The Dreamers
They burned the witches of the day and tried to clean the air. But the air’s never clean where their breaths have been. The smoke of ideas just circle around and infect. Once infected the symptoms are clear. Your laughter grows too loud, your songs become too free, your eyes see too much. Don’t fret, simply wait to die. Some are ashes. You now are the smoke.
They escaped each night.
None were noticed first—
these rained-upon minds
leaving burnt cities, lunging
towards dreamlit waters,
learning, each night,
to play the lights.
The bodies have turned the crows to vultures. The smell grows stronger every day. It’s all wrong. Strong is wrong. So wrong, so rotten, the vultures can’t stop feeding on it. They keep pecking till even the bodies want to crawl away.
And every day they turned, returned,
each to their tailored mornings
perfect as a picture-
may be a Cezanne room where fruits
are eternally escaping baskets.
One only worries about
noisy neighbours
or the children’s lunch
while a tidy tea is brewing.
A dog passes by sniffing the air. It’s a country of stray dogs. Pets are a pretty peculiarity. One may pet a conspiring, corrupted mind— not dogs. The stray ones no longer know to bite. Weak knees wobbling, they just pass by.
Nights are for the creatures of dreams—
lost in day when newspapers scream and
frantic faiths sell faster than fashion
and folly spreads faster than pollution.
The moon might make a poet of you,
the sun sees only sin.
Love is a luxury, but still mothers cry. Bodies become faces that once smiled. The smiles now are the smoke.
Here now is the dream,
the sin of dreaming,
and a land of labyrinths—
here where the mind
splits: two birds—
one lost in the beauty of beyond,
one bound in the burden of between.
15 May 2013
Of papers and autumns and lost pencils
I’ve lost the pencil you gave me.
It wouldn’t be the first time, but
I just don’t think with it any more,
I’m not the mind I used to be
with it. I live by fresh white pages,
trying to find poetry in packed buses,
ketchup stains on a white sweater.
I just don’t feel with it any more.
I’ve even tried on those nights
when the slightest sound in the street
brings back all the counted sheep,
and in slits of bits of sleep I pass
the drowsing litter of lines.
I pass dreams that never complete.
Sometimes I simply live for those
nightly interstices, dream-lit corridors...
I remember once I took your hand
knowing that none of us chose
to be afraid, none of us chose to wait.
But your palm too became a leaf,
yellowing when first autumn touched it.
Perhaps because I keep returning
to mornings of cereal and symmetry,
spend my days counting the last bills,
sometimes, perhaps, too lost in them?
Still my fingers trace the geometry
of your face, we smile, hold hands, and wait—
wait for the sun to be the tree’s diadem.
The wholeness of a day sometimes comes
with debts of pieces of the next.
And so autumn has showered on me
my shreds of countless poems,
and so I have learned to live
by blank white pages, lost pencils,
and last night’s fractured sleep.
22 October 2011
Between drops
The moon like a hole in a perfectly black enclosure
was his only link to the outer universe.
It meant there was a sky, a night, nightly stars…
but it always was the outer verse,
always the distant song, the different story--
it became to him the essence of a dream.
He lay face-first, on the cold bottle-green,
smelled the cold earth, the mandatory home.
Then turned over, lay back down, stared
at the moon and the darkly cast unknown.
And often in this game,
half the night passed,
then the bugs ran past
a slow summer sleep.
In the kitchen a rough-hewn window
brought a similar moon,
the gentle dance of air in her hair,
the likes of summer in her eyes
and a lonely mother’s care,
whose years’ disillusions deny
any necessity of this summer
or the next. For every year there
is the moon, the grass, the air,
with them the abstruse absence
of strings that bind to home.
One who is loved will only roam,
one who loves may only sense.
In her wait, she too was growing—
growing and graying in passable strain.
And in her drowse
by the fire,
she thought for once
it rained.
He woke in rain, danced to celebrate.
Summer bore, in a world of lights,
this folksy forest night.
She felt the rain,
in her eyes, her years,
her slowest journey to the quiet.
November 7, 2009
Balalaika
May be we'll tango in to the night.
Tin candles and thin romance.
Toes tapping, testing ground.
Tongues touching, tasting vows.
Or may be a flamenco--
what with the flamboyant flirt of my skirt,
you'll fall, fall there where you can't be found.
I'll wear red that night,
like the fire is red,
like red wine is red,
red like blood and lies.
I'll love you so,
if you had sisters as a child you'd know
love tickles, it tickles till you laugh,
and you laugh, you laugh till you cry.
Dec 21 2012
Be.
In the measure of a day,
the dire cries of an hour
fade in the next,
always remaining a part
of the next day’s planned survival.
Or life comes in fortuities
—unexpected, ecstatic—
and drags another day
on in its blood and need.
The cries continue.
Life,
in a hundred hungry faces—
black against the ivory skies,
is raw:
raw in its failure to comprehend
the laws, faiths, philosophies,
justice and its blinded eyes.
These faces merely live and cry
out of stupid simple senses.
But us, we understand more, live less.
And life in war is raw—
fought
for each bread,
for each breath.
White flags are not edible.
In the candlelight a lifted hand
casts a shadow on the wall
—flickering, firm—
larger than our hands,
larger than us.
This is our God—this hand
that craves on, and is
the darkest silhouette
in a world of feeble lights.
Don’t love. Simply be.
1 May, 2008
Collage
8PM. The subway. The overheard conversations. They’re never about lemon trees. Someone’s friend’s boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend slept around. Someone put gum in someone’s hair. Someone tripped on their heels. Cats. Club nights. Ecstasy. Love...
...Ladies and Lovers, when tonight you meet in jazz,
pour yourself some of that celestial wine.
Take small sips. Laugh. Attract. Bask. Forget...
“The stores are always on fire. But oh, you look so good in that dress! Wow, you changed your hair color! And your eyes too! I’m thinking of getting new lashes soon. And yes new nails. Are you seeing him anymore? ‘Cuz if you don’t I might...”
...When she sipped, she sipped deep, so the wine and her lips
blended in one red lie. Turning in the Paris of his arms
she smiled red, and whispered in his ears, “L’amour passera”...
It’s the end of a day. I’ve reached my stop. I get off the train. My hands feel cold and numb. I’m not, though. I walk an empty platform, thinking about lemon trees.
...The city neons pass him every night as he drives.
Once in a while he looks at the rear-view mirror:
“L’amour passera”. He tunes in to a slow jazz and smiles.
9 October, 2010