am a cynic,
a cemetery,
a holocaust,
a chaotic, distant, lost girl
buried in her own
self-destruction.

but with you
i am different.

i want to wake up,
keep my promises,
make up for lost time,
spill blood and ink,
try again,
live

for you.

iii.

you walk me home
and the skies blush
pink cloud summers
mid-December.

we part and i marvel
at the sepia tint
of backyard roses
blurring my lenses.

you came in
like the missing palette color
i never knew
i needed
my skies painted with.

iv.

now, you are all the love poems
i didn't know i could write.

and every metaphor i create
is just a lengthier version of
'i love you'

i really do.

There's something tragic about Brisbane; the city speaks of an older more Romantic time, though the people speak of a newer, modern; more disposable age. It seemingly looks at you with a lost lovers eyes.

Though the city still retains some of its antique glamour; take a stroll down any street in the center and around you will be found the remnants of that age.
Victorian Red-bricks dot the city like proud sentinels, keeping watch over the ever expanding invasion of its contemporary neighbours.
What tales would these monolithic madmen tell is if only we had the ears to listen, who's feet did once trample up the now year-stained wooden stairs, who lived and died and loved and uttered curses and birthed within those walls...and what tales would they have to tell if we only listened?

Ah, gentle reader, you see how your mind wanders at the mention of these thoughts?
The City certainly has its landmarks: the Clock tower of Town Hall, over looking the new modern space of "The Deck" in King George Square, the facade of Grand central station still retaining its grandeur and majesty; now turned into theme bars and a nightclub strip. The old houses littering West End and the strip of red bricks running like a sepia toned river up Elizabeth Street. And of course the dotted remnants of Old City Life being ever encroached upon in the center of the City's smoke filled heart.

The most curious of these is the impression wrought in plaster and cement, white over red, of a window in the city center, with a set of stairs leading up to a place that no longer exists; 50 feet in the air.
Whenever I gaze up at that window, that reminder of the past, I cannot help but wondre who would be staring down at us, on this date in the last century.

"Suffer them not" I wish to say, "for these people are of a different age, with different Gods and values than you."

Suffer them not, ignore their slings, suffer them not.

I love Brisbane.

It's mish-mash of centuries, its people, the tales of its unwritten past, it seems as if the city exudes both a sense of joy and one of unutterable melancholy.

I'm on the train, homebound now to my modern house in the ultra-modern Gold Coast. This is quite depressing. The freedom, the movement, the chance, the ebb and flow of the people soaked tide of the city is leaving fast behind me as this electric trap with seats barrels under facades and tunnels, with enormous neon snakes glittering down from the peaks of modern and ancient towers and we find them reflected in the winding river like innumerable fireflies...dying and twisting and being reborn in the soft moonlight.

South Brisbane Station.
An immortal Victorian construct, still surviving to this day. The same architecture, the same route...different paint though. This Industrial Relic is overlooked by the shining modern whirlpool of THE EYE, a gigantic Ferris wheel giving you the chance to see the city by air, to one side; and a multicoloured, four story glowing monument to the hairdresser franchise god Stefan on the other...which I dub "Stefan's Pintle".

It's garish as hell.

Passing through the night the train goes ever on, powered incessantly by the ticket payers seemingly endless dollar supply.

There's a strange transition from City to Coast, the outerlying towns left in the dust and wake of one and unsure whether they belong to the other. Places such as Kuraby, Banoon, Runcorn, Altandi, Logan and Eden's Landing.

Yet the train ponders on into the night, as it's denizens relinquish themselves to its discretion and desires.
Yes; the train ponders on into the night...

We slowly pass through Woodridge, one of those last bastions of civilisation, neither here nor there. A glittering town trying desperately to be a city. They have a McDonalds. Yay. These places always scare me, and confuse me.
What are they like? Their people? I guess I'll never know, i've never stayed in one long enough to realize.

Welcome to Loganlea, this is a strange place...the funniest thing about it is the fact that it IS a hole. Yet the sign into it shows a shining beach with palm trees and boldly proclaims "WELCOME TO LOGANLEA".
As you draw closer you realize it's pock marked with bullet holes and rust stains.

A train whizzes past, and we find ourselves reflected in its windows, our reality traveling one way; our ghosts another.
Into the long, pale night, coloured by the stars of a thousand distant streetlights. Like a million tiny man made suns; created to fend of the darkness and keep our fears at bay. We truely live in the age of endless day.

