GRANDFATHER
You remember more of what is no more.
Past steps into your bedroom and your grandson
becomes your newly born. You love to address
him as Baba – this is how you called your first born.
The present blurred and faceless has no challenges
for you. Your face perks up and breaks into...
LONGING
How can Kashmir be a hydrogen conspiracy?
the passiveness, the aloofness—the longitude
they search for their wriggled breathing
abandoned history, stooped pride in city squares
what is the DNA of their guillotined blood—
Dalits
they preserve solitariness in a ledge—Dalits
they store pain in their barns—Dalits
and then the masses of the holy land pray
together for the...
Old Men Walk Funny
Old men walk funny with shadows and time eating at their heels.
Pediatric walkers, prostate exams, bend over, then most die.
They grow poor, leave their grocery list at home,
and forget their social security checks bank account numbers,
dwell on whether they wear dentures, uppers or lowers;
did they...
Distant Thunder
I. Monster Mash
My sister noticed first:
“You walk like an old lady.”
I was forty-six, but she was right.
I could not, would not, see.
One day on the beach in Hermosa,
walking along the shore,
I stopped and looked back.
The sea tried to hide the evidence
but I was too quick:
step slide, step slide,...
MOLD
When you left
and I left
When we both left
our glasses
to the loneliness
that'll babysit
our leaving
the place
that has seen
us naked
in each one
of our eyes
There were islands;
green irises & black pupils
they floated the way
we buoyed in that moment
of intimacy.
INCENSE RIBS
I am thinking of you.
Don't move.
Let the cars run over.
Let people walk through.
Let rain...
TO SEE
To see
as I see you,
through beetle eyes—
mosaic percussion
of hundred incarnations,
to see,
as I see you
through strange beetle eyes—
like
strange art
on cryptic flowers,
strange streaks
at strange places.
TO THINK
Like the one
who sits cowered
in the haunt
of the anticipated halt,
mind riveting
like a forced swing,
head synchronized
with the ejaculating bus,
the light of creatures
and things,
passing
in and out
as it...
AFTER ALEXANDRIA
What an agony not to wake up next to you.
Not to have fallen asleep with your head on my chest.
I made the bed quickly, as you did every day,
sheets that still smell of your hair and skin.
Your pillows, one that you took with you, take
with you everywhere, sandalwood...
The Removal of Sin in a World Without Sin
Turning once again toward the sea,
strong arms move my head
to look at the land instead,
a desert landscape beige, bland
sand the monotonous menu
for my eyes that have seen it all before.
Defiant, I turn to feast on the wild water,
currents pushing the shore...
THE MAGIC OF STILLNESS AND THE CHAOTIC
Some people, lost souls,
caught in the absurdity of noise,
create magical stillness
out of the chaotic
outwitting comprehension.
Other lost souls,
caught in the absurdity of silence,
create the chaotic
out of magical stillness
sidestepping incomprehension.
I, confused by both noise and silence,
adoring absurdity yet not knowing
which is more magical
or comprehensible,
stillness or...
On The Vasettha Sutta
Two Brahmins brought the Blessed One a dispute.
One argued, We were born pure into this caste.
The second claimed, Class is by virtue of actions.
Buddha, who often stayed silent, untouchable,
above such fray, discoursed in no uncertain terms:
Grasses or trees are distinct from birth, not man.
Still twenty-five hundred...
MOTHER COURAGE
I was not strong, rather meek and shy,
Saw my mother catching wind between palms,
Trying to hold me
while lighting the dusk lamp,
The mellow sun greeted her resilience, her bravery,
Stroking at the edge of her Bengal cotton sari,
Not knew,
the reason of sadness flooding her body.
Her voice then dropped to a...