The Worm

A worm burrows down through my mind

Sinking, sliding as though it were a grain of sand

Rolling, trickling through a miserly hand.

And let the creature slip

Like a creature fugitive from

Law and life looking for

Some hideout

Almost level to the ground.

It moves hermetically,

Resigned to travel:

Destination its destiny,

Lodged beyond the vision of town

No transportation has ever reached

Or would ever hope to keep a count.

Listening to Me

I hear voices,

Unlike Joan of Arc

Or some crystal gazing psychic

With Tarot cards spread before her,

Like skittering squeaky rats

They compete for my mind

As though it were a ball of cheese

And those voices must feed on it

After ages of a hungry outbreak.

Some are like chirping birds

Come home for their clamoring chicks

With food in their painted clipper beaks.

ABSENCE

You think you're gone
That makes the space
Of the room virgin again
And fills the one you left
With immense pain.

Not so, I suppose
When you've lived there
Body and soul, the space
Gets impressed pell-mell
Like a river bank at the day end.

These are marks better felt
Than seen as by a blind man
Whose eyes are niches
From where the candles
Were removed to light the other senses.

Your absence is everywhere
Where those lips dolloped sweetness
Where those fingers stroked the flesh
Where your voice made silence language
And your person choreographed movements.

Now when you are gone
Those imprints are absences
Like the packing of a box
That goes hollow
From the contents unpacked and gone.

My Senses

My senses are tendrils and mimosas,

Intent, observant and ready to recoil;

Can’t bear heavy treads or rough hands

And hang and sway daylong in the air.

They curl and quiver in musical rings,

Tense, tensile and fragile to the touch;

My senses are sentient creepers

That warm and wake up at all hours

As trees approach or winds shake

And love filters through their pores.

They are brides new

Bashfully bent into a tautened bow

When nature is downy with whispers

Or squally with high winds and fiery lusts,

Wearing down all to a dark nakedness.

A Pendulum Heart

She has a pendulum heart;

It's a bell without a tongue.

It's never known

When it sings, or silent is.

Stressed Out

How can you save your conjugality

If woken up by inarticulate shrieks at night?

Sweat rolls down your nape.

How can you save your conjugality

If chastised for reasons never known?

No drink awaits you on the bedside table.

How can you save your conjugality

If started up from sleepless sleep of midnight

Jangling with a new edition of nightmare?

Shrieks, chastisements and nightmares

Deposit your conjugality at your feet

In the morning hour.

Winter Issue of My Hopes

Winter's creeping down the bare hills,

But this time it feels too late,

Yet the dew hangs on the eves

To split a red sun

Or make a lonely moon lonelier

Or it just falls out of sight

Into endless pores. But the glassy

Globule is chaste and quietly

Intense like this fourth winter issue

Of my hopes to prosper or despair;

Of course your likes and dislikes

After all count in the long run.

You may see how it all hangs together

And reads beside the matters

Chalked and tarred on everyday walls.

All contributors to this issue are men,

While women thinking

And doing something else

Are, nevertheless, welcome!

Dare You All the Stars

When the sky is all molten silver of stars,

The astrologer scoops it in telescopefuls

And measures the celestial distance clear

by nascent rays hitting the thermopile,

And his face, too, catches a beam from there

And looks damn hopeful.

If you are human—

And I’m certain you duly are—

It’s impossible to think of all telescoped stars

On time’s huddled, crumpled spur,

For your heart is stretched taut

On the points of a single star.

A Conundrum

In the sunlight

The nascent butterfly

Walked with me,

Perched on my heart’s upper lobe;

I don’t know why.

I grew superstitious

And credulous of a new love

Or felt the old one depart

On a fading flight.

A moment passed by

And the butterfly

Left its footprints

Where it had sat:

Were they from the nectar dip

Or was my heart to blame

For inordinate its tenderness?

The Birthday Candle

The Birthday Candle

Melted to its first nudity

And let the smile glitter on your lips.

The tongue of the baby was a tongue of flame,

His mouth was washed with natal roseate.

I don’t regret that I killed you clinically.

I was advised by her, your mom,

The matron of my clinic, my home,

To await bleeding before she could bear you down

Down on to a downy bed.

I wanted you hard when I was soft

You came soft when the coming was hard.

The candle, going down naked,

Dropped its dress in doughy folds.

It was regression to my childhood

While the father was a baby-loving baby.

All the same, I celebrated my nudity

Instead of yours, my unborn child!