The melancholy of the city is far behind now, it's streets, its smells, its people all gone. As we are lost in the brightness of the endless day and the night grows ever long, touching those distant, far between places with its natural, velvet splendour, running its hand down the cheek of time. For there will always be a night, even when we create days, and the city will always be melancholy, and the coast will always be a glittering sequin on the dress of a cheap, soulless *****.

I love Brisbane.

We love to chase the wind through streaks of blinding bliss,
Tagging the glorious ideals of love, peace, friendship, even
The meaning of life, to weeping willows and pensive pebbles.

We admire the monochrome sky in all its barren blue or pregnant purple;
Hues of burple and plue are dismissed as being tedious, or just confused.
Fear not, photoshop will rectify this pigmented aberration.

We giggle at clouds that resemble kitchen utensils or mystical creatures;
“Hey look a teddy bear in a spacesuit with a flowerpot on his head wielding the Sword of Gryffindor!”
We declare sagely, with the acumen of a legendary bird watcher.

We resurrect grass angels by launching into horizontal jumping-jacks, and,
Just as a disclaimer, no flower was harmed in the process. Not that it matters,
As long as we did not soil our Lacoste and Burberry.

We spin a mixtape out of the torrential downpour, our tracks pitting
The pitter of regularity against the patter of inconstancy, synchronizing
The symphony of splashes to an undercurrent of nostalgia.

We kiss against the bark of an elm, and if a tree is not available in the vicinity,
We throw ourselves down a nearby hill, tumbling into a ball of moist romance,
Panting, as we bask in the studio lighting of the approving sun.

Every still is captured by a Lomo,
Every scene arrested in sepia motion,
Every moment ravished by the chichi Bohemian in us.

My heart feels like an uncut diamond
Though it is still the same, it is not the same
Someone speaks of a bridge to be built from Tangier
to Algeciras or is it Gibraltar?
"Yes & then a highway to the stars or more likely
an elevator to the Underworld," says Yellow Turban
To White Jellaba as the exhaust fumes from the bus
engulf them, leaving behind not even a single
shadow.
Is that Mel Clay in a white jacket turning the corner?
No, it is a figment of my imagination escaped from the
asylum.
Is that Ian Sommerville walking backwards up the street
as if pulled by a giant magnet?
No, that is Wm. Burroughs making electricity
from dead cats.
Is that Tatiana glistening on Maxiton?
No, that is the sun dancing in the sugar bowl.
Is that Marc Schelfer wavering on the cliffedge?
No, it is a promontory in the wind of time
about to fall in the sea.
Is that Beethoven's 9th Symphony being played
up the street?
No, it is the sound of the breadwagons
rumbling over cobblestones
Is that George Andrews with two girls in hand
looking for bread?
No, it is an unidentified flying object about to land.
Is that One-eyed Mose hanging by his heels?
No, that is the hanged man inventing the Taro.
Are the dead really so fascinated by *******?
Yes, that is how they travel.
Is that Irving in short pants looking for trouble?
No, that's me unable to stop thinking.
Is that Kenneth Halliwell looking for Joe Orton?
Is that Jane Bowles looking for Sherifa, Rosalind looking
for her baby, Alfred searching for his lost hair?
Is that the wig of it all, the patched robe of my brain,
the wind talking to itself?
Brion is dead and Yacoubi is dead, and I am a not unhappy
ghost remembering everything, the warp & woof of memories,
her yellow slip, her shaved ****, her idiot child.
Dream shuttle makes me exist everywhere at once.
The blind beggars led by children keep coming.
"They all have many houses in the Casbah,"
chant the unbelievers ******* on sugar.
Words keep coming back like Bezezel for ****, Lictcheen
for oranges, like Mina, like Fatima, like Driss Berrada
dropping his trousers for an injection in the middle
of his shop.
The trunk is full of old sepia postcards,
barebreasted girls smoking hookahs etcetera.
We speak of the cataplana, the mist which obscures
even the cielo you cannot even see the hand in front
of your face.
We embrace, he says he thought of me only yesterday,
he says there are always nine such men who look like us
in the world and that we are the tenth.
We speak of the gold filets in the sky over Moulay Absalom.
The garbage men in rubber boots go thru the Socco pushing
wheeled drums of collected garbage.
An unveiled woman wobbles out of a taxi and heads home
before sunrise.
Paul couldn’t believe that was a Karma Street,
but I will never forget it.
And Billy Batman, who made the best hash in the world,
he dropped a loaded pistol in Kabul, shot himself in the *****,
took some ****** and lay down to die.
Now I must get up from my table in the allnight Café Central.
No more Dr. Nadal, no more window with red crosses & red
crescents.
The water thrown from buckets runs across the café floors
& over the sidewalks & I drop a dirham into the hand
of a blind beggar singing in the dark on the American stairs


