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Pockmarked with
an uncertain joy
this day
dimpled in
all the wrong places
this day
more bitter than
sweet
this day
Its leftovers
tasteless warmed over
A badly baked roti
this day…
Me in my office
chair, uncomfortable
bound
to this desk
look out
longingly, into
a sun-warmed, winter
sky
a lone pigeon
streaks across
my vision
Ah, the freedom
I am wont to
think… but
is the pigeon free?
From hunger, the need
to forage, fend?
maybe i, in my
office chair
can be
free, after a
fashion
with Ctrl+N, a new office doc
pristine white
opens, which i can
mark, with
poetry, withheld breath
exhaled, onto this
page….
if i can write
a poem
just like
this, i surely
must be
free!
I am
a drop
coursing through
the vein of life
lifted, swirled
peaked, troughed
in her flow
a hot ray
finds me
and i evaporate
i watch, i breathe
a cool stone
i seek
where i condense
formed anew…
A dewdrop of love
condenses upon
a cold heart…
A spring of hope
suddenly sprouts
in the desert of despair…
In a moment
a man decides
to die
so another
might live….
A father-husband
saves families
while his own
perishes….
A policeman
chooses death
so a terrorist
might live
and tell the tale….
The darkness
of inhumanity
is illuminated with
a fineness of grace
a deathless determination
a fearless compassion…
A little girl
brushes crumbs
off her skirt
Carefully, patiently
gathers them
in her tiny palm
And squats before
a line of ants
weaving their way through
the single-window room.
Here, take this,
she whispers,
in language
that’s still babytalk
and folds her hands
and bows her head…
A painted bowl
a chronicle of life
a micro-earth
its rim, the horizon
its curved insides
the playground
of animals, humans, insects
one turning into another
men growing fangs
and lizard tails
salamanders who love
like you and I
lines, crisscross, zigzag
spirit paths for shamanic flights…
A painted bowl
– a macro-sky
a deep desire
a pit-stomach cry
of earth convulsed
into life,
like this body
fired by breath?
(This poem is inspired by the painted bowled of the Mimbres Indians, who lived in southwest New Mexico until the 12th century.)
Winter’s here. In May, when the earth baked and the sky simmered, we thought we’d never live to see the heat die down. And now it has. The very air feels too cold to breathe. It goes through the nostrils and I can feel it chilling my lungs through and through. At night, for the longest while, the toes and soles of my feet are numb and frozen under my heavy quilt, my razai filled with beaten, fluffy cotton.
The fingers that tap on the keyboard feel like two twigs, cold and lifeless.
My mother the zen master is sick of hearing me complain about the cold. “Yesterday it was the heat. Today its the cold. Tomorrow it will be something else. Why don’t you learn to be patient?”
Ah, patience. And the art of surviving the cold. And the heat. And the heartbreak. And the suffering.
Not just surviving. There’s something more, something else. Finding beauty, perhaps? Or the kernel of heat that lies enclosed within cold, the moment when one stops gritting and tightening against it, and allows it to flow through?
The madwoman
runs through the bazaars
And when she finds
thoughts of my Beloved
wandering the muddy lanes,
she swirls and twirls
and throws her arms
up in the sky.
He comes on stage, folds his hands in greeting, sits down. The light shining on him is too bright, too harsh. It won’t allow his magic to take root, grow, flow. They have to be dimmed. There, that’s right. Just enough so we can discern his form in still motion, and the expressions that arise and ebb on his mercurial face.
Silence hovers over the crowd like a krishna-hued monsoon cloud, heavy with anticipation. It’s rumbling with thunder now, unable to contain its own fullness. As his voice, and his hands, move from the earth to the sky, the cloud bursts into warm flashes of rain, drenching us with the furious beauty, the momentous suddenness, of his music.
Somewhere deep within, a snake uncoils and frees itself, rising all the way to the crown chakra.
Somewhere in the universe, a sun implodes.
Somewhere in the ocean, a pearl forms.
Somewhere in our collective consciousness, love begins. Once again.
The fine hair
on the reeds
the delicate drops
of dew
on the bamboo leaf
the flurry of feathers
on birds’ underbellies
the clouds engaged
in erotic embrace
your eyes
my eyes
all catch
this first light
this first warm kiss
between
earth and sky…
