Poem

I watch my cellphone flash
With a frantic call -- goes out -- back
Again. I have left the last letter, his
Last postcard in the dustbin of
Desire among sweepings and
Dead cats of memory. Till the next.
I wait patiently for the passing of
This fantastic invasion, when all I'd done was to
Spill by chance some ink on his chest that
Cannot be washed away.
I have chosen a snowy dress, I have
Brightened my teeth. The
Heart -- that is harder to groom
But the better part of it, my writing, is
White.

Correction

Words, giving vision,
like lenses for myopia
      -- Dad,
without whom life is
a blur, in his writing.

Untitled

Look, two hands
Whose twists wring out the cloth
And the bucket
Bucket full of black water
Like a closed piano.

The surface jumps and scowls
Like when a dead heart
Drops in blood
Like the moon upon
Sleepless rooms.

It spills and rolls,
Turns -- a head, there it is,
Shrunken, white,
Eyes blank, teeth looking out.
Standing I survey it.

Idea that'd agitated to clot:
A collage of feelings and events
Wherefore
A plaintive tune floats in time
From depths of the keyboard.

Golden Fog

The world is a wall of whiteness.
Air or stone watches me steadily;
I keep up the walking.

A chimney lets out wools of breath.
The first old tram,
Colour of sage,

Parts the diaphanous flesh.
For a long time
Outlines of distance are

Dissolving; the next yard is safe.
My bones carry a quiet.
Soon, they melt into farness --

An illuminated way through
The day, tomorrow,
Of love and meaning and golden skies.

Here, Now

Vegetation riots on the earth,

Big trees are king;
The stretch of river runs along,

Contented,
Into the quiet of shaded distances.

The air is warm and sweet,

Of mud,
The mystery of wilderness

Vigorous upon my nostrils.

On the silvery bank
A pair of reptiles

Are sunning themselves side by side;

There is joy in brilliance of the light,

The stream, the great silence, impenetrable forest.

For they've never known him,

Nor anything in their lives 

Of his hollowing absence.

Under The Tree

Grasping a handful

Of earth where

His ashes were spread

And where he'd burnt

His manuscript

I cannot know if

This is his or him

Light, My Raison D'etre

Light, my raison d'etre
A crack in the sky, the sleepy white of your eyes, the
   company I am happy with,
Clasped hands swinging down the quiet path,
The grass whitened by footprints of overnight mist,
Leaves coloured by autumn red and gold and purple and brown,
Orange, burning rim of cigarettes
The tip-toe of stars on the slumbering lake, headlamps and
   fireflies, the open refrigerator, lantern hanging
   on the empty porch,
The trickle of these images, gentle and imperfectly described by turns,
   limited only by talent, when I summon them to mind.
Poetry that puts on a film, takes the seat next to me,
   arms around my shoulders,
Poetry without words, poetry that does not care for words,
   has no time for words,
The mother, for whom 'motherhood' is merely a collection of alphabets
   invented by somebody to fill a void, the mother who cannot give a damn
   if the word exists or not,
The urgent seeker that moves down the skirt, then up from the hem,
   to make its way hungrily between folds,
New learning, new thoughts, new beginnings,
   old books, old times, old-er surrender,
Slant of the sun upon wet earth, the stir of wind against my
   skin, the scent of wood and bark and scrub and roots,
   sounds of air that sink and swell,
Life that basks in love, then reflects the product of that love,
Signature sharps and flats that join from down and up
   to dissolve into rhythm of movements,
Writing that creeps discreetly up and takes hold,
   that presses upon you with firm, lusty arms,
   curves his strong legs about your consciousness,
   until you yield to his will, breathless and fulfilled,
Lightning that stains upwards, then
   another, a third, again,
Your mouth breaking into a smile against the steamy moon,
The smell of rain, the wholesome sense of rest
   and content and relief,
And this list gathered from scattered puddles,
   that I now toss into the fire.

For Susan's prompt

Poets United Midweek Motif -- Organic

Home

It reads your pulse, comfortable as dusk,
Comfortable that time flows where it must,
And strength back in recrudescence of life,

That the hands of the sisters Sufficiency and Sun
Smear upon eyes and cheeks,
Some pearly pink and deuce of light.

For there is no vacancy; alone, I have chartered
The place. I put on the lamp as the street sign
Quivers out --  then at the desk that catches my silhouette, I feel

Rhythm stir the air, the beat of my drum in salubrious ear.

For Sumana's prompt

Poets United Midweek Motif -- Home

How Long Were We Black

You and I, how long were we black
Now emerging, we slowly rise, as a plant after landslide
There is colour, long have we kept out, but now it returns
We return; we are the colour
We are music, strawberries, lace, cinemas, literature
We are here; we are of the human race
We are walks in the park, dappled foliage on wooden bench, stray tennis ball on the grass
We are the sun
We are a pair of rosellas fluttering away into the east
We hum the tune on our fingers, surf the chords of Rachmaninov, determined as any
We are where the sky and the ocean meet without a joint, the low haze like fabric in diaphanous folds
We are also mud on the skirt lifted above the knees, sound of the river, current between our toes
We are lowered eyes, corners of mouth curling up, meaningful pauses, we are cheekiness
We are bookends, standing side by side with no distance between them
We are novels lying flat on the shelf
We tap upon a blank page with a cheap pen and scribble and dream, we waste time
We are poetry, we are prose, we exist on napkins, spill across scrap-paper
We are what a sunset is: capricious, indifferent, perceptible, imperceptible
We are tenderness, frost, fire, laughter, empathy
We are cafes and galleries and dramas and alleyways
We are hand cream, flowers in a watering can, long chats with mum, bowl of noodle soup
We had lunged about, headlong, in darkness, you and I, back and forth, corner to corner, but now
We are home
We have dug our roots deep inside the ground from where we are free with which there is joy.

To Bring You Back

I would do anything
I would go to gatherings and stay the night
I would do James Joyce’s Ulysses or stop reading
I would swim the clipper route, climb Elbrus

To bring you back

I would play computer games and lose with grace
I would sleep with open doors and starch my sheets
I would tick the box True then tick the box False
I would shoot the Pope

I would lie naked under summer’s mid-day sun
I would spend my days in a Casino
I would set my house on fire or let taps run
I would take heroin

I would push the piano off the cliff
I would amputate my tongue and cauterise her wound
I would do twenty years as the Secretary-General at the UN
I would be a prostitute

I would be a politician and hijack a plane
I would feed the wolves in me I want to starve
I would eat meat and swallow nails
I would let my demons win

I would give up and I would give in
I would break my own legs, fall on their knees
I would live in a purgatory the rest of my life
To bring you back

I would do anything