Ember

The air is pungent, like the bite of a berry,
Frosted, thick with the dark of shuffling murmurs.
A hollow shadow follows from memory's cove,
Betraying the nebulous doors of time.

I ask for a surveying kindness,
To yield and lay upon the riverbed.
Forbearance is a mighty forest in spite of the moon,
Even the night must lose her way sometimes.

Oh to forget and be forgotten,
If only for a moment, to sit and to perish.
To dance and fall off the edge like an ashen fruit,
Or to pick up an arrow and shoot.

Oil and fumes and tide and wine,
All rise above the lidded skies in proof
Of violent sorrows and hours upon the earth.
Hence this too shall be a passing eclipse.

So an eager leash of prayer flags as tether,
Into this ocean of despite I plunge.
Kicking against the swell of darkness and death,
With a single name to the embers of my heart.

Because water is too small to tame my fire,
Because silence runs deep and my love, deeper still,
Because a poem of love needs no approval,
Because my song for you knows no ending.

Library

Sitting by the framed music of her window,
The church bells knell the evening lights.
Just as flocking wings gather in a litany,
We ferry our drooping shoulders home.

The throat is parched with the dust of time,
And the gaze returns from the inward mockery.
Far ahead glazed the sempiternal dance of the wine-drunk tide,
Mimicking the pale fires of our battering hearts.

Scratch the bottom of language,
And the flood runs out of water.
The walls breathe and shift in silence,
Blindly clock the noise, softly hold the voice.

They who dwell beyond the hour of sleep,
Of whose feather, a lightness sought,
Of whose youth, a sweetness fraught,
Buries a longing in your homeless soul.

An intruder upon this ancient covenant,
I lower my eyes to the prevailing sanity.
The insouciance involved is a pretence,
Must I continue or sigh?

June again

Flickering ghosts of an adventuring spirit
gave me rite of passage into the unawakened dawn.

Here the silent valleys lay in pure being,
In deep evidence of blue eternity.
Here false sentiments fell away in defeat
To the thundering echo of life.

What then to be afraid of?
My heart was no longer overcast.

So there we were, surrounded by words,
Yet struggling to taste the right ones.
Poetry stood in amused witness,
To this clumsy story spilling before their pages.

Timidly we approached the tender space in between,
That holy kingdom so far eluding our clutch.

I confess, I was too afraid to touch,
It felt like a dream that would dissolve
Like a tablet in a glass of darkness.
So I let myself melt in the safe folds of distance.

The dampness of my feet barely registering,
As I stepped into puddled pools of shared whispers.

As with the gradual etch of time on stones,
You were engraving a name inside my fortress.
My disobedient soul rode dizzily into the rain,
And our footsteps danced to the pace of my heart.

Between the fugitive words and the insobriety,
Something escaped our lips - a kiss, though we didn't touch.

Outside I could taste the ocean in my mouth,
As the daring brush of a shoulder drove me delirious.
Blindly we walked past the opaque city lights dancing in mischief,
Our souls sighing in a beautiful melancholy for things we never lost.

I'm glad we're still walking, deciphering each day,
The wonder has only deepened with time.

Funeral Lights

A tree is falling,

Slowly, roots tearing away at life.

The aged bark grunts as if in submission,

Nearly a century spent under shower and sun.

Dismantled, bloodied, she lies in wait,

Her lofty shadow attempting a fading escapade.

The wind sweeps away her last echoes of rustling as if in farewell,

And a long forgotten name falls from her lips.

Her lovers lean in to touch her ebbing light,

Her leaves weep for you the tears you cannot shed. 

Even the sun dips his face behind the horizon.

You remember the funeral, you know you are drowning too.

Alone she makes her journey forth, towards darkness,

Clinging, against confusion, to pictures of youth and life.

Stars, and wind, and the music of rain,

And you are caught in the corridor of sorrows left behind.

Ashamed to go home now,

You fall at her feet just like the rest of her sighing lovers. 

Here lies a grave of dreams imploring the world to remember,

And you, an unworthy witness to this story.

The city lights come on as if to blind one, 

Dotted windows of mocking cheer, 

Piercing honks and passing cars, rattling your insides.

The world is incapable of mourning. 

At the brimming tides of Nagaon

The unbounded joy of the surging waves,
As if they couldn't wait to reach the shore.
They remind me of my own eager footfalls,
Each time I set forth to see you.

When at last they merge,
When water and land consume each other,
Like lips meeting lips, or like book meeting reader,
Thirst and satiation become one.

As the waters sweep over me,
I try and clasp their memory in my fist.
But as a dear old poet once wrote,
Time shall have its fancy, tomorrow or today.

And so inexplicably I find myself deceived.
They are gone all too soon, and I am left
With the residue of their love story in my palm -
A murky map of abandoned dreams.

So too are the homeless debris of my mind,
Like ghosts fading into the ocean.
But before I am allowed to mourn, they return,
New waves promising new dreams.

And so we play our respective roles,
Mortal souls in an immortal story.
The sun, the moon, and the waves indulge us,
And for a moment, we like to think our footprints won't wash away.

A Bronze Dream

What do you seek in these words, dear one?
The ebbing of vague hopes,
A life resting uneasy upon jagged edifices
Of empty consolation and forgotten vows?

A life perhaps deceiving itself into sleep.
Dreams of never waking,
Dreams of life itself being the promise of a dream,
A life spent thus in dreaming.

Sometimes you stare into the mirror,
Hoping for recognition,
Hoping to find a face that abides,
And you meet a stranger in your eyes.

Like young pebbles waiting to fall into the stream,
I float without knowing how to reach the bottom.
The wise waters whisper a bronze story in my ear,
And I am reminded of enduring sorrows and abiding pleasures.

In the soft shadows of this restless night,
I look for words to bring your face to light.
(But I realize I am asleep,
And Chuang Tzu's butterflies mock my dream.)

Far away in the silence,
The moon glows of your face in the forests deep.

Chasing tails

The unbearable silence of this evening,
Calls out your name in earnest.
The world seems to sigh along in unison,
As if they too were part of my yearning.

The distant echo of a passing train,
Reverberates a dismal tune of hasty farewells.
The clouds too relent and mourn with me,
I ache without knowing why.

Words fail, memory lies.
The only truth is painted outside the window.
The purple hues of the stoic sky,
And the burning lump in my throat.

Why knock on an open door?
Why wait for a dreamless sleep?
Who understands the sorrow of rain?
I ache without knowing why.

We hurt, we heal, we go forth again.
Moving forward is such an illusion.
Haven't we chased our tails around the same sun for ages now?
A few revolutions around a floating ball of fire,
That is the entirety of our story.

And yet we wrap our bodies and minds with fairy lights,
Carve symbols celebrating our mortal resilience,
Our dream being to dazzle through the eternal darkness,
Shine our way through life,
And go shining into death.