The tip of the grass was yellow The root of the grass was green They waved at me like water in winter And I waved back just glad at being seen The words rolled back Dyeing my tongue Like a dry river
Rocks and pebbles Fishbones and silt Traced my thorax Grinding my guilt So I could swallow and wallow The echo of oars Belonging to those ancient mariners before me Who sought loneliness And found it One step before horizon
II
In my dream I pool out from the fissure of earth After a midlife rebirth Gleaming, polished, welted and wet Watching the woman holding my fate Nestled like a flower Asleep in my rubicon arms Dreaming of fragrance At once tender and torn; Oh to be born beautiful And in all beauties, a unicorn, In my mythical ache I keep this universe at stake For it’s brutal to awake When I am so brittle to break.
It is night But the dark shines A soft black Such perceptible blindness Such untouchable familiarity Should I succumb to the magic touch? Drawn like a dying man to the nectar of her neck Should I summarise eons of my afterthoughts in an afternoon with her? And let her reciprocate the same On a kohl claimed evening So my ashtray mind Can drift And ignite My field of dreams A purple blue; That colour of a newfound forgetfulness Unnoticed to the irises of her eyes.
I dim and she shimmers As we dance in the glass case She; of velvet toes And I; of rubber gloves With her hand in my hand Like time through sand Passing, and staying This melting portrait Of our memories And I am aware, suddenly, At the soft sweetness of everything That percolates into the inchoate perfection Wavering and waiting to crystallise in our kiss; I lean in And the world holds still Till another breath finds me And it feels what I feel
Measure me in marigolds For in a throw-away thesaurus, outside a church, I grappled with the dappled god of meaning, And lost.
What is light and dark? Where is heaven and hell? If not in the act of becoming one, At the last peal of the bell.
(Pardon my parody, but the juxtaposition is justified)
Am I pregnant with pain? Crawling on the polyester carpet of my burnt-down building, Wondering if the watchman can watch my agony, Or the torch is just an ornament, Like for a cripple is the cane. Should I wither or give birth? Is there not enough on this earth: Pain, I mean; the people they can pray, Dancing upon the anthill, A divine massacre so to say, Thus I ask for an answer and the Answer, it asks: Is that your true face, Or the mask of your masks?
Should I memorise now, The punctuations on my face? Or claw down to a carcass, The primordial preface? Whence time could be tasted, As old flint struck new bone, When men bowed and prayed, To the shape of the stone.
So, Summon me, Suleiman; Who darkened the Siberian plain, Red snow on his arrow-tip From the blood of a thousand slain.
Summon me too, Great Elixir, He of immortal name, Who tore down towers of sandstone, As part of a checkered game.
Summon me, Lady Myleth, She who crowned her husband as Queen, And watched as the kingdom danced On the watered edge of a dagger unseen.
Summon me too, the People Pleaser, For whom did the senate end, But died as an enemy In the circle of enslaved friends.
Thus, my answer to the Answer, Is a question in disguise For isn’t truth an orphan Born out of lies? I ask: Do I dwell on the delusion, That maybe everything is as it should be, That change is a charlatan Only a reflection of what could be, As the nature of all things, Is to echo and not sing, Why tie the knot and be anchored, When you can hold onto the string?
I have never spoken of it. The secret, although not shameful on its own, makes me feel ashamed. It’s like being able to see among a group of blind people. You want to describe the beauty of the world or dissect the violence of a man’s motion, to complete the cracks of a woman’s expression but you can’t: without feeling acutely guilty. So, here I speak of it—
I preyed on promises Like a thoughtful vulture Of culture and cheap compromise For facade of feeling was important To alter the illusion That gift-wrapped horrors Are comedy of errors A reality divided By the cause and the causality: For a broken man Does not bleed in the mirror
(Perhaps heaven is a heart That is heavier to hold)
I know my poem feels like practice A frozen hand Combing through rough edges of life To even out the answers So music may appear Vibrating crystal clear A tear tainted with tear Like lyrics of King Lear Alas, this exercise Is not to exorcise any answer But to await and witness The silent decay Of solitude
(For has any mind every mastered The art of interrupting its own soliloquy?)
I thread my threshold; Some common words are never welcome, Words that suture out from chafed lips Carried over as gangrene For whom mind’s a myth And memory a mind Words that evolve as themselves Over and over A curated cancer called as a cure The next iteration The final step On life’s drowning ladder
(Do they know that the ocean Is deeper at the top?)
Beyond the compass needle I discover a horizon Painted in haste Made of waste paper And a pulverised sun It stretches-this myriad moment This suspended time This grotesque mask of shattering beauty Like a dragon’s yawn And near her maw I dance: daring death to dandelions Till the fire came Like algebra on music-sheet Unreadable Exquisite And I was reborn A particle Singular Similar A sinner
(I summarise in theory That a poem knows more of the poetry Than a poet does)
In this sudden stillness A final silence grows From beneath the dead branches Enveloping ants and Angels alike
The dry mist of purpose That once haunted men Now haunts their monuments The mindless mortar Made and remade For each thought And every contour Which seeks in itself The forever form That everlasting aspiration Of becoming a being
But the Promethean promises Are but promises Just as the silhouette stems from the shape So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette Like a circle trapped Within its own circumference Sans a seen beginning Sans any unseen end
There is a witness For every arrival Till no one arrives anymore And then the fishes are left alone in the desert To drown in the mirage of memories The breathing carcass Reminiscent of living In an abandoned womb Never to awake Never to walk Like ages unspent Upon the faces of the rock
I saw my children standing in the rain Their faces lined with age and late reason Watched the abandoned bicycles And broken seesaws Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old Seemed painted In the moist color of quiet The abandoned delight Having dissolved In the lament of the rain They turn; the motion a sad song An unfinished lullaby To look at me with eyes Half awake but never asleep As if I with my window earned wisdom Would know Why all things grow Only to die If life in the very virtue of living Is a lie But they know the answer As well as me It is better to forget than to believe what we see In the everyday aftermath Of the daily demise Of choices left to chances And promises made before goodbyes For in the end all paths Shall return where they began Even the oceans with all their eternity Are but remains of the rain…
These verses I bind
With threads in my mind
Are cobwebs from corners
I once failed to find
So let it linger now and sway
Like dewdrops in day
Or beads of red rosary
No monk holds to pray