From Anais Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love—"The women wear fireflies in their hair, but the fireflies stop shining when they go to sleep so now and then the women had to rub the fire- flies to keep them awake."

~
In her sulking-place
alone and naked

framed in soft sepia
—the vintage, harlequin hue

at this supposed faded hour
she sits looking back on memory

she sits and stares
into the boudoir mirror

at herself
at her embonpoint

yes, at these *******
—at their landscape

how they fall
(like Niagara)

where they point
(like a compass)

what they tell (so fondly)
when pressed together

about their time
—their work and play

towers on the precipice
of judgment

both callous and
uncharitable

if the mirror
truly be her reflection

her vision is turned around
as illusion

—a study of tonality and tolerance
for one's own flesh

the room
an invitation

or perhaps
a lockaway

where she even keeps secrets
from herself
~

To be alone with you,
stuck together in a still-framed eternity,
to be unsure of where we're going
in a blacked out picture perfect life.
Whether I choose to star in our own film
or live in a beatniks' reality,
whether I'm able to separate myself from you
or remain bound in our love stained story

Caught in a momentary lapse of judgement
hung on a wall for all to see,
this is the life we have been forced to live.
No one wanted to inspect the negatives,
no one wanted to find any flaws
in our majestic lie of a loveless love

She'd swooshed by on her skates.
He'd seen her in her reflection that day
On his car’s rear view mirror,
For the first time ever.
The new neighbour, was she?

That very night, for the first time ever,
Both happened to be on their respective rooftops.
The clock had just scaled eleven.
Now that they’d seen each other,
Tonight's coincidence sufficed to make way
For a rendezvous every night, thereafter.

He’d often be smiling his sheepish smile,
Panting for breath as he’d reach the terrace
While the clock would strike eleven,
A few heartbeats later.
Oh, but she would often already be there,
A teasing laughter on her lips,
A childlike smile in her eyes.
Relief followed by exultation in his heart.

And so, they’d be standing a lane's length apart,
United under the zoetic starry sky, every night hence.

You’d wonder, how both were somehow convinced,
That the other still believed
This nightly tryst
Under the sky's roof to be a coincidence.

She'd light cigarette after another.
He'd pretend
To be caressing his pet,
Fast asleep.
Or some such silly thing.

How he’d wish the whiff of smoke from her cigarette
Would drift across to his terrace.
He’d imagine the wafting smoke
That’d emanate as she’d part her lips
To be a peek into her coy desires.
And many such cheesy things.

They hadn't exchanged a word till date.
Oh but they'd exchanged hearts that very first night.
She didn't even know his name yet
She'd wonder if he knew hers’?
'Has it ever mattered?' she'd think.
'I'm better off not knowing her name!'
Thinking a name could define her
Is to be silly', he’d think.

She was at his door one evening,
To hand over a letter,
Mistakenly delivered at her home.
Or so she said. Something he'd happily believed.
She'd slipped her heart along with the letter,
She later happily realized.

The ensuing night lingered
Six and a half cigarettes longer,
The first time ever.

Fifteen evenings gone by since
She wouldn’t be seen.
He stayed for a brief bit on the sixteenth night.
Disappointed less, worried more.
Did she feel this silent encounter
Of their worlds had stayed silent too long?
Words could never suffice, didn't she know?
He went down to his room ruefully.
Oh but she’d reached just the terrace at that instant.

And they thought coincidences could only always favor them.

A few evenings later he saw her.
Not veiled by the sepia-tinted street lights this time.
Nor in the crimson blush of that evening.
Decked in bridal finery
The vermilion vows on her forehead
Staring starkly at him like an exclamation mark.

