Boxes

Please do not move, you hear? Stay there
while I move
these boxes of white paper home, said the stranger.
Under the yellow streetlight,
and surrounded by a thickening fog
descending so late at night,
with my back against the idling flatbed truck
I heard some cardboard box bark.
Which one—and did it bark?
Under the disapproving yellow light,
and unwelcome touches of a philandering fog,
I heard barks again and felt boxes crawl
toward me. Or was it my fingers
crawling toward them? But did I not hear howls?
—Stay there while I move, barked the stranger,
this last box. Stay, stay there, there, the stranger said,
pointing to the revving flatbed.
But did I not hear labored breathing, a coughing dog
or dogs? Did I not reach into a box there,
tongues licking my fingers?
Dozens of puppies, one sick, some sick, some dead,
boxes swollen with sounds, with woof, woof—
Do not move! said the stranger.
Boxes in search of something, something other,
maybe a hero, a savior. Only white papers,
barked the familiar stranger.
But if not barking then what was it the boxes said?

Childhood's Monsters

Beneath my childhood bed myriad monsters
lurked nightly in darkness, hidden horrors....
Oh how simple was life for the young me,
life's monsters confined in space and in time.
Mushrooming they've colonized every inch
of my insides now, of the world out there,
blending in when need be, profess honor,
ones that look like me, ones in modest robes,
in Kiton suits, fatigues, dirty tatters...
some even capes!  Who to trust when I've known
monstrous hearts in some, some their monstrous brains?
But monsters live too inside chance and fate,
deep in the deafening hush of the world
where air, with or without you, keeps its form,
the sun's forever sun and the moon moon,
childhood's monsters gulped as if breaths in storm.

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