True Self
Nameless stands with his back to the wall.
Desperate grappling of an unsettled mind.
Piercing screams emitting from some lost place.
Unsure of any fate, real or imagined.
Looking past a vague blackness,
slowly filling an empty jar on the shelf.
Cardboard dreams crumbling,
while paint peels off in layers of obscurity.
A disease of doubt...
BLACK IN GRAY AMERICA
(in memory of Sam Cornish)
You recalled a city of stinks:
the shabby breath of yellow teeth,
filthy socks on crusty feet,
blood-spill dried on the sidewalk.
The dirt-floor basement room
your mother tried to sweep clean
rustled all night as rodents
named and renamed you in dreams.
The sorry carcass of Baltimore
coughed up feverish...
SCAR
The love byte is a frozen ripple
seeking the other shore
just as the curve
seeks the circle,
the curly hair seeks the halo
encircling the head.
May be because raw effort is
prettier than the outcome,
sun fondles the dark underbelly
of the forest, floods it with light
only for darkness to regrow
like waiting.
Humans remain banks with the
turbulence...
RENDEZVOUS
poems no longer emerge
out of some verdant soil
like lilies reflexively
spreading their pink cheer
they don’t happen as they did
twisting out of a gnawing gut...
glow worms on the screen
shedding light in dark corners
words tapping themselves out
of their own accord
have lost their easy fluidity
stanched like blood from a wound
they want me to...
TRIATHLON
Jane was in Vancouver one day and she stood
at the window and saw a woman crawling out
of the sea. The woman started running really
fast on the beach until she reached a bicycle
and then she hopped on it and kept going.
“Wow!” Jane said, “I just saw the evolution
of mankind in...
The Removal of Sin in a World Without Sin
Turning once again toward the sea,
strong arms move my head
to look at the land instead,
a desert landscape beige, bland
sand the monotonous menu
for my eyes that have seen it all before.
Defiant, I turn to feast on the wild water,
currents pushing the shore...
Balasan
I’ve met the river before, but this is a new setting—
like meeting a parent in their office.
Bala—sand, san—stone:
a river baptised for spitting its monsoonal gifts,
like calling a girl Khushi, to bait happiness.
The mountains that fight the grease of dust
when we look at it from Matigara,
they are here now, my...
I PASS YOU AN EMPTY SKY
I just
love when
I pass you
an empty
sky
and you
spin it
then
hand me
back
a fistful
of stars.
ENTANGLEMENT 1
You reach through
this spiral of settling light
and touch
a drifting,
mislaid piece
of dust.
You lift it
and somewhere else
in time and space,
something in me
rises.
ENTANGLEMENT 2
On this ground I plant
a seed.
I lay by this mound
of peat moss and...
GRANDFATHER
You remember more of what is no more.
Past steps into your bedroom and your grandson
becomes your newly born. You love to address
him as Baba – this is how you called your first born.
The present blurred and faceless has no challenges
for you. Your face perks up and breaks into...
Old Men Walk Funny
Old men walk funny with shadows and time eating at their heels.
Pediatric walkers, prostate exams, bend over, then most die.
They grow poor, leave their grocery list at home,
and forget their social security checks bank account numbers,
dwell on whether they wear dentures, uppers or lowers;
did they...