These Urban Rites

If the soul selects her own society
Then tell me who shut the door on years
Shared, oblivious, estranged that was
Once so intimate, divorced reality

Some things that fly – are meant to be
Don’t you know, lover, formerly Beloved?
Where we two crept through winters
Hand in hand for a short while

Was it enough, tell me lost friends?
I have known some of the most lonely hours
Sensitive perhaps to primitive emotions
Of abandonment, alienation, dependency

On a clan, a tribe, a friend, a partner
Who was not truly there, the family unit
Is then, not what it used to be
Brothers, unsistered, father impersonal and past

Faith is a fine invention, for community
But what if the world was dangerously anonymous
What if the trusting woods were no more?
And friendship, as if spoken by a distant bird

Whose voice has been ripped from evolution’s side
We, who were once two butterflies at noon
In our starry youth, overcome with glee
The tides have turned and we’ve been beaten

By men who would be our competition,
What mystery pervades such a world
Where the street and brutality have new meaning
And poverty a disfigured face to those
Who once might have shown us kindness.

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On the truth in gossip

listen to the stories women
tell other women, O’
I miss my women friends
who would talk a history in a needle
listen to a name, gossip a little
that sound of other places
with a foreign taste
the ripeness of a voice
made vulnerable and accessible
I am no longer a hunter of women
I have only empathy left
In my bones, in my half-smile
You can only live and learn
In this world, there is no disgrace
That lasts forever, only heartbreak
That is extremely normal
So don’t fret, the falling seas
The falling snow, we’ve seen it all before
Listen to the stories of women
To the wisdom passed down
On hearing a name long unspoken
Take a guess as to why you hear it now
Our cries echo in unique ways
And our voice reaches the heart
At the appointed time, maybe
Centuries later, our love is recognized.

That thing you call the hearth

the day is not our own
it belongs to our hearth
our family, our society, our nation

nature made our hearts
public calendars, followers
of tribe, so when you lust

know that you service this
your honest thoughts may linger
but individuality is a myth

you are a part of history
you came from a mother
you owe your livelihood

to the city, to the nurturance
of friends, to the generosity
of employers, to the wealth
you scavenged how to speak
to the stars, but it only

brought you closer to others
not to God, not to any beauty
no, that left you long ago.

The ones worth suffering for

“Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .””
― C.S. Lewis

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/A-friendship-tale-116384835

i

It’s a long time since I haven’t
heard from you, old friend
though you like to live in my mind
and in those moments I imagine
you are thinking of me too

our time and place is gone
to erect for ourselves a lovers’
monument deep in the recess of our soul

ii

We give each slice to another man
another woman, but the truth is
few captivate our ideals, have values
in the likeness of our own
once we talked about who we would

be, and to speak about changes
was to speak about love,
the love we shared for our future

iii

When you wept because we had to part
did you know there was another
unlike me waiting for you?
It’s a long time since I haven’t
heard from you, I did not receive

even a little piece of paper
It’s not a lack of love
but a lack of friendship
which makes the missing stronger.

To the lovely couple

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

During our love, houses were completed
spiritual homes where you
rebuilt my foundations

idealistic comforts that
somehow I had forgotten
among the gardens, listing
the essential spiritual pleasure
that had no country to root for

but accepted all beings
During our love, we felt
a peace where we were completed

finally, irrevocably, whole
as if lost forever previously
our touch was that mutual
sensation of shared mysticism
the chime of fortitude

and unity so foreign to our
previous human experience
you and I were still like

strange visions to behold
universal love, at just
the right temperature.

