Always

Sorrow

You come from the juxtapose of joy

As I ate words of love

I had been starving for

Felt your surround like a glory

My body opening for the first time in years

To the rain of you and your outstretched us.

That safe place

Didn’t really exist

I had simply been running in diminishing blindfolds

Emptying myself of protest just as, in one glance, you fill me whole

Anything less is biding time before dying

And it’s not good enough! I want to feel FIRE.

I am

I said into darkness

A strange person

I spent my youth

Acting multiple roles

Watching the stage from ceilings

And words? You have none, I have plenty

But they mean nothing

The purity of your act

Holding my chin and neck

As only one who owns my heart

Tells me more than any soliloquy.

I am a writer

Who doesn’t believe in detail

I’ve had the most fantastic actors

And I’ve seen through them all

But your raw silent search

Slams me with its reality

And I open and open and open

Crying out my betrayal and my hurt

Your fingers beneath my arching

The feel of you, deep in my journey.

Like a wild wind

I pull hard on you

Because I cannot have enough

I want you to live inside me

Like a flower touching my soul, blooms in darkness

Our fingers interlaced

Things I’ll never be able to say.

I smell home in your neck

I touch pain against bliss

And collapse on the other side

Where all meaning resides and you …

You are my all

I want to stay here

Gathered into you and afraid

Because when you feel

You always walk the edge of a blade

Sharp and unknown.

I cannot say anything

But the feel of you against me, is my only sense

I am driven

Like sea is drawn magnetically, every morning

Thundering against shore or stone

Grieving its former peace momentarily

Before losing in the din and rage of passion

All ordinary sense, replaced with certainty.

I am unable to exist without

The burn of following

I follow you

As we are shadows separate and together

Watching me watching you, merge and turn like slivers of ink

Until one, until none

Indivisible we begin over

Unweaving what was you from my depths

Incomplete now

Stay

Stay

Stay please

Always.

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One

Out of the smallness that is me

Not you

I don’t know how you stumble through this world

Or glide, shine, explode, trip

Out of the smallness that is me

Is the only point of reference

I’m no empath

Can’t speak for you, choose colors for walls or swatch of fabric

You may stand beside me all our lives

Rubbing shoulders, sharing scraps thrown

By the hedgemony

Still I am me and you are you

You born in a family of four

Eight, three, six

Me, born in zero

A concept that is Indian

As my concept is reduced

Shrunken, made to fit a narrow lens

Just me

Till this world strokes her end

On my wick

And kissing me bon nuit

Extinguishes the tick tock tick

Out of the smallness that is me

To some an ordinary, downright boring set of genes

We are not that much more to each other than code

The man who seaks a mate types;

Pale skin need not apply

I like coffee and cream not plain vanilla

Whilst to another I am a warrior, a fighter, a courageous soul

I could have fangs and scales and they’d love me still whole

Their eyes pierce the superficial wrapping of the world and locate my root

Still

I wake from salt, I die in sod

Alone

An only child, no lessons in

Understanding concepts of siblings

I hold your hands in imaginary play

You take the razor away and hide it behind teddy

We swim underwater to the same heartbeat

Imagination has a secret back door

You stay behind whilst I am forced

Out into a single stage for ill-prepared audition

Can’t tap dance your way to inclusion

The audience are sets of Siamese twins

One yawns, the other powders her nose

He tweeks his moustache, she fidgits on the balls of her toes

A dancer without freedom

As I am given too loose a rein

Tell the child to hush and stay out of sight

You may find her gone before she’s finished

Learning her lessons from the good book

And sun comes ashen and discolored through poorly wiped glass

Yesterday’s merriment hangs like a wreath in stale air

Adults drop their heads as if pinched with regret

Just yesterday we didn’t think on it

The hiss of spectator and judge dualing on parapet

Still I am me and you are you

Longing to transcribe the distance

Tap tap of moorse code

Flash flash the lantern extinguished by high wave

No translation

I sit

At a table for one

And watch the elbows jostle and spar

Closer than twice removed and strangers can understand

A plea we have no words for

In the long sum of day

Yawning at our door

Warm and content like a cat

Who has lapped spilt milk

Before it turned sour

Out of the smallness that is me

Seven billion voices and one

Stubborn in her persistent belief

We all

Count

Reflecting our make

Born inheriting jaundice

from an incubator world

nobody wanted to hold

the baby with malform

forehead elongated, she held on

wishing not to be born

till calipers force the point

leaving behind viking indent

brand scaring watery soul

who dreamed still of utero

without air banishment

moonshine, her first sup

on the mustard kick of luckless child

unwanted by chain-smoking teens

seeking succor in bricked up people

climbing invisible ladders to some faraway mount

not of tablet and command

more a belief if we earn enough

we can pay away our sin

she was a ward of one

listening to water rise in radiators, surge and grow cold

before her first birthday she learned

life is a scolding pecking bird

retreat inward like sleeping charm

wait out first 18 winters

till freed of snow you take flight

cutting yourself out of smite

the unwanted will inherit their cast

dyed in river beds to wash never indigo

the hue of their regret

O to be counted

surely one more drag, one more wrought night

lying back on pillows watching stars trip beyond

their pinpointed direction never clarified

do they seek their diminishment or

have they already died?

showing their skirt tails like faint ghosts

for weary-eyed consumer of bottled night

blinking as neon sign beneath liquor store

stays on throughout retching dark

luring empty hearts toward comforting glow

we drink because we need to feel full

starve ourselves to let bidden pain flow

cut out the parts that remind us how

we came in and left without touching earth

those children of no consequence

developing thick soles and empty shadows

no wonder then we stay fissure thin

in diminished light of birth

reflecting our make

as weary moon, closes her eyes

flits behind rolling cloud

blocking out acknowledgement

like a candle can be snuffed

between a pinch and rub

you are no more than you were

the crust of you, harder to break

underneath there is a word

waiting in turn to ask

why?

must we inherit for our legacy

indifferent design?