Precision

A micron feeling picks its way along

On the snail’s narrow, wary path,

Merely a fine point inching

In the saint’s laden stare.

The body poised on needle point

Is the mind’s dark matter

Like the cosmic lens

You see the far stars far better.

It’s paucity all out of breath.

A feather balanced on edge

Stands quivering from windmilling fall

Like a wraith on the mind’s tightrope.

The nerves keep tautening

Until they are gleaming white

Lethal like fresh slivers of glass

Chilling in the hard sunlight.

Scales of Water

This water

This cool serrated water

Feels like scales of fish on me.

I stand on the boat roof.

The air feels cool and pure

Like virgin water

For ever secure in the sunless deep.

I stand firm and fearless,

An Adam fish with steady fins,

Beyond net or hook,

In the fisherman's dreams.

Fishgirl, hook me up

With your heart

And take home your precious kill.

Water World

Deep under

No air

Water water.

Fish are the citizens

Now the rightful denizens

Who were once humans

Like you and me.

Palaces, courts, bazaars

Peaceful homes of placid populace

Thoroughfares of endless footsteps

Of an ancient date

Now lie under layered gunk

Of excremental tourist lake.

Trophy

Make a woman of me,
You prayed to a dark deity,
When the virgin seed crisply cracked
Between you and me.
Your eager body leaned,
You couldn't help,
Like a tree bent back
In a strong ripping wind.
The mountain shook,
The earth floor moved.
You craved and moaned,
Scratched by the fingers of the dark.
You came like a vicious sin
Bursting banks at the vital seam.
The seed crackled to leaf
And we giggled ourselves silly,
Thanking our accomplishment,
We walked off with but a tinsel trophy.

The Tale of a Beetle and a Butterfly

The beetle wheels around
Darkly grave
Nimbus-headed
And dung embedded
Lounging in dirty cowsheds.

The butterfly whirs around
Painted gallant
Lightly clad
And airily made
Hardly cooling his fairy feet.

Day over.
The beetle returns happily with a pea of dung.
The butterfly is pleased to sleep in his flower bunk.

RHAPSODY ON A MOONLIT NIGHT

You sing nocturnes.
I melt the moon in hive-broken honey
And drink the potion in the instant's infinity.
I know a sweetness that drives me nuts,
When my loins burn with an wolfish lust.
Don't tell me of a moon-soaked night
I call up the witches out of sight.
Don't tell me of sleeveless women born that night
Who starve me with half a diet.

Funny! I didn't know!!

Jilted students are known to have turned cynical and been serviceable to the faculty. They volunteer to be love sleuths or teachers' confidant(e)s, and shop and snitch on successfuls. Ill-luck hardens them particularly with honesty and candor: they might be relied on to tip you off on secret pairs clandestinely operating in the market at the moment who manage the same tutors together and use their tutorial sessions ('tuteveaux'?) to stay (or live!) together, drawing out the sessions unnecessarily long by quizzing quizzical tutors , thus peacefully, beatifically away from the aping, ogling, curious, nasty public eye (thank heavens!) for at least an hour or more (in case of self-forgetful tutors, much longer!). Should the hapless tutor taunt and tease the female of the pair in the course of the academic sour (that is, the pair's involved tête-à-têtes for an hour) for keeping them from dropping off or from collapsing over each other with camouflaging, side-splitting jokes or from snuggling under cover , the guerrilla gallant might bear bearishly with a dirty laughter but, I swear, not for ever, soon to follow it with, in the name of God, a life-threatening, spine-chilling electronic letter, of course, as afters of the mind-boggling dinner, or as a bill for the price of his laughter from the gutter. Aré baba! Why don't you wear heart-shaped badges so that horny goats or leering sages can take heed and beware? The problem is solved once and for ever!

Crossing

Waiting to cross the road,

While crossing the mind, too,

Stand I negotiating between the two.

Two run parallel,

Two speeding streams equally deceitful,

Hesitant stand I between rule and rule.

I look for a crossroads

Of real and unreal

But there’s no traffic lights that can help.

To the right to the left to the right to the left

Right left right left but to no avail

I stand on the sidewalk refusing to fail.