The Corona

Little compliments
and unspoken endearments-
I sit wreathed in love.

His Pride

Two black strokes, her brows-
pave the passage to his pride;
he follows, gets lost.

Today I Build a Letter

Today I build a letter in my mind,

with loving words and little blocks of dreams;

a letter you will seek but never find.

Today I write with my small breaths aligned

to the spring of life and its many streams-

today I build a letter in my mind.

The dervish dances to tunes undefined;

what are planets spinning at their extremes?

The letter you will seek but never find.

Remember the times I’d been left behind-

because I would stop to collect sunbeams?

Today I build a letter in my mind.

Our love is a tide, let me but remind-

that which first forfeits and later redeems.

The letter you will seek but never find.

This ever-rising ladder that I lined,

is thoughts that but intertwined at the seams-

today I built a letter in my mind;

a letter you will seek but never find.

Blankness

Air, unfurling ‘you’-

white paper, curly edges.

My pen may not kiss

but my breath will touch your being;

your blankness will inspire me.

A Pauper's Poem

The shadows have left them

and my eyes are now lonely-

I cannot find any dreams;

my sleep is famished.

A lone beam in my heart,

a bar of dust-

I cannot touch it;

I cannot be blemished.

The sky is widowed;

I scavenge stars from its skin.

Yet what I have lost-

can it be replenished?

In days, another moon will grow.

But these lamps of mine

will never be lit again.

The fuel was love and it’s now

finished.

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.