And you thought coincidences could only always favor us,
Seemed to be the rhetoric she was throwing at him.

That night, his tattered heart
Writhed in dead wakefulness on the rooftop.
Even now, he looks across
At her absence, a presence in itself.

Low lit room
Your perfume
Seeps into my lungs
Seeps into my lungs.

Transfixed eyes
Alibis
Slow this scene down
Slow this scene down
There you go.

Breathing slow
No one knows
You're halfway out my door
Halfway out my door
Watch you go.

So tell the trees
So I can be
Remove the traces of you
Remove the traces of you.

Lower your guns
Because no one won
I'm not your possibility
I'm not your possibility
Anymore.

Beaumaris,
carnival of soft pastel tones
of damp evenings
of tramway cars
with small orange lights
distracted bystanders
the empty bridges
the silent horizons
pale lace on a parasol,
light sepia dreams
of a particular Monet,
forgotten, unseen
before the rains came.

Many years later,
I found her
so tenuous, so subtle
in what little was left
yet there it was, her soul
all new shades
of melancholy.

Now I just swim,
every now and then
in that blue ocean
of her blueness,
the Sea of Oblivion.
In the glimpse  
of bright reflections
of sunshine
on the water,
of salted afternoons
in a country
where it no longer
rains

i woke with a **** and
a windpipe full of butterflies, so i
swallowed them down to my chest
my stomach and below and
it was then that i realized
they weren't butterflies
but backward flies
that turn to maggots and
eat dead things

so it was then that i realized
i was dead, in between that
chasing-my-breath consciousness and
sepia splotched dream
which featured my favorite
human being
waking me, winding me
up...

hey saige, come on, so i
unlocked my eyes
even though i knew it was my
little brother
all along...

bright
cobwebbed windows at my
feet and
brighter fringe above me
brushing my forehead, like fingers
he leaned
over me, nudged me
hugged me, come on
saige...

i began to rise, which is why
he stopped me, that's when he
kissed me, and that's when i
forgave him
because i knew it was
an accident
except for, that was when
he did it
again...

my lips inside his, and
i kept my eyes
open
kept telling myself to
just kiss back, since we'd
already ruined everything, because
that was all he
wanted
because maybe
we could go back, maybe we'd still be
inseparable if
i hadn't screamed, enough!
maybe nightmares
are second chances at
being better
best friends...

i was torn
worn threadbare and i felt it
in every fiber of me
lying there, but i couldn't
pull away and i've
never wished to hurt him, so i
couldn't push, either
just clamped my eyes
shut, as he did the same
with his mouth...

and that was when
i woke
without a soul nor a shame
save for the maggots
in my veins

Stained glass coffins
Crystalline mosquitoes
Death that masquerades
In silken flags and floras
Languorous beauties
Graffiti of red and violet light
Sirens kiss the bullets
As they scatter them
To burn holes in sepia dreams
Watercolor ghosts
Casting out wildflower candy
Attics that hide under
Strawberry dust and lemons
That melts into mildew
As they pass down the gullet
Layers of ashes in the belly
“But you told us to swallow!”
Masses of children howl
The pretty ghouls hiss back
“Cannot you tell a lie by now,
By the sweetness of its taste?”

I’m phased out to sepia, Pet,
The last cab on the rank,
My good looks and *** a memory, Sweet,
For which, I’ve you to thank.
One day blending through to next
Increasingly a blur,
Dissatisfaction total now
For things ain’t what they were.
Ignored by all and sundry
Quite invisible to they
Who converse in hieroglyphics,
Incomprehensible, I say.
Overtaken by technology
Can’t figure out the phone
Facebook, watch and wallet mishmash
Won’t leave us alone.
Confusion at the pace of things,
It’s all moving far too fast
Queuing up for life
Leaves us, inevitably, last.
But bitterness ain’t with me
For I’ve loved your churlish ways,
Tho we’ve sailed through life on cobblestones
That old sunshine warmed our days.
But now I’m phasing out to sepia, Sweet,
Cos I’m the last cab on the rank
One quick kiss before departure, Pet,
For which..... I’ve you to thank.