Autumn’s True Tenderness

you have come to me, all tenderness & meekness
to give solace to me, my dear….
this portends perhaps to my forsaken doom
or to some suffering that God wants to quantify?
all things being equal, I am not here forever
no, mortality is a brief window closing
don’t you know? didn’t you?

come now, stay a little longer
won’t you, if you could, for yourself and all
you hold dear, for your health that is
to meet me with a torch, while lunar gleams
unsteadily behind you, your smile never faltered
even as your voice is strangely altered
from former years, your face hangs low now wrinkled

what might have been, had our hiding places
of timing matched, I cannot say
i’ve a certain smile, thanks to you
these years have not been as lonely
as I might have feared, and this
that’s the promise of the greatest hand
who lends their heart to uplift a fate

as low as mine, gold before me are alter and road
the fire has settled deeper now
my soul is full of light and freedom
but the mirror of my body is gathering grey
life, what a letter, what a bouquet
to think that i’ll miss this too
was once almost inconceivable

in servitude you know i languish
at the edge of awkward anguish
my fragrant heartached years weren’t what
i might have expected, i can still hear
the old gate creaking, and remember the
yellow stains of my youth, but that
is not important, we are sometimes so unaware

of our good fortune and spiritual calling
nothing is quite as glowing as
gratitude in our last autumn on the Earth.

THE LAMP OF EXHILARATION

i

Spring, your grass is longer until June
I can sense Summer further than the Birds
An unobtrusive transformation
Of flowers, gradual perfection of Grace
Regardless of our minor tragedies

ii

Nature, this pensive custom of
Cycles outlasts all change
She carries enlarging loneliness
Making the youth hunt friendship
The heat beneath burning Noons
Makes us sweat for tomorrow

iii

Nature drips sunsets and drapes
The future, across a vistas of Yearning
Passion as the seed the Wizard Sun
Creatures following the mirth
Of the hand of evolution, the eyes

iv

Of the erotic energy of time
Dare I say I felt the lip of the flamingo
The wind does not require grass
But prefers it as I do, the colors
All end in green, and the wisdom
Of the light that never asks questions.

Treatise on Rabia al Basr

In
my soul
There is a temple, a shrine, a garden
where my religion is love
nature, freedom, peace
Where time
Does not have a body
And the future is not
A question of economy, survival, friendship
But where all dissolves
In divinity and connectedness
where ecstasy gets poured into itself
spreading across the galaxies
like a spiritual luminosity
In
my soul
There is a voice, a whisper, a melody
where all art retreats in deeper revelry
and hope
Does not require a family, nation, empire
But can include everything, everyone, all beings.

on Being Other Centered

I scarce esteem the business of a name
Time and being, too closely knelt –
To be somebody is surely
A bondage, as a play, the debts

Of somebody else’s keeping
In some spaces, imprisonment
With other co-conspirators, sweet
I scarce esteem my time on the Earth

Less with my comrades
Few and far-between though they call –
Bring my past despair, those
Bands of spice, talks or reckoning

So I may take flight from these
Boundaries of sense-in-pain
For consciousness is thus sandwiched
Between Eternity and time, and others

I can do without time and Eternity
Enough to be at heart with beloveds.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/In-The-Pouring-Rain-403324988

Since our Names are Completely Ordinary

It’s good you came
I was about to lose my sense
Of interpersonal identification
You are only as lucky
As the people around you

Well so they came to see me
And I had gifts for them
And they used me all too altruistically
But I cannot get furious
At those I loved, and maybe I wish

For friendship too easily
It’s good you came
I was about to lose hope in humanity
Secluding myself with cats
And my memories of emotional intensity

You are only as lovable
As the one special person says you are
Well so I came to see you
Whispering the cherished lines:
I’m sorry, forgive me, thank you, I love you

It’s about time you let somebody like me
Into your life, I’ll watch you in the kitchen
For a lifetime and come running
Into your arms, it’s never too late
It’s good you invited me

Thank you for having me
You are the first person in a long while
Who knew how to make me feel special
I want to be significant again
And I’ll give you my everything
Flowers, poems, chocolate, my heart.

The Toast of First Conversations

You are inside every kindness/
And I am haunted with the giving
I cannot write about the source
Of my dreams, these are ways of loving
The thrill of identity’s finest evidence!

Every natural pleasure/
The vicinity of joy
The unity that occurs
When someone loves something
It is the passion of dedication

And I am haunted by it/
I live to encompass it
Like pure compassion
The table of my life’s delight
Has been set, and I am waiting for

Participants, friends, lovers/
The silence of self-annihilation
A mystical otherness of inner finding
You are inside every kindness
A symbol of my devotion

The living shiver or roselight/
The new idea on the sky of the brain
The conversation that changes everything.

