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

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

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

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

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

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