M.
Auckland
22 April 2015

In the beginning, a warm sepia tone film was wrapped around my eyes like a blind fold,
distorting my perception of reality, while we spun around.
The warm summer air that our love grew out of still warmed my hands when I left.
Now  the balmy haze has lifted and a broken record plays over. And over.
And over until your words don’t sound like words anymore,
quietly fading into the background,  we start to move slower. And slower.
And slower until we are immobile.  Paused.
We move backwards now, rewinding like an old family video. Farther. And farther.
And farther until we are at the very beginning again.
With our sepia eyes locked we’ll never move again. Frozen in time like a Polaroid.

They squirm inside their clothes
tweed, chiffon tiered skirts, and bows
of their grandmothers’ sepia, halcyon days

with lumberjack flannel and Kerouac quotes,
but it’s more a matter of age than size,
these charging, listless, candid creatures

with hairstyles that can only be described
as gravity readily defied and self-cut,
frequently dyed to shades that swing

between black coffee and New York poetry
deep imagism and social realism against the backdrop
of American Apparel ads on scratched up Macs.

They slouch up and down trafficked Newbury,
dropping names like Morrissey and Bukowski
pausing now and then to pick up on the ennui

of twenty-three, and how they will one day live la vie
Dharhimian, running on American Spirits,
James Dean, Truffaut chic,

a monthly check from their parents,
an apathetic sneer at holding anything too dearly
and how they hate that word—*hip-ster.

a creeping chill throws me cold: the
skies have turn  SEPIA AND i  completely
utterly melt into each word
birth'd -- this elegie betrays the poet;
a confession unburdens the Spirit -- you
are reading about the me of 'i' have always loved you |mia /i shall meet you again to-now within the theater of my Soul  sure, sometimes
i have concern for the world as it continues to devour my Feelings and sensibilities.
   when can i love you again?

:: 03.24.2020 ::

My father's long fingers smooth
over the aged scratchy pleats.
The Kilt is magnificent. It has the
fleeting beauty that only a well
kept antique has, that warm
firelight glow of the past.
It has a few scuffs and holes,
but the somber reds and greens of
clan Mackintoish have settled into
the cloth and darkened pleasantly.
The kilt is always the most important detail,
it has passed from grandfather down,
and it looks as handsome now
as in the sepia photographs on our shelves.
The dirks black ornate hilt rests
heavily against his hip, and the
belt is cinched tightly to hold it up.
you can practically hear bagpipes
My grandfather's dark green cotton socks
sit near the top of my father's calf
and he leans over to adjust the frills.
And as his tan wrinkled brow furrows
in concentration, and his admittedly
attractive white whiskers scrape
across his collar, and the image
nears completion, the drum beats louder.
Reaching up from the ancient past
and grasping the future in tradition,
the ghosts of ancestors enter his poise,
and he suddenly appears less like
my father and takes on the swagger
of a cocky fisherman, of pirate.
He is swinging swords
and playing pipes, and cobbling, and
setting stones upright in ancient
forgotten ritual, and tossing cabers.
I know looking at him now,
what my own ghosts will be
when my time comes.

Strolling upon the dark pavements,
under the melancholy aura of The Moon,
I wander what I fear deep within me.
Is it the darkness of my soul? or is it,
the weight of the fear or the pain of
either my close ones or my friends,
or the shared stories of many more.
Is it only me with racing thoughts?
Or I race on someone's mind too?
I think not. They laugh, They grin,
Where as I drink the red off of
my own unhealed scars and
some of it spills on my small and
hardbound old sepia sheets as poetry...

I found it while unpacking boxes of old books in the basement.
It slipped out of a Spanish to English
dictionary that I probably smuggled out
of a middle school library ten years ago
and haven't opened since.

I knew what it was, of course-
whole years were spent with bad posture
listening to substitute teachers and CCD carpool-drivers
lecture about the bold beauty and senseless frailty
that was youth.
Their bodies were at once tense and earnest.
Their voices were at once condescending and pleading as
they sang deeply of the space we blindly occupied and
they fiercely missed.

My understanding of youth was a
sepia-streak stumble through tall reeds below an open
sky; taking clumsy steps on sea-cut feet
and one day regretting not passing enough
notes kept folded in pockets or taking
enough pictures of the faces whom I ran beside.

Youth, obviously, is subjective-
It can be teased up or sculpted-in tight
in relation to circumstance.
In my own mind youth is a cool breeze,  glory days thing- like prom night or my first kiss.
Really each took place years ago but, since they didn’t
carry the weight or sheen I was told they should,
I still sit tight and wait for them.

