Storm at 4AM

4 AM and outside, in the dark,
The storm slams into the street’s tar;
The gutters sing ghazals,
The ground gratefully guzzles up the water;
The winds slash at me violently
But this concrete square shelters well.

I think of all the times I’d been in love:
I think I was in love with the storms
That brewed inside of people;
I’d never been in love with any one body –
Just the flush of a few moments –
Moments which came as a delicious dream,
Moments that linger on even when
The entire body of courtship is cold.

Despite this, I still prefer this weather,
I still hope and wait for the storms:
When a positive and a negative meeting
Play out their inimitable Beauty on the skies.

Where are they ?

Where are the wild things ?

Somewhere in a ritual or habit.

Wild, still.

Inspite of the communal hunting.

Our nets and drumming cannot herd it.

We never kill it all.

 

Wild grizzly freedom is out there in the courage I never had to turn wild.

To turn tiger, jackal, no, rodent.

My heart is smaller than a mole’s. I am not half as bold.

 

For I fear and love the dark spots under the trees.

The same ones in broken down houses.

In unoccupied hospital rooms.

Something dwells there.

Something still dwells inside me.

And thank god, for that.

For a useless solitude.

Some Gods

Some gods are really weird
They need you to grow a beard

Some of them are damn hard to please
They want you down on your knees

How am I going to worship the guy
If he’s invisible, up in the sky ?

What do you reckon I’d say
When I don’t think about him all day ?

Some gods don’t like women in service
Others really make men nervous

I think we all need a time-out
From the hysteria and shouts

Give me a quiet, pensive deity
Not of the church but the laity

Give me a god of the stark winters
Give me a god of mud and splinters

Give me a god, cold like stone heaths
A god that reminds us of our soft feet,
Our soft skins, our soft tissues, our soft ideas

Past Life Repression

Betrayal
Father chases me with a stick
I run to grandmother in the garden
I sob into her warm clothes
She hands me over to father

 

Pain
Father dies in a car crash
Father dies in pain
I hear this in the garden
Now I know Pain

 

Anger
Why did you take him away
When I did your Sunday School work !?
Why did you fail me
When I prayed to you each day ?!

 

Loss
Something went missing
Around my 16th year
Something flew away
I don’t know where it’s fled

Lies

I’m drowning in an ocean of lies,
My entire life is just an illusion,
A composite built of several lives
Made mine, by a single grand fusion.

They are beckoned forth by arrogant Pride,
Unknowingly they slip out of my mouth –
How tentative I become after I have lied
Lest my words should incur some doubt.

These tales that I so intricately weave,
Have but a few visible flaws;
But should tedious Inquiry refuse to leave
The palace of lies comes crashing to the floor.

I cannot stop these absurd pretensions;
I’m afraid my friends will hate me.
Truth will bring distrust and apprehension –
The rusted lock sees no turn of the key.

There were times I had been undone
By the very words I spoke.
I try to flee, I try to run
But I am tethered to this yoke.