Touch

Curled up by the fire.

Paws touch hands. One last blink. The

sound of flapping wings.

 

 

"The End"

Each one of us is a story with a beginning we did not write and a conclusion we cannot predict. I remember, back in my school days, a young lady named Marissa who didn't like being a story. She wanted to be the author and force her story to conclude in a particular way. A way that made sense to her. Marissa even wrote a note, which ended with "The End." But that is not how her story ended. People still talk about it, changing the narrative, drawing new connections, discussing other possible endings. It should not have ended that way, some say. It really did not have to, others agree. I remember once Marissa told me how her grandparents met on the Titanic. The next day she said, I made it up. How happy she looked, for a very brief moment, for having fooled me.

Something Black and Red

Walking to work

Covering my ears as always

Past the scream and grind

Of savage machines

My feet deep in heavy snow.

Suddenly I saw:

By the construction site sat

Balanced on the edge of a curb

Something black and red

Under a thick layer of ice

Immune to the December sun.

In those days I didn't know

what a scarlet tanager 

looked like dead

or sounded alive.

Air

One day you may touch what's wrong.
I've wrung my dreams out in verse.
Drip drop drip drop drip drop drip.
Grip strip trip—I saw a soul inside a hearse
singing of seasons past, a silent song.
Sat up, sweat pouring, gasping for air.
Sylvia, many a night, I've touched what's wrong
but woke grasping only the silvery air.

Reflection

Tonight I admit this without shame:
I am afraid of death, afraid of dying—
as painless as the latter may be,
and as unconscious the first—
because it's lonelier than lonely,
because—oh what's the use of an outburst?
Its reflection on a tall building...
I see the moon drink it all in.
The moon does not look at me.
But look, I have a name,
remember it please, tell them the sea
and the ocean used to pour into me,
tell them I became
what the universe wanted me to be,
but not
what I'd wanted,
Not
what
I'd wanted.
Remember that.
Not.

Alive

The lady of the hour
looms up wrapped in whispers—
security officers standing by her sides.
The wild honey of her eyes
inside a hive of scars….
We're very happy
that you're alive,
unconvincingly utters
a voice that’s become
familiar to me.
Much later the voice pours
like lava on a red poppy:
She fails in everything, no?
Oh, how her face is disfigured!
If I were her, I'd rather die!
Something in me thinks,
people can die
even while still alive.

Failures

After my failures unfurled
with the sound of their brazen
laughter fluttering in the breeze
I, a dry sprig of blushing red grass,
I, who could not exist, how could I cease?

Donne Tell me Not

"Death, be not proud—" "Hey Donne," Death interrupts,
"I'm trying to sleep here!  Don't speak so loud!"

Life of a Poet

Producing poetry is like pushing an empty pen

Right into your guest’s sinless heart
Write as the horror in their eyes
Dulls engulfed into death
But pray at their dargah
Notice it is your own
We poets worship
Ourselves first
We murder it
Again and
Again

An Old Moose

An old moose staggers
Down face to face with daisies
Dancing summer grass

In the Snow

In the spring why
must we die?
I think
we were made
out of snow.
Moments preserved
in every flake
of every mold.

Memories melt.
Insensitive sun.
In the slush
sinking....Who's who
in the ocean?
I'm palpable me
A frozen smile
in the snow.

New Things

Once a year the rain
rinses the urn of our sins
Inside new things grow

Frankenlines

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass
I'm addicted to my own hopelessness
I can connect nothing with nothing
I have been half in love with easeful Death
There is no place that does not see you
You must change your life

Darkness

This evening the dark undressed
I saw the darkness drunk
sprawling upon the lonely streets
and lined with bones that never sleep
I heard an infant gasp and scream
By windows saw the darkness crawl
knocking against the stars that groaned
I saw some falling and some broke
But then I heard the darkness retch
I heard it pray night long for death

Short Poems #1-2

I live inside a box I've formed of sounds 
of letters—meaning-making music, bounds 
of human-living—written (voiced), to rhyme
and rhythm.

************************************

Existence: Side effect of death, decay.
So many never birthed; but birthed, all die.
Thus life is fall from death; but death is whole.
Death is the soul; and life, entombed remains. 

News of an accident

The father is alive, alert. 
The mother—doctors say—is too. 
But not the Skylark: it is wrecked. 
A nameless something else was killed.    
"The children," we regret, "are dead." 
And grandpa?  Grandma?  "Too," they said. 
But flowers, pastries, hats...intact.
The onyx colored dress, untorn.

The causes here remain unknown. 

Although the bones are red,
and smoke has spread,
beyond the dark I see
that serrated skyline, 
with same array of peaks—
but now to me they seem
exact and bleak.

But life ignores our pleas. 
So sway, the willow trees;
go on, the roads, as laid;
the Earth, as cold and gray.
While it spins and revolves,
creatures evolve and learn,
and skies around it burn
and spit, the Earth's no more
a pit. But still portend,
spoken words, and express;
observed are facts, they're named
and claimed; machines are made;
money produced and paid;
memories form then fade;
poems are measured and penned; 
Yet life‒my own‒can't be,
ever again the same.

Moments

Moments are butterflies.
They die, kept in a jar. 

Moments are kunik* kisses from the stars. 
They're breezes, cooled by moon and warmed by sun. 

Moments are wombs.  So too a lifeboat fleet,   
with all the boats deflating, one by one. 

Moments are lonely flower buds. 
Caress them each and watch them bloom. 

Moments are sweet receding rooms, 
with crooning walls and scented floors. 

Moments: this verse, this word.
See it, feel it...it’s gone.


*Kunik: a way of kissing or showing affection, associated with an Inuit practice of breathing in the skin of cheek or forehead.

Mold

Mold on the lime to 
the moribund butterfly:
Blossoming snowflake.