Two Poets

They came for us one day;
I hid behind the buttons-
Q, W, E, R, T.

He turned, walked away-
walked to the furthest room,
the room with one door
and no windows.

                                                 There had been nights when we'd
                                                 played lovers, me and him;
                                                 I, perched on his 'window', would sing
                                                 and he

Q-W-E-R-T-

                                                There had been nights when I'd
                                                flown in through the window,
                                                a sparrow and hovered
                                                for a moment to see
                                                what they call an eternity.
                                             
                                                I'd been rain on some nights
                                                and a snowflake on others,
                                                falling, dropping, giving in, dying.

                                                It was beautiful-
                                                our being perfectly free.

Then one day,
they came for us.
We weren't found, of course.

I still hide behind the buttons
and he lives a windowless existence.
I don't knock, not me.

Reading the Notes

Weightless on a bike,
I travel like
the unreal quaver
playing in my mind,
leading me to forgetfulness.

I look up at the sky
and open my arms
to the blackbirds that fly-

birds,
like musical notes
on an endless sheet.
Sky is music
and so am I.

Halt me not,
let me go today-

I look up at the sky;
my eyelashes like staves,
trapping a few bird-notes.

A Birthday Party

They were blowing into balloons,
themselves
and the balloons wouldn't take it
for they came in sizes, too small
to be inhaling emptiness,
containing
the weight of it.

The balloons burst.
They tried newer ones.

Mother got tired.
Father needed a drink.

I picked the reds and greens from the floor.
It pricked me when I saw him
head to that door
while she tried
to try a little more,
my mother.

Because Poetry

My heart has been in hiding ever since
he took me off of it and painted him
like skin, like sin, like things I can't evince,
like reds and blues and moods, he painted him.

There's this bed I sail on
during nights darker than his eyes.
And it feels like so many storms
trying in vain to set me right.
I write.
Because poetry.

There's a tear that I never shed;
I bled red, but I never shed,
this truth that I left unsaid.
I write. I write.

A million gongs to the morning,
bells and more bells-
he tickles and I cry,
our silences have gone dry
we try
to keep away.

A million alarms to the night,
we feign sleep before shadows.
They make love while we
make poetry.
Because poetry.

I Write, Why?

There was nowhere to go
but I whipped the horse anyway;
made it run
and bleed,
this steed I call my pen.

I wasn't speaking the truth.
There was no truth to be spoken!
The truth dwelt in silence
and I invoked words.
Words?
I drew from a dry well.

The ancient soul is but too young-
it is artless.
And here I paint pictures,
I design.
I wince with want 
of words!
I write
when it cannot be written.
I write, why?

Ride. Ride. Ride, they say.
But when I ride,
I feel like being ridden
by the beast instead.
Why must I saddle myself?

I write
when it cannot be written.
I write, why?

In the Mouth of a Zero

Every night the ceiling fan

weaves me a whirlpool

to drop my eyes into it,

to land weightless

in a stale pool of desire.

Every night

in the mouth of a zero,

I find your dream,

bubbling like

it has just escaped from a bottle,

like it has come with a tide

to be gone,

to be gone.

I peel the white waves

off the shore

and wear them like morning

across my neck.

The ceiling fan never tires

of weaving me this endless drape

of nudity.

To Be Contained

Bones are bars and behind them is a bird

that flutters and fights but only to fail

escaping them until the rail gets blurred

and the bird is delivered from the jail.

The heart that learns to beat between the 'bars'
the soul that is limited by a 'score',
the game, this life and all its destined wars
are but the music He creates ashore.

And we die 'being', we live only to cling
to these waves that are nothing but the trail
of thoughts He drops into an endless string;
we embrace the wave but forget to sail.

Why is it that the father so ordained
that we'd be us only till we're contained?