They will find me eventually.
They’ll arrive a loud booming from a furious sky that births open-prairie rainfall that quiets my
teenage sadness as I sit shotgun
in some boy’s pickup and we race
a  cornfield to the Wyoming border.

The fact that I’m in my twenties is irrelevant.
The fact that I live in New England, where corn is imported and gas is expensive, is not worth noting.

So when, in the basement among the books I've hoarded and arranged around me like armor,
I saw my golden-ticket youth slip
out between pages and waft slowly down, I let it  hit the ground.
I could have crushed it with a sneakered sole
like a cigarette or crumbled it into nothing with shaking fingers.
I could have let it careen down between damp paperbacks to
the box’s bottom and know for certain it
would never reemerge.

But, surprisingly, I didn’t want to.
It was light and lovely in a way I would have never guessed.
It wasn’t as sticky as I thought it’d be.
In fact, as I flipped my hair forward and
double-no-triple knotted the bouncy, silky strings
(Strings that felt more like existing than regretting)
at the nape of my neck- a smile so severe I thought I'd crack found it's way to me.

My youth will never be something I flip through
like a catalogue and miss and cry out for. I will never
be haunted by it nor will I conjure it
around a fire while trying to make a point.
I won’t tell ghost stories about my youth
to bored kids because I am not going to let it die.

I saw it today. For the first time I could touch
it and smell it and I realized it didn’t have to be
the sarcophagus of who I was,
but instead could serve as the shifting
and stretching prologue to who I will be.

I’ll let it hang loose and light from my neck.
Its colors will fade in the sun and its beads will
probably warp as it trapezes altitudes and climates.
It will dull and tarnish.
It won’t stay pretty but neither will I.

I’ll gladly sacrifice any lace and filtered polaroid memories
and oft-repeared stories of my youth; kept behind glass and propped up among rags at a museum exhibit,
for the low belly excitement of closing my eyes today and not knowing what I'll see when I open them tomorrow.

I am not depressed
I’m just deflated
Out of style and over-dressed
At second-best, I’m overrated

An old birthday balloon
(Out of breath, somewhat bated)
I hum my jingles out of tune
One-hit-wonders soon outdated

Like a song without sound
Mourning a muted meltdown
I’m at the point of no concern
For my inability to yearn

I am -
Whatever comes after
The past, the future
The cries, and the laughter

I remain –
Whatever came before
The purple rain, the midnight train
The ****** and the *****

I am a pixelated painting
Understood by few
Inexplicably containing
Little drops of you

You’re my middle C
A sepia photograph
Of my mundane eulogy
And my previous epitaph

You are my bitter half
The gall in my bladder
My nervous laugh
My endless chatter

You’re my history rewritten
My once shy, twice-bitten
My state-of-the-art
You’re the bottom of my heart

The top of my lungs
You’re my talking in tongues
The motivational quote
In my suicide note

And although I’ll never be free
From this heart on my sleeve
I’ll always wish you to be
The Adam to my Eve.

Lying with you in black and white,
I wonder the significance of a mouth,
hands, fingertips.
grazing skin. mere body mechanics,
or a vessel for a spiraling kinetic?
how we become weak to emotion, seemingly pathetic,
clinging to eachother
leeching off one another's need.
I stare into your eyes
unabashed. I smile.
I wonder how it is that I stare on
and be ever taken by the arrangement of your eyelashes,
the curve of your lips. My lips are wilted leaves,
cracking against the flow of your rejuvenation.
my eyes feel heavy and dry but I stare on,
alive. the shadows take away hesitation
as it shades your words
black and white, sepia, blue.
your hands of ginger, hot and sweet,
melt the frost clinging to my back
created by the rush
turning my gut
as I ache toward dark whiperings.
I want to utter the same, but I know
I can never replicate your dulcet timbre.
I sound so plain. Instead I trickle my lips across your face.
My soul cries out,
Ours are made for love antique
In an instant world.  
It pains me to budge
from this bind.

I wonder how fingertips may convey
what in the light we scarcely can define.

