Sacred Ganga,
Welcome to our city.
What gifts you’ll take.
Narrow warren,
lanes lined with bright-hued goods,
bangle blind and lost.
Cattle herd
roams the parched mudflat,
kicking up dust.
A golden bridge
visits each morning, and
exits silently.
Wood stackers
endlessly working
the burning ghats.
crowded skies,
circling raptors weave
invisible baskets.
little chipmunk,
screeching relentlessly,
stop! all are warned.
rat slinks away
as cat creeps near,
despite edge in size.
popsicle monkey,
crowd coos, “Cute copy-cat,”
idly stuffing faces.
Mumbai leopards?
Hollywood mountain lions?
cats seeking parts?
alpine lake,
depth a guarded secret,
mirroring mountain
ships sit
on your sandy bottom,
yet, you’re called “lake”
in sunlight
your glistening canvas,
a bowl of diamonds
winter ice cracks
with steel cable song,
sending shudders
barren pine
beside mud-rimmed lake,
heeding drought
outside? muggy;
from inside: gray skies look
like Viennese winter
cool mornings,
after a rainy night,
soothe the spirit
the guard shack,
topped by a wading pool
only I can see
rain song
absorbs harsh sounds,
hushing the city
trust old people
with umbrellas more than
the blue in the sky
The Jane outside my window is not real.
She’s just a fevered dream I can’t describe,
a searing pain that I don’t want to feel,
an intoxicant that I can’t imbibe.
My mind conjures so many listless souls.
I see them out the corner of my eye.
They have a gravity, I feel its pull,
but that force is only the devil’s lie.
Where do they go when I turn to see them?
Do they rain down to some dark underworld?
Or, tis I who fade from the world of men?
A sightless, silent brute in fetal curl?
Taking you by the lapels, I must ask,
what do you see revealed in all these masks?
I
his dreamtime mind
floated to a forest
settling in the shadows
where time resides
only in shifting shapes
II
I saw a woman smudge a tear with her palm,
listening to an old song that wasn’t old to her,
a song that pulled dusky moments of angst to the forefront of her mind,
rocketing her into a reality eight miles back and decades distant.
III
oh, the monsters of long ago
trudging over ice and snow
such a lonely life
too much time was left to think
about being on the very brink
of extinction
I saw that nation when it was anew,
and all the dreams of countrymen, they flew.
But danced back to the Earth in flaky ash.
As the dictator donned his glitter sash.
He said, “The fault? You’ll find it five miles down
in the bowels of bunkers, underground.”
People went to digging with their spoons,
and cursed the worst while burning at high noon.
From day-to-day you’ll find that they still dig.
No need to build a gallows or a brig.
There’s an old-timey telephone operator inside my skull,
popping plugs and jacking them back in elsewhere,
but doing it like a Hindu deity — infinite arms all ablur,
and all I know is that the well-worn jacks get the fire.
Chasing sages down the street,
tripping to bow at their feet.
Oh no, poor soul, who’s lost his way,
his brain behind, his mind affray.
You can’t get to there from here
for it’s much worse than you fear.
Lao Tzu’s Way is closed today.
Try again when it thaws next May.
Maybe by then you’ll ‘ve seen the light,
bouncing your way from wrong to right,
feeling the weight of what you’ve heard,
having found the sound, and lost the word.
you’ve clocked me on atomic time
dragged me below the water line
but you don’t know from whence I’ve come
blank, teary-eyed, and feeling numb
weary from my endless travel
my throat parched, the sound of gravel
still you pull from me a charred word
but it feels distant and absurd
somehow he thinks that he will find
somewhere among the broken time
a time shard that tells the story
lost city, ditched and hoary
weary wanderer drowned down there
pulled from green waters by his hair
“but who was the evil culprit!”
i once heard screamed from a pulpit
the funeral for a future me
i heard the word i could not see
found by some old man of means
who could see behind the scenes
but to know the truth, he could not
secrets hide in bits time forgot
