Fear

Fear is the bleeding yarn
Fear is the fleeting dawn
Fear is the grave of sleep
Fear is the fiery yawn

Fear is the naked plain
Fear is the shield and chain
Fear is the spider's creep
Fear is the lion's mane

Fear is the godless leer
Fear is the throaty croon
Fear is the missing sheep
Fear is the icy moon

Fear is the crack of bone
Fear is the dark unknown
Fear is the drowning deep
Fear is the dying moan

Fear is the perfect line
Fear is the senseless sign
Fear is the patterned beep
Fear is the curving spine

Fear is inside this yarn
Fear has knit my rhyme
Fear oh you fool...
My will's as sharp as knife!

Yvette and Val

Yvette and Val were left behind.
Yvette was blind
but Val was brown
and new in town.

Yvette turned Barbie for the night
and stood in light,
alone near Val
her ghostly pal.

Alarming masks appear and fade.
She's not afraid,
been touched before.
She shuts the door.

Dirty Eyes

I woke up covered all 
In fragments of a dream,
All sticky like the scent of skunks
That sprayed my storybook last night.
—Wash up!  the voices shrieked 
And pushed my head madly beneath
A pool of tears until I drowned 
Again inside another dream.

So tell me whose tears were that soaked 
The leaves I'd flipped through all last night 
With every flutter of lashes so moist.
So speak but make it soft and clean
And hold my hands and smile and joke
And only then describe my nightly scene 
The screens projected on my twitching lids 
The ghastly films my dirty eyes have seen.... 

Play With Us It's Safe

What do you want
What would you like
It's up to you
The choice is yours
Whatever you might wish
Whatever you decide

But when the skies are foggy black I still recall the moon 
that night its bruised red eye was peeping at us through the clouds
I said come out and play with us it's safe we're children too.

An Old Man on a Swing

An old man on a swing?   

I used to think 
that's nothing much to write
a verse about.
Until I saw a mural, one

by Goya.  Gazing at the man,
it seems as if
he's lurching forward, leaping off 
the wall,
exploding through the shattered plane.


Or maybe just

detached

and dangling, hanging on for life.


He's out of breath.
The frenzied eyes, elated.  Or

just maybe full

of horrors caged,

or Furies' rage,

The savaged sunken head atop the arms and legs belonging to a human twice his size,
cadavers or
a beast perhaps.

The mouth distends beyond all human bounds....I fear
that evil leer,
that spreads below the hollow holes, the ghosts inside, possessed....
Some say a self-portrait! 

I hope some day, some poem I create
in black and white, below my name,

can haunt you just the same.

Knight*

NO HEAVY SUIT OF ARMOR...silver shields, for me no swords; 
no piercing flesh of villains...beasts, collecting of rewards; 
no sweeping gestures, long incisive glances, wisdom words;
no grit, no faith unshakable, no gentlemen’s accords;  
no gallant crossing of the perilous and icy fjords;  
no solitary rides to distant hills—no joining them (the hordes);
no fending of the sick and weak, obeying of the lords;  
no entrances so grand—dramatic exits non towards 
bold adventures and novel romances no heart affords.

Hear me now, and hear me well:  This "I" can't heal (nor can save). 
I’m only knight in name. I'm mortal—just like you!  I'm slave 
to whim of time and space, to every nameless shallow grave. 
It's only when this "I" can be, that it does—like a wave
I wash you over when we meet.  But wave does not behave  
as does a weathered shoreline, bearing clouds, or sun.  Can't brave 
the storms at night, give sight to blind, or tame the crimson light.
Escape this body, ask you, Oust the soul?  Can not.  Can't fight
the human life in you, erase what I had never write.  

Listen: Within life (the real and the true), I do alright
(even great), by being myself—naked, cracked, and finite.
Sometimes that is all I need to be, it’s enough, despite
what you may believe, have thought, or felt; and in fact it's quite
counter to what we’re told, that one must shine, as color white— 
perfect, pure.  But could it be, that mud is all that you need,
To paint the soldiers' footsteps (men whose hearts are torn and bleed), 
to paint the shores drenched in rain, and that gasping flower seed— 
downing mud and drinking with unadulterated greed?

Yes at times romantic, hero, Arash, at times the knight,
this "I" could ride the horse of wisdom, up some thrilling height,  
to mark the bounds—with arrow flying swiftly out of sight—
of Persia-Tūrān**, of the dream and truth, of day and night. 
But knight can only be a knight by Poet's august might;
and when the faithful poet, He withdraws, it sinks (in fright)
my lifeless hands; and writhe these drunk heroic words—they flag, 
like the tamest souls of the wildest preys thus trapped, 
or last words of poem, pickled, silence-tickled.

* The poem was inspired in part by legend of Arash Kamangir or Arash-e-Kamangir (read: Āraŝ e Kamāngir; translate: Arash-the-Archer), an archer from Persian mythology, specifically, Ferdowsi's Shahnameh. 

** In Shahnameh, Turan was at war with Iran/Persia.  Arash's bowshot decided the boundary between the two sides.

In Search

A rainbow wavered 
through the darkened clouds like faith  
in search of refuge.

Forget Your Woes

A Birman licks her paws—deformed and pale—
and wails, inside the doorway, where the footprints fade. 
A belly rises, quivers, falls. 
A head is hanging down—the eyes are open wide.
A sign implores, in letters painted scarlet-red,
"My fellows, have a drink, forget your woes." 
Fluorescents buzz and flicker, overheard.  

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.

This Time

Sometimes I am angry. 
And unaware I leave,
but reenter later,
come closer, take a look, 
at the tormented me. 
This time I see.
That's when I cry.

Voice

I crammed the words in tight iambic feet.
"Speak in feet or hold your peace," so addressed
me then, a voice like mine‒but one distressed.     
I speak in pain, of loss and rage that eat
my bones, at night; each day, fatigue my heart,
they twist my soul...and drain my love‒"Silence!"
said the raising voice relentlessly, roared,
"I guard your heart and soul.  This pain you'll not
contain without my aid, your rage impairs
all your sense, so fear emotions unchecked...."

Silently out the words I let, freely roam, 
atop my pain galloped we past meadows in rain,
the air had bled seventeen quarts of cherry tart, 
the cawing ink (heaven-spilled, erased by time),  
directed me, my face (tear-soaked), home. 

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.

But Not to Boss

Work is a funny word.
But not to boss.
To work off debt,
it's said, you have to go to work;
where working as a clerk,
you work your way up, reach the top.
You work around the snags you come across, 
and working in the office never stop
to work away at them with all your heart, 
till your report's a flawless work of art:
Intense and smart.
But not to boss.
You work out quickly, getting set
to soon depart for work, and yet 
you end up working up a sweat.
It's funny how that works...
But not to boss.
Then there's the "work it in" to write,
which now I'm working into this outright. 
By "this" I mean my poem, song,
which, by the way, I've long
been fond of working on.
But does that count as work?
It's never work, it's said, 
but only if you do 
sincerely love the work. 
But not to boss.

Devouring Silence

The suitcase of silence    
is veiled in black, in white; 
it tails behind on wheels 
that dance to earthy tunes, 
spinning at whim.... 

My carry-on contains 
displaced letters only.
Homeless in frozen air— 
How they blubber!

In the flying coffin,     
relics of past, hollow.
Meaning: I call poem
my home. 

I escaped with letters hostage,  
so I can be.  At last.
Alone.  I

fear devouring
silence.