Solstice

I am salved with the galvanic rhythm
of silent rivers
insubstantial shadow, a night.
The oar is a heart,
untying the mouth of waves
The wind wavers still.

Petaled in a lotus.
I traverse ungrounded
as it fathoms a diffused dusk
a twilight as lucid as oblivion


And somehow if you were not mine,
What I would not have endured?

And some day the wind will carry us

to a certain hollowness, apart.
we will not know to breathe,
we will not fathom words
we will not sail with the leaves
Someday unmindful, sorrow will carry us
meandering through the eternal fog
with empty spaces forming banks
rivering us into shape
before
all goes to ashes
before lines are blurred
and faces forgotten.
into the last uncharted land
where neither of us can sing
into the forlorn residue of our mind.

An ode to my Grandma

I cannot begin to write about life
For it is short.
Summed up neatly in a few memories
Like a bundle of old newspaper
Stored aside for occasional reference.
You lived.
And it ends.
Like that.
Neither can I write about death
Death is too long.
Smoked in hazy absence.
Like the mouth of a river
Seared and forsaken by the desert sand.
You died.
And it begins.
Like that.
I think I shall bury you in my unconsciousness
Or my childhood.
You can bring me to mornings.
Or fan me with a hand made bamboo fan
on humid summer nights.
Like you used to.
And you will remain.
A mist my eyes dread to part with
A quietude
this sable night brings.

A journey through stillness

A thousand marches of umbrella feet
Mark me in
A thousand quaking journeys
And as many halts
amidst waving tides and a divide.
Counting the whims of
fleeting consciousness
collecting like rain
every dark
that petals into the night.
The morning, however,
does not listen..

The heavy mist sets sail and
my closed limbs
bid farewell to the
dusky haze of nameless clouds.
But I do not drizzle.

Sometimes in vibrant
threads of life
and sometimes
In the paraphernalia of dreams
I am closed tight
neither dead nor alive.

Fall

Some night
between a fallen mist
and the quiet earth
my distance runs wild.

smaller by every wound
darker made the cold rain

some journeys
between the ripple of old oars
and nowhere
my swansongs of ether noons
reckon with me.

arched by the latent burn
brackish made the frail sea

some other bones of
half open nights
between my gypsy river
and the seeds of refuge sleep
life does not wait
and the mind floats away.

Traces

The divide widens
as I nomad across long lost dreams
the distance steals your thought
oceans, only a calm stream remains.
and we smile.

How far do the dusks lie?
I want to sleep.
My eyes are worn out
forgetting you.
my fingers can’t feel the scorching sand.
or recall the cascading humidity of your lips.

How long before it rains?
before I lose my way back to you?
How many tides before I cannot recall how to forget you.

How many winds must slip out my fingers?
How many unattainings before I am lost to the sea.

How many lemongrass afternoons
Before I let it go
And remain hushed amidst
the whispers of wildflower moons.

An Ode to Nothingness

After relentless winters
and numbing spinning nights
with oblivion piled up man high
amidst half burnt fires
quietly burning away
from my eyes to your touch.

A song remains undone
like grey black brown shades of the earth
the earth that I walk on
the earth that envelops me
and a dream
that comes to me sometimes
with you.

Not with the rain
It is colder now,
neither with light.
the sun is too distant.
Why? I do not know. I do not ask.

The winds don’t come here anymore.
They do not bind me like the arms
of a hungry lover
maybe they have gone with you too.

And those who want to know where you are.
I tell them that you are with tomorrows
In sun and shadows playing
in the laughter of nights
in the flow of rivers.
Everywhere.

Only I cannot find you.

Tomorrow I shall tell them
that I have found nothing.
that exists
without you.
except me.
For you are not with me.

Maybe my pain and love and anger
Are too shallow and too moist
And you don’t want to live here.

Someday I know I will have you
In my song
blooming
But till then
I have hope and my silence.