The Impossible Expression

Nights would have been expressionless
had it not been for the moon.

The moon, I say, is a mood.

I love it when it's lips; a perfect 'O'-
like I've woken its passion;
rekindled it.

Sometimes it grows pale and yellow
and I believe it as fickle as I am.

Then the crescent of Eid-
like a downcast eye,
like Buddha's smile.
And the placid brow
of a mystic, when upside down.
I moon my nights away,
admiring the pout on the sky.

The moon is never a face;
it's a chameleonic feeling.
Sometimes I peel it off the sky
and swallow it.

But on days like today,
as it snowballs into a dream,
I pet it and spoil it.

Its fullness tells me,
it's been enceinte a fortnight.

Nigger Night

The night's a nigger
and the crescent, its white smile.
While the dawn sleep walks
in a silk robe and slippers,
the darkie dreams, perspires stars.

Riding the Deadly Wagon

Every morning
we ride in Death's car,
me and him.
He drives and I sit back
wondering if I will make it
there.

He loses the wheel;
the grip is forgotten
as thoughts and more thoughts
become important
to him.

I look at everything
through the opaque glass;
perspectives change.

There, when we'd started
with a jerk or two
and here, at a signal,
forgetting to shiver-
we have come too far.

We forget.

Green light, again.
Jerks.

I squint and he coughs
as the little car puffs it all out.
"Did we die, Pa?"

"Pa?"

He drives and I sit back
wondering if we will make it
there.

Stints and Stunts

A dream showed me in and I

tiptoed into the lie,

an unripe ballerina.

Fate's fool, porcelain,

I pirouetted through
the red curtain
and shed my all.

I shed my skin, my tenderfoot;
became a silhouette, a shadow put
before countless eyes
that looked down upon me
like stars winking,
each to each.

I danced;
the spotlight romanced me
until we couldn't go on
being one.

Light escaped then
freezing me, erasing me
and showing up elsewhere.
The Coda was but a breach.
Stars winked, each to each.

Light escaped then
like the flight of the soul
from its mold.
The beam shrunk,
left me a trunk-
leafless, lifeless.

"Death of a star", they said
and it showed up elsewhere.
"Birth of a star", they said.

On and off it went,
the momentary scent,
lighting and looting;
eclipsing the show.

Death breathed behind the curtain-
eyes could never know
that the life of the shadow
was trapped in light.

Symbiosis

The bow on his face 
has but misled the arrow-
it is me he's wounded
with a kiss.

Adversaries, were we
two opponents in a game-
his to shoot,
mine to shame?

Exalted, those eyes
have now gained colour-
my blood complements
his grays.

Lust is a chisel;
I'm reduced to an idol.
Love is debris 
he rejects.

Yet I am the beat
of his heart; I am
the spring and he,
my oasis.

Need is the basis
of our bitter symbiosis.

Acme

In whose eyes live revelations-

take me to such an anonymity.

Within whose arms rest inspirations-

lead me to such a notoriety.

O Lord, could you too ultimately

die a little in love of me?

In whose sighs flame ambitions-

steer me to such a slavery.

In whose eyes live revelations-

take me to such an anonymity.

Schizophrenia

He goes fluting in my heart all day long,

never once have those notes gone wrong.

His unreal breath that streams like a song,

madness that has canoed me all along-

love's oblivion is whither I belong.

His gaze that unveils my own mind

is a kiss invoked- one of a kind.

These lips upon mine, a find

of myriad dreams lurking behind

a sun that shan't turn me blind.

Can it be Reality that trifles with the soul;

robbing the heart and leaving but a hole?

What are these things forever on a stroll

along a hollow mouth, life's shoal-

never jumping, merging into a whole?

Can it be untruths that sate

the spirit and its mate?

Call it folly, call it fate-

if it is him that I create,

I hope then, to forever hallucinate. . .

Torpor

Raindrops will ripple the sea,
teardrops will cripple me.
Ink-drops will but be
ennui, ennui.

A Love Note to Lucifer

Drought.

A flaming cross, the sun,
that brands my eyes with red crevices;
corals in a sea of salt.
These silvery hemispheres have but
known the Star, a burning cross.

Won't you dive, Lucifer,
dive into these trenches and find Red?
Won't you find blood?

Come, conjure a flood;
wake the dead sea
within me.

O Prince of Darkness,
O Anonymity-
I worship thee, I worship thee.

Tempt the tides to rise;
seduce the seabed,
this breast that heaves not,
this heart that grieves not.

Bring me the fruit to kiss,
deceive me. Hiss
to me the sin that will be my undoing.

Come to me, my bête noire-
let us fall.
Let us fall in love and be fallen.
We belong to the Underworld.