Indigo

Empty handed you go into spaces

searching for  souls like collisions

of grey shapes stumbling down

into staircases heading for exit.

 

Pass this way. They are the reflections

of glassy things you see staring back

at you- images of the sun battling

against the rogue winds. Then peace

 

will come knocking at your door

peddling its sepia stained photographs

and pushing nostalgic emotions

tethered to your distant past.

 

You will not allow it. You will pretend

as if you’ve come a long way from there

and someone has to understand

that they need to break down

 

the concept of the old life you are not

now. Though they won’t applaud changes

and alone you have to float like a river

where myriad of dreams are waiting

 

to become realities and rarities.

You have to be lighter than feather.

You should embrace memories

like the colors of the rainbow.

 

Unmindful and undeterred by fear

gripping like empty boxes and chains

to the blank spaces waiting to be filled

with courage to break through walls.

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Orphans

You see the bookshelves collecting dust

and the pages of books banded together like

comrades and no one stop by to break the line.

Or a lyric sheet spread at a piano stand I suspect

the sound would be bland as no one cared

to touch the keys for a long time.  And the strings

of the violin were like my hairs loosened from

its follicles. Aged and unkempt.

 

Or the watercolor pans caked and its oil evaporated

in time without seeing a day on the paper

and all the images just lay there in the mind.

Each night you stare on the pair of begging hands

reaching out and nagging at your conscience.

Where does the time go? Does anyone know?

You may gone flirting into new diversions

gobbling your attention and forget the allegiance

you made to Mother Art and create orphans

watching when you’ll pick enthusiasm.

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Hands Clean

Sometimes,  I catch myself

wondering about you

on some moonless evenings

or misty mornings, drifting-

where have your pages brought you

on some ride in the wind

or tail of a comet’s end.

 

Somewhere

hidden beneath the shadow of stars

thinking

 

who’s reading you now.

Whose hands walk

the landscape of your soul.

A borrowed moment

inhaling your scent

and leaving fine, little circles

of fingerprints

much softer than mine.

 

Sorry if

I left you-

 

like letters I burn in the fireplace

while watching the ashes float in winter air

and fall sadly to the pavement. Like rain

 

remembering the sweet hours.

The blur images of innocence

and immortality you believed

then, but honestly, I realize how beautiful

it was

 

and I kept you

for awhile but good things never last.

I wonder

 

who’s reading you now,

whose mind can fathom

the deeper meaning of you.

Whose hands were

much cleaner than mine.

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Aching Thread

My thoughts are as directionless

as the moths seeking for warmth.

The fire within crackles

sending cinders to my realm.

My mantra of calm are as restless

as the grasshopper hopping

to some isolated and jotted

islands of images, dark-

that painterly abstraction.

Jarring and savage.

 

Some questions will burn tonight.

And answers will die on my bed.

 

I, like a squirming maggot

will never break it out.

My wings  would never ride

the wind like the butterfly.

The ants are climbing

this white walled kingdom.

The night owl squeals a secret.

While the lizard is ready

to pounce for vengeance.

 

That’s what is left of me.

An spectator to the scenes which

I could not connect in a thread.

Bare. Hope. Chance

snapping some strings

and shout eureka. I found it.

 

How shall I fill the blanks

that never beg for words?

Naked. Lying here like a piece

of shit and this suicidal poem.

Eccentricity finds no reason,

dangerous and hangs its limit.

That yielding point.

 

Sanity is a false shelter where

no one wants to be intruder

and break down the door.

Open wide discovering

another neck is lingering

asleep forever in dreams.

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Those Sisters’ Men

When my sisters began to marry their men,

I just stop talking to them. Eagerness

suddenly plummet into nil and I began seeing

an imaginary wall that divides me to them.

Those strangers’ hand snatching spaces,

of familiarity, never uttered a word about apologies.

Plundering the blood bond, the images of innocence

running away to far places where I cannot go… I hate them.

 

Suddenly somewhere appears picket fences,

territories, boundaries and cages

which were meant as a warning

not to encroach their line, their property.

And how then, for a split-second

they ruin the emotional investment

my sisters and I build relationships.

 

Ah, they would never understand

the weightier aspects more than

the union of two bodies to breed.

They would never understand how

my sisters and I share a lifetime-

that intimate part we found eversince

we are born, out of our mother’s womb.

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His Past Smells

His past smells of a ditch

drying up its putrid stink

as stale as the street air.

It belongs to a smoggy neighborhood.

In the memory of tattered rags

flapping like flags on the clothesline.

As if dreams can be scavenged

out of the hilly mounds

of garbage, dumping its gifts

of someone else’s trash turning

into someone else’s fortune.

 

No one cared about armpits

getting wet and sour for hours,

as long as the bad odors

can promise him little money

to buy fish sauce for rice.

Sniffing heaven on earth-

little angel never complaining

about life, about the linger-

of those occasional whiffs

from the broken sewer.

Nor the rising sting of steam

emanating from his broken skin

pierced by the cruel sun.

 

Nor inhaling the dry cough of cars

and buses farted poison.

The way he exhaled yesterday

walking on a pavement slow,

feeling the throbbing locomotion

churn on his empty stomach.

A street urchin squeezing the crowd

like a fly hopping on a hope

above the grease and grime

that smeared a childhood.

 

He won’t cover the past

with today’s perfume

nor sanitize its images

in suds of detergent.

He’s not ashamed

of the scent of his past-

the smell of poverty

that swarmed his innocence

and have walked

the muddy line across

the nook and cranny

of his every bones.

He survived them all.

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Ink Must Wait

You will find me here sitting

at the end of the sentence-

like in a breakwater. Waiting

 

for ships and vessels of words

in this twilight seeking

the meaning of this impending

darkness.  When

 

it anchors and begins to unload

subtle images of this lonely harbor.

Watching the past

sinking down

 

along

with my heart.

 

And the sky will once again-

dotted by inkblots.

Smeared into the face

of this teary evening.

While time slowly

freezes, then fades into

early hours till daybreak,

unfinished.

 

When I am not

being able to say

goodbye.

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