Thursday, July 25, 2013

Writers write, so
If I do, am I?

I sit myself in boxes
sometimes two or three at a time
I sit and I stare and I do but I dare
not leave my world of rhyme

There is reason in stanzas
each with four lines
There are no shadows
There is no grime

In my metered verse 
of cool rain and shine
there is a lullaby hidden
as the clock keeps time

I sit myself in boxes
sometimes, two or three at a time
I sit and I stare I know not where
Seeking an undeniable sign

In my neutered verse
of plateaus and a white sea
there is nothing sudden
no depths unperceived

There are seasons in my boxes
that don't change with time
They open and I close
Like an interminable mime

I sit myself in boxes
sometimes two or three at a time
I sit and I stare like I really don't care
That I spit stereotypes in every line

A day begins, 
from my boxes I see
The sun goes up, 
I see it and I close

There are no shadows in my boxes
No shadows I can see
For I am blind in my boxes
And things shine wantonly

I sit myself in boxes
sometimes two or three at a time
I sit and I scare of boxes that aren't there
And sell a dozen pairs of wings for a dime

Today begins
from my boxes I rise
I take stock of the number
the colour and the size

Monday, October 8, 2012

For You, To Your Star


I bring you songs
Long forgotten
That are sung by the leaves, 
the grass and shriveled tree
And by the dew and the dark
In stone-womb caves.

I bring you the rhythm of the earth
The slow, long boom 
That roars, echoes and whispers
from deep within, in my heart.

Of a hundred different suns,
(Some that awoke long before time was birthed,
and some that are tiny, gleaming jewels 
In the everlasting dream of the universe,)
I bring you sunsets
That meld into the horizon 
The colors of woven dream
And until the dying moments of twilight,
Last forever

I bring you tales and stories and myths
Of dead kings, lost Gods and magic
Tales as old as stone and wind and sea
Tales that time births, spins, sets aglow
And swallows in the end
Tales that, like the call of the waves
and the dance of day and night
return forevermore

I bring you silence
From the heart of sound
From the eternal moment between words
The instant before the twinkle
Of a smile in the eyes

I bring you all these
And I cast them up into the sky
To the star that bears your name

When night falls, slow and deep
Look to your star
And it will sing you forgotten songs
To the rhythm of all earths, all worlds
It will unfurl old yarns, and show glimpses
of the hues of sunsets 
That were, are and will be
In its silent, white heart

Thursday, August 16, 2012

For Amma

Come to me, dear mother
Come, look into my heart
There is light moulded by sunsets
There is darkness, in part

Peep in, but be silent, still
For in it, I am alseep, aware
Of an orb of ever-new warmth
In the void that is full

Come to me, dear mother
Come, look into my dreams
You will find them scattered by your feet
A mosaic that's more than it seems

Tread softly and you shall feel
The song of the broken, and the bound
The ebbing light shall animate
The lost and the newfound

Come to me, dear mother
Come, look into my eyes
They mirror the light that birthed me
They hide stars, they bear skies

I am many, I am not one
I hold your faces, your stories, your dreams
I am a web bereft of seams
I am you, I am your son

Monday, January 23, 2012

The Beginning

The hymn pulsed
Through nothingness
In a single wave that became time,
That grew into distance, and shone as light eternal

Universes sparkled into being
In the nothingness
They swirled like dreams of motion
Like the dreams of dance
Deep within the womb
Of that nothingness

Everything was asleep
In that nothingness
And everything was alive
There was space, to be explored
And distances,

In that nothingness
There was sound
An immense, endless, silent roar
Of galaxies merging their spirals
In a frenzied dance, beautiful, perfect,
Ancient. It would be named chaos

In that nothingness
There was sound
The sound of light newborn, that burst into being
To shine eternally
Through the nothingness

It was dark, endlessly dark,
This nothingness
And it blazed with light
Light streaked through the nothingness
In an endless column
It engulfed the nothingness
Within its heart
And disappeared into nothingness
Light bloomed and withered
Light burst and bubbled
Light crackled and streamed
Light sparkled and shone
And then in the far distance
It twinkled
In the nothingness

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Symphony

In a bed of silence

That is endlessly still

An infant sound bulbs

And a dying snowflake’s kiss

Breaks the surface and blooms


A single note

A single, windless chime;

At the moment of its birth

It ceases to be


The silent sea

Is still once more

But it dreams of that

Tiny swell

Endlessly


An infant sound bulbs

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Dance

Dance, I dance, I dance
Watch me, watch me dance

I have sharpened my eyes
In the scythe of winds
And tell stories that lie
Upon the fabric of the sands

I can cast a mystic spell,
That is sweet wine and burning hell
With my sword-sharp gaze
And serpentine hands

Dance, I dance, I dance
Watch me, watch me dance

Watch my kohl-black eyes
And remember the velvet night
Watch the dance of colorless silk
That clothes me in the light

My lips,they course with a rare wine
They wait behind a veil
They wait for one who is worthy
To whom my dreams sail

Dance, I dance, I dance
Watch me, watch me dance

My touch can feed your aching soul
To the end of your mortal days
The high Sheikhs of a hundred lands seek
The oasis of my embrace

I am the wind of the west
I am the fire in the sand
The ice-sword of the naked moon
I am the spirit of this land

Dance, I dance, I dance
Watch me, watch me dance

The desert dances to my tune
The wind beats the rhythm of my feet
When I swirl by the fire
The night howls to man's desires

The skies grow purple, light
The night's end is nigh
When dawn tries to steal a kiss
I shall vanish into the night

Dance, I dance, I dance
Watch me, watch me dance

Dreams of Flight

1.
The wind buttresses my fingertips
They play a medley of notes in the air,
Tap at the invisible membrane of reality
In nonchalant joy

I look down and I cannot see the ground.
There are no brown-green crumbs
Scattered below.
No crooked silver lines,
Cutting impossibly straight
Man-made incisions
Into meaningless grammar.

All around me is blue.
And white.
Blue and white melded so inseparably
That I see them both as one.
Blue is white
White is blue.

All around me is emptiness.
Emptiness that is filled
With blue and white.

I look for the sun.
And then from below me,
In the far distance, to a side,
I see clouds.

I know I made them.
I made them so I could find the sun.
To find the sun I had to look for it.
To look for it, I had to hide it.
And so I made the clouds.

I looked for the sun I hid in the clouds
The clouds were pierced by yellow light
And my blue white sky was simple no more
It was indescribable. Inexplicable.

I strain harder, arch my neck forward
The wind lilts lost melodies in my ears
It carries whispers of other times
Other 'me's

I strain harder, arch my back and twist
I want to fly around the cloud
Look behind the cloud, my cloud
Find the sun. My sun.

I find the sun
And wake up the dawn
My dream ends
The wind dies
The sky fades


2.
Swirling through whorling grey cumulous clouds
Plunging into its dark dew-and-dust heart
I swallowed a pearl of white light that burst into
A thousand and eight threads of gossamer shards

I rose up through countless wayward kisses moist
Each kiss held one life fulfilled,death asleep coiled
I rose like a bead of blue lightning from a brow
That frowned dark and deep in unceasing pond'rous toil

The wind stole the kisses, it wiped them away
And wrapped me in shrouds of cold sky in their stead
It wailed and it laughed and it shuddered in dread
And it threw me into another bright day