Poetry

Heirloom When your mother raises her hand; earthy brown, skin cracked open— sun parched field— iron hot temper and hits you the pain melts your flesh, bones, marrow. When your mother raises her hand to strike you the pain bites (your pet rabid dog). She throws the foliage of her swallowed dreams— barren land that was hers and her mother’s and her mother’s mother who couldn’t...

Tongues I don't care if Jesus died for my sins I tell my Sunday School teacher after class, He'll have to do better than that to get me to come back next week and then I leave her without saying goodbye atop the two-by-four-and-plywood porch of our trailer-classroom, or is that our classroom -trailer, whatever it is it has...

Paradise lonely feet on a subway train at half past midnight she misses paradise where every day she would collect a pocket full of shells why not give her home away for another trip to the coastline without a name our lady train rider flashes back to the nights where she would stumble drunkenly with another girl who split...

11 243 Meters, Purple Mediterranean                                                  The airplane wings draw new summer fragrances in the fogs they’re expected by tomorrow's smiles like a dawn or maybe a dusk with a calm, lazy eyes the day can witness the providence through all the blue truths the winds lose their hearing with the speed of a fatal...

Midsummer i I was inside a labyrinth: A flood in front of me. The endless surge and fall of water. The deep ocean surface wavered before turned in white waves. When the waves receded, they left a little shimmer in my little eyes. At a distance, something washed ashore. A blue...

Word… Word is Brahman It emerges from Hiranyagarbh And wanders in the ether Man’s heart vibrates He hears its rapturous melody And sways in ecstasy And is lost in the sacred silence. The other day… The predator pounces upon the word And preserves the kill A dictionary is compiled It hardly objects But, is it at ease? Lexicons continue multiplying And then, words…words…words… Words sans soul   Across...

The Trickster Kokopelli, I know what I know. You are the mysterious humpbacked flute-playing Casanova of the cliff dwellers of the American Southwest. Kokopelli, you are the carousing peace-loving traveling salesman seducing women in villages with your many gifts of music, dancing, and mischief. Kokopelli, having seen you in ancient Anasazi glyphs and rock art; and having spent time inside the...

The Work of Art It is just another day To be proud Happy with who I am With high self Esteem And the old broom and Mop at hand.   At the Doctor Trust, to care about Who I am As if to let me have My say Pad and pen the end Or give me a couple Words as a pathway.

Masscult Elation about well-timed ascendancy has a certain piquancy. It extends to those not affiliated to it. When *M C Sher’s flowing tongue capsules his long haul his happiness is mine, tap- ping into frozen areas of my campaign. In rooting for this Gully Boy I begin to rekindle my abandoned side. *Siddhant Chaturvedi in Gully Boy, breakout...

Ode to Muezzins Muezzins used to climb the minaret to make the call to prayer… (after Stefan Kaegi) Oh to be on call five times daily and feat days ready to roll cocksure in your three-balled alabaster minaret outpost honeyed and hyssoped throat nose to the windscreen positioned just so between your faith and a vintage Shure 55SW anodyne mic an array...

NOSTALGIA OF A WORKNIGHT She’s weary as an unused toy—unwrapped, not touched. She’s not hidden but by herself in back of a toybox, under the snapped off arm of her last doll. She thinks a shelf might be nice. She’d like to hear the soft click as her nightlight went dark and slipped into a sleep...

RIVERS Should I multiply or divide my soul in rivers under sheltering domes? I have left bits of me in the Elbe and the Rhine. I have left liquid tears in the lighted Seine. Paris, Berlin, Dresden -- each city is an epic, a tome. In rose gardens in the day or beer-gardens at night I have ranged and roamed. The...