How Similar

How similar are our thoughts-
yours about life, and mine about death:

You refer to your breath
when you say 'struggle'
and I refer to your breath
when I struggle
to live.

To Artlessness

Drape it a lyric across those lips;
keep it on your fingertips-
my name you say is enough?
Have it clipped to your heart, but know:
I will go.

I will go
where there is no art-
no seas, no shores, no ships.
I will go where the wind is rough
when it whips
life into submission.

I will tow every line you drew
and disrupt this symmetry 
that still tries to contain me-

trap it, if you still want...
my name on a ruled sheet.

I will go where poetry
is artless.

The Reply

Yesteryears, they burn, a fire-
your mind turns to fear,
you ask:
Will you raise our tomorrows
in the ashes of past,
the blackness of love?

And my reply
is the black rose,
that will never be found:

Tomorrows
born of the past
will be the thorns that I will keep-
thorns guarding
the blackness of our love.

Celibacy

"I will do you."

Here is our Cinderella,

trying every shoe:

nothing fits, not one hits

the point.

Twelve times, the twelfth hour-

twelve thoughts

but one:

what is the point?

Starfish!

Starve fish.

An alien between her legs;

circles in square pegs:

woman, she breathes and begs-

I need the ocean,

nothing less.

Starfish,

one of a kind-

she glides into celibacy

of the mind:

I shan't find.

I shan't find.

Orgasmic Eye

Solitude has needs-

I am his orgasmic eye.

I come easily.

The Dog Wakes Up to its Tail

At the Station, by the track, is the corpse of Silence,

papering the earth with pure blood.

Layer, after layer of stories with the same ending-

they died.

But theirs aren't the only suicides committed.

Nobody knows that a dog had woken up to its tail on a Tuesday morning

and smelled for the first time, death.

Two men, in a train, had woken up to their balls

and learned that they will kill themselves as the train of life sped

along time's tracks.

The poet, journeying in a dream bubble, had sowed death in her mind.

She's waiting to reap it.

Death, and the thought of it, is a big leap, indeed.

While life, is only a keep. Our habit of sleeping.

Each moment, when you succumb to life, know that you are killing

yourself; know that you're planting a tail where you should have

plugged emptiness; know that in keeping time, you're losing it.

The Boot

The Night is Reality's boot;
existence, a bruise.

In the face, we take it,
our moment of shame
when the game is over
and we lose.

We lose it every night
and hope that some day,
some day we'll choose
death.

But all we do is wait
to be struck again,
to be shamed
into dying or living.

On Her Being the Moon

I saw the Moon rehearse the act one night;

being an artist's clock is not a cakewalk-

to babysit their black minutes; to talk,

while they are at your breast, undoing white.

Nursing is no pleasure; you're but a muse-

they'll use your timelessness to satisfy

needs that stem from their perennial blues;

compulsions that consort them to the sky.

I saw the Moon evolve into a poem;

a man then shawled her in his old canvas.

And I saw him carry her to his home;

he nailed her to a wall by the cactus.

What You Have of Me

When I hyphenate
my lines,
I imagine you at the bank,
sipping from the river
its flatness.

And when some words
are born out of the rhyme
that was our time,
I imagine you cradling my poems
in your arms,
kissing them with the understanding
of a muse.

'Because' is irrelevant.
My every pause
is an allowance for you to touch me,
physically-

there, where I hide my mind
is your point.

Arms and legs are just spokes
to a wheel,
that has forgotten to roll.

Polished Woman

The paint is going;
oil, flowing;
and the soul,
billowing from the body.

Ten words
shot at the woman-
daughter, breasts, veil, book,
marry, carry, weary, cook,
look, life.
She thinks.

Twenty angles
to the same question-
fertility, futility.

At thirty,
the paint is going.
As if, life is winnowing
the woman from the body.

Number Plate

A number plate on the roadside:
it fell off as the car sped;
couldn't be nailed to the journey
any more.

Let the car(s) invade every secret-
we shall stay put in the dust
where we may fade,
fade, fade.

Zero
attempts at suicide-
I fell off midway in life; they say,
I'm dead.
Couldn't be nailed to The Journey
any more.

A number plate by the road.
Fading.

Eloquent Night

The night is an eloquent form; bespeaks

tenderness at your hands, 'tween your fingers,

lips. A tangible silence; look above

the curves... there's a constellation called love.
Have it in your eyes, this jewel that lingers
by the night. Love is only yours to take.
Make of it, a new dust for morning's sake;
love is only yours to take. Take it in.
Between your fingers. In your eyes; your palms.
Let every space be the spirit, Love;
break free, tonight. Give up all your meanings-
be looked at and spoken of, only as
love. Take it in tonight- all this that sings
of you and me and you and me and You.

Penetration

Water is on fire;
tides are flames-
they aim for the sky,
but penetration
is a distant dream.

Submissive

The piano, at high tide

was a little short of reaching you-
between my teeth,
a last breath that couldn't escape.

I then walked away-
trickled down my mind,
to that place where one heard the ocean
guzzle silence.

Deathless music-
I lived in a neck;
a deep gorge... redness.

Each tide was an arm
that fed the moon to Time's ears.

Couldn't I but recoil
these tides back across the sea
like one does with old tapes-
cassettes that forget to contain their music?

But my fingers were taken.

Lunacy

To slip into a startle

as you drag the burden of your breaths

and to laugh

when you see his face

rise again, unbeaten;

a winter trickling to your depths-

the other half

of you, there,

there before your eyes, once again.

He pins you down

and the choke is fooled into life.

Song, a liquid

that drinks you and fills you...

he's there, 

there before your eyes again-

you see him rise again.

His word,

undressing you, your every thought-

you repeat him,

defeat him

in being the poem he was.

And suddenly-

you're beautiful.