Es fácil vaticinar que los propagandistas de la infancia no van a interrumpir su campaña
quieren vendernos la inocencia cual si fuera un desodorante o un horóscopo
después de todo saben que caeremos como gorriones en la trampa
piando nostalgias inventando recuerdos perfeccionando la ansiedad

los geniales demagogos de la infancia
así se llamen Amicis o Proust o Lamorisse
sólo recapitulan turbadores sacrificios móviles campanarios globos que vuelven a su nube de origen
su paraíso recobrable no es exactamente nuestro siempre perdido paraíso
su paraíso tan seguro como dos y dos son cuatro no cabe en nuestro mezquino walhalla
ese logaritmo que nunca está en las tablas

los impecables paleontólogos de la infancia
duchos en exumar rondas triciclos mimos y otros fósiles
tienen olfato e intuición suficientes como para desenterrar y desplegar mitos cautivantes pavores sabrosos felicidad a cuerda

esos decisivos restauradores
con destreza profesional tapan grietas y traumas
y remiendan con zurcido invisible el desgarrón que arruinaba nuestro compacto recuerdo de cielo

sin embargo un día habrá que entrar a saco la podrida infancia
no el desván
allí apenas habitan los juguetes rotos los álbumes de sellos el ferrocarril rengo o sea la piel reseca de la infancia
no  las fotografías y su letargo sepia
habrá que entrar a saco la miseria

porque la infancia
además del estanque de azogada piedad
que a cualquier precio adquieren los ávidos turistas del regreso
además de la espiga y la arañita
y el piano de Mompou
además del alegre asombro que dicen hubo
además de la amistad con el perro del vecino
del juego con las trenzas que hacen juego
además de todo eso
tan radiante tan modestamente fabuloso
y sin embargo tan cruelmente olvidado
la infancia es otra cosa

por ejemplo la oprobiosa galería de  rostros
encendidos de entusiasmo puericultor y algunas veces de crueldad dulzona
y es (también la infancia tiene su otoño) la caída de las primeras máscaras
la vertiginosa temporada que va de la inauguración del pánico a la vergüenza de la masturbación inicial rudimentaria
la gallina asesinada por los garfios de la misma buena parienta que nos arropa al comienzo de la noche
la palabra cáncer y la noción de que no hay exorcismo que valga
la rebelión de la epidermis las estupefacciones convertidas en  lamparones de diversos diseños y medidas
la noche como la gran cortina que nadie es capaz de descorrer y que sin embargo oculta la prestigiosa momia del porvenir

por ejemplo la recurrente pesadilla
de diez cien veinte mil encapuchados
cuyo silencio a coro repetirá un longplay treinta años más tarde con el alevoso fascinante murmullo de los lamas del Tibet en sus cantos de muerte
pero que por entonces es sólo una interminable fila de encapuchados balanceándose saliéndose del sueño golpeando en el empañado vidrio de la cocina
proponiendo el terror y sus múltiples sobornos anexos

la otra infancia es qué duda cabe el insomnio con los ardides de su infierno acústico
uno dejándose llevar despojado de sábanas mosquitero camisón y pellejo
uno sin bronquios y sin tímpanos
dejándose llevar imaginándose llevado hacia un lejanísismo casi inalcanzable círculo o celda o sima donde no hay hormigas ni abuela ni quebrados ni ventana ni sopa y donde el ruido del mundo llega sólo como un zumbido ni siquiera insistente
es el golpe en la cara para ser más exacto en la  nariz
el caliente sabor de la primera sangre tragada
y el arranque de la inquina la navidad del odio que irza el pelo calienta las orejas aprieta los dientes gira los puños en un molinete enloquecido mientras los demás asisten como un cerco de horripiladas esperanzas timideces palabrotas y ojos con nauseas

es la chiquilina obligatoria distancia
la teresa rubia
de ojos alemanes y sonrisa para otros
humilladora de mis lápices de veneración de mis insignias de ofrenda de mis estampillas de homenaje
futura pobre gorda sofocada de deudas y de hijos pero entonces tan lejos y escarpada
y es también el amigo el único el mejor
aplastado en la calle

sí
un día de éstos habrá que entrar a saco la podrida infancia
habrá que entrar a saco la miseria

sólo después
con el magro botín en las manos crispadamente adultas
sólo después
ya de regreso
podrá uno permitirse el lujo la merced el pretexto
el disfrute
de hacer escala en el desván
y revisar las fotos en su letargo sepia.