When Geography Meets Biography

My sky, lights up with questions/
When I am with you
Like an applause meter of naturalness
Acceptance, is a beautiful thing

With references, of quiet friendship/
I don’t need clever turns of phrase
But simplicity, that spells out the
Beautiful names, like laughter unbidden

I’d cherish that, like lightning/
Out on the evening veranda
Or raindrops heavy with moisture
That long for the ground, the quiet Earth

So strong and stable, so in need/
Of a little water, that’s how I am with you –
A running light, of golden miles
As far as the eyes can see, it’s comforting

To know, that I can find contentment/
Light-jeweled in the parks
Turning in only conversation, forth & replied
Like a deeper comfort into the night.

26.4.2013

Patchwork Features of Social Interchange

Now tell me there is a pause
Of where the world bends, and we Begin –
The ferries of the best twilights
That were people, half-bloomed
.
Before they cross the river ahead
Each person brings us a symbol
Of the world, like corn and half-blown sunflowers
That dangles in the reaching out
.
That might have never been, since
The wind-burned pastures don’t always
Have much to show, a few smiling memories
That good advice that haunts us till our end
.
Now tell me there is a pause
To the affections that do not last –
What someone in their wisdom might have meant
In reference to their imperfect knowledge of us?
.
There is a strange afterlife, to lovers
And a peculiar premonition of strangers
Now tell me there is a pause
Of where we begin, and the intersection
Through the fretwork of our ghostlike biographies.

Gateway of an Author

In the kingdom of poets, you are my
Pronoun intertwined, my lover of words
I read you like a lover touches you
.
.
I learn to be in your suppositions
Striving to yield in your lyricism
And break free in your hypothesis
In the realm of expression, you are my
Premonition of the dream of years
.
.
Arriving forever at distant wonder
Alphabets of yearning, unmistakable fountains
I attempt to enter your gateway of being
With the optimism of your humanitarianism
I read you like a lover touches you
First tenderly and then fiercely, over and over
Again, you are the singing in my brain
The lavish ceremony of my soul’s literature
.
.
I grasp at meanings in-between your sentences
And analyze you because you told me
That I could know you through your poems.

Dreams of your Photographs

Sweetheart, you are my river in paradise
I understand that destiny, more than anything
Is how we come together, like when you
Take your nature walks – I am transported
To the inner places you have been

Our nomadic beauty could wander the world
Because love cannot always fly
Without resting, I am such a place
Where you can be freely, without expectation
Or obligation, A calm root where you can belong

There is no formula of clay in our lives
But when our minds and bodies come together
You are the turquoise piece that fits in me
Like a gem to my stone, like a bud to my stem
And I yearn for your like mineral wishes

Emerald-longing, as sweet as the earth
We open celestial capsules in our minutes shared
Hours that caress us from afar, the spiritual wonder
Of so much discovery, you bring me alive
As if I’ve been invisible to every gift, before you.

The Breakup

And with a sudden emphasis
Of our sad geometry
Like an old flower in a tender vase
You threw me out the window!
Circumscribing our enormous debts

A lover’s never so beautiful
As when they look at you with cold eyes
As if for the last time
Kissing you on the cheek
Knowing that this will be the last time

But I must replay the excess that stops me with its dream
Love is fickle as the sea
Though it is my rite to everything
The one in me who’s lazy & distracted
And requires art & romance
To feel complete, or entertained?

Trapped by the impatience for another
As if experience could mount immortality
Into my forgotten heart
But like a pinned butterfly
Motionless and fragile
I may only beat my wings

Your child seemed surprised
I cried for him, the last look
And I have been debased
Lost to the vast circle of beautiful things

And with a sudden emphasis
The purest sigh, there was not affection

Here, waiting for me, at the other end of the room
In your eyes, only ruthlessness
Proof of a goodbye so grand
Your promises of friendship were like
The curtains you said you would tailor for me

Thing one says, when trying to be polite
To someone, you can’t be the other half of the world – for.