POEMS
We Become a Destination
In a magical corner of air
A cello plays sacredly.
My heart tumbles into your sagacious posture,
Turns into a capering contour for your fingers,
Begs for the uneven geometry of your craggy words
As it watches you unfold ancient parchments in your eyes
Relaxed white walls
Shift between my left and right brain hemispheres
Show me a kaleidoscope of a million rosy moments
Knitted into a single future.
Music bows into this enamored opera of love
Rains swing into this diaphanous rhapsody
Sheer and sweet like curtains
When we gaze at each other,
Through all the bitter lessons waiting to be learnt,
We fall into a dream.
We float like wisps of feathery seeds into each other's throats
Slip into gulps of immortal love.
Time less, journey less, route less,
We cease to traverse. We become a destination
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Alloy Ink
This ink
Dark with desires
Old with knowledge
Older with thirsts
Incendiary yet apologetic
Inciting yet comforting
When I write
The ink becomes
As cleansing as water
One fine day in history
It hardens, becomes tensile like steel
Coagulating feelings into
A frozen crystal lattice, defying time
Blistering souls
Forging truths
About why things are the way they are
In the crucible of life
*********
My name, a boat
My name is a boat
Porting my courage
To the pure waters
Of your voice
Say it
Break my name between your teeth
Taste it with your tongue
The way you would taste a fruit
Or sip wine
Savor the breaking bedrocks of its syllables
The furrowed alluvium of its earth
Smeared and shiny with too much walking
With too few pauses
Floating into eternity
on the sails of your lips
Docked in the anchor of your throat
Only to bob again in the water of your eyes
When you rise next morning...or the next
My name is a boat moored between your own
*********
Abandoned in Old Age
The grime and garbage on the streets
Are his focus points
Things he wakes up to every morning
Tortured by his aching joints
The street air has little in it
To give to his poor lungs
Oxygen is not an option
Here on life's lowest rungs
His clothes are baggy
Tattered and torn
The same he wore
When he was thrown out of 'home'
Only his tears are fresh
Refreshed everyday
When he assesses the cruelty
Of being abandoned this way
He relies on whatever he can find
Bits of leftover pizza and bread
Thrown away waste
Have become sustenance instead
I catch his eyes at a traffic signal
See in his eyes, the clarity of pain
Wan lips, pale cheeks, gauntness
That he tries to conceal, in vain
The rudder of life sometimes
doesn't steer very right
Man depends on his children
But children are indifferent to elders' plight
Old age and loneliness
Go hand in hand
When life deepens and ripens
Ironically, all joys disband
The pain of this reality
Haunts like a ghost
Why loved ones abandon us
When we need them the most
We're living inside deaf walls
Where no sensitivity permeates
Compassion is dead
We've forgotten how to tolerate
Demeaning those
From whose seed and womb we are born
Ceding the flowers
And clinging to the thorns
*********