AFTER A FIGHT

You came with daylilies woven in your hair
and with the long lost smiles I missed so much
and in response I gave a halfhearted grin
but felt it too inadequate for the occasion
and found my fingertips parting your tresses
and drawing lines on your forehead keeping
my tears from running all over my face
I thought long and then with my hands
fancied and thought up an oracle on your head
To keep in it a secret shrine of remembrance
Of our sorrows, the solemn moments of silence
After a fight when we felt each other rather than talked
And left the poison of pain whisper harshly into our hearts
At this place I perceived how I drank myself out
and made myself hollow to hear your voice there
echoing your presence and filling myself with your scent.
I felt your hair brush my skin and in resignation
we embraced in our solitude and I breathed
the fragrance of the flowers in your hair.

DEPOSITION AT GOLGOTHA

As forlorn widows mourn
soldiers signaled the bystanders
depart the place and Joseph
and his helpers hastened for the ladder
and the pincers wet with rain.
Two men clambered up
the crossbeam and anchored
a rope to hold his body
and commenced to loose the nails
from the wood as the crown of thorns
fell silently to the ground.
The cross shuddered gently
in the pounding repeating
the sounds of the wrathful deed
done hours before.
Soon he was on the ground,
with his mother cradling him,
wiping his face and bloodying her dress.
The echo of “Consummatum est”
Reverberates in the Darkness
and does not end grimly
but sprinted in the dying dusk
following the wailing
along the climbing trail
on to heaven relentless like trumpets
after a victory.

AN ARTIST'S LIFE

I held my brush posed to dab in
an impressionised peacock
with a full compliment of colors
that will make me immortal
to the eyes of pretentious
Gurus in dimly lit galleries
with blue-blooded connoisseurs
ready with a pen and check
to acquire a new investment.
Soon the brushworkand the spirit dries
and I return to the back street
studio where the hue of the gouache
in my palette hardly changed
still glowed with my spites
and my fancies and my delusions of fame
Soon they will fade
and I’ll realize that the hillocks
behind the house is myMontmartre
and my bare table
is a worthy still life
and my dreams are avant-garde
moderns waiting to be understood
and I’ll enjoy my blessed Renaissance
every time I buy a lottery ticket

MANGO LEAVES

As I sit on my long, chainsaw-hewn bench
I so carefully constructed beneath this vast
umbrella of Indian mango leaves,
I scanfor my daughters’ carved initials,
done by their clumsy fingers with a rusty nail.
Only indecipherable, random marks
of scratched wood grain remain.
They survived those sun filled days,
finding refuge in this consecrated playground,
within rustic concrete walls,
as the fierce winds
of the winter habagat roared incessantly.
Their tricycle broken down awhile back,
consumed by playful abuse,
as I was.
Now the silence yields itself to futile,
frantic human attempts,
as I idly watch
these unstoppable signs of age thrust
its way through these barren moments
wrenching my daughters away from me.
But I’ll wait under this leafy canopy,
when they come back next Summer.

BETEL NUT EUPHORIA

My heart is a red piece of areca
it curls in deep and dark in betel leaf
smelling like a dream you can hold in your hand.
Smooth, warm, and whispering
bite deep enough and you can feel
blood streaking with powders of lime
and the purest crimson ink

And if you bite even deeper
and the sun hits you just the right way . . .
your completely transparent
and devoid of all that is tangible and contained
For that moment
even if you can't hold it
it can surely hold you
heartbeats more and your whole and floating
your thoughts and dreams now opaque
already memory is only wisps of song
until you wet your ears with saliva
and shake away the stupor encircling your head

SPARROW WAVES

From the window pane
rice fields stretch and shimmer
westward slivers a path
out of gaze along the winding vale.
Ancient farmers gave names
to winds from certain places
with a sense of the invisible
that I first felt and remembered

Sea from the blue sky,
thousands of sparrows
dappled its face
I didn't know there
was a word for life's desires
to leap out of itself
now looking down and--
swooping--past my window
and I stand still in wonder.

FATHER

Metal toolboxes stares
like cluttered witnesses
to the greasy craftsman
toiling wire, belts and chains
wafting the gasoline smelling
breeze unafraid of black-lung
sitting on a low bench
on the mottled dirt carpet.
I remember Jesus visible
as he pulls and pushes
forming magic and toys
for bristle faced tots with
shaggy hair and dirt covered shorts.
Then oil-stained fingers finally caress
the hastily made orange spider,
the longed for bric-a brac of scraps
and scampers away contented
squealing for their roosts