Juvenescence

Someone tapped my ground

And hit a reserve never found

Then a well of fresh water splashed and gushed

As from a busted deep-delved pitcher round.

I washed in it

And had my youth refreshed and renewed.

Tinker of the Heart

I’m a tinker of the heart

The porcelain heart with chips and cracks;

But my glue isn’t fast enough

To mend it whole or seal the breaks.

A laggard I am,

I must be contented with whatever is left

After all the guests have departed and drunk of it.

Eyes that Help Me Die

Eyes half sunken in kindness

Like a pair of bobbing dolphin heads;

Listening to Emily, you lent me your helping hand,

As I was drowning in her treacherous pond.

But, then, those dolphin eyes were my lifebuoys

That let me die quietly without spasm or pain.

A Peep Show in the Railway Compartment

It isn’t a night coach, quite--

Evening train would be a fitter name

Authorized vendors perilously sway

Up and down the compartment’s aisle

Like sliders on slide rules,

balancing business on their callused hands.

A doubtful student couple across from me

Pinch and pilfer every chance and cover

For their stringent precious privacy.

Their eyes take over their speech

Their secrets are none of public business.

Their joy, though, requires public consent

Which they are loath to seek at the moment.

I steal a look

And return to my book

Hopelessly trying to concentrate.

The Beloved’s Song and the Lover’s Coda

Once you are in the land of Canaan,

I promise to turn this terrain to Heaven!

Did you say you like to walk?

Well! your wish is my command:

We shall walk, baby, hand in hand

As far as the road takes us over the land.

We shall stride over the very land

Sanctified by the blood of Holy Crusades.

We shall tread over the same track

Taken once by Richard-the-Lion-Heart,

Or by Lawrence-of-Arabia in our time!

But now this is our track!

I shall escort you through peerless Petra,

The Nabatean’s hideout,

‘A rose-red city half as old as time’,

We shall graze all day long

Like two loving gazelles in their prime.

By eventide we shall reach

The flamboyant heights of Wadi Rum.

While watching the sunset in silence,

I’ll make a portrait of you

With colours of the twilight

On the canvas of my throbbing heart!

Under a moonlit sky,

We shall spend the night on the Valley of Moon.

While myriads of stars sparkle and smile on us:

“Look! A shooting star!” I shall scream

Like a child witnessing a magical sign;

You’ll croon in my ears, “Make a wish, Honey.”

I’ll close my eyes and make my wish

While you go and fetch my wish for me.

No, our journey is not quite over yet,

For you’re still new to this wild territory,

And I still have to guide you through curves and crevasses,

Take you through new crags and canyons, gorges and ridges.

Then, when you feel you are almost through,

I shall replenish you body and mind

And rejuvenate you with the vintage wine

Made from the best vineyards of the Holy Land.

One last elevation—Mount Nebo,

Where God had spoken to Moses

And showed him the Promised Land!

I shall erect a gate of olive branches to welcome you

On this sacred summit, my Deity, my Love,

I shall decorate your path

With purple lavender and green rosemary,

Under the Tree-of-Life, in full pomegranate blossom.

An altar, adorned in black-iris and rose-damas, is waiting for lovers.

Time for the Holy Communion!

I shall take a bite of manna from your sweet lips,

And I will be baptized in your love forever,

And then the desert shall turn into an oasis,

And the Dead Sea shall be alive again,

With elves and mermaids moaning in hymn.

At dusk when night and day kiss without a seam

The lovers, one host and the other guest,

Enter an enchanted forest Arden once they named.

And after their amorous sojourn they emerge

Incandescent with lucent kisses all over their faces

On their lips and along their throats

As though there glow-worms were swatted all night long,

As though butterflies daubed their bodies in pastel paints,

Butterflies and glow-worms that blaze on even after death.

Eyes That Hold Tears

Your two eyes
Sleep on the two pillows
Of their pouches below,
The two vials of dreams.
I can't imagine
How many years you've slept now
While still dancing and singing
On the boughs of your cousin relations.
I wonder if you've ever wept,
For not to do so is safe
Lest a precious stone should drop
And make those two eyes dull and poor.

Spectre of Breath

The odour of your mouth
Departed into my memory like a soul.
I'm possessed by the intensity of your breath--
Even now I can masturbate,
Inhaling your moist pollen in air
Wafting from years long gone by.

This City Has No Park

'I'm to come back to you
Again and again,
Every evening,
For this city has no park--'
Chimed in lyric
A young poet of Chittagong,
Wistfully looking
At the beloved's hilltop house
From one of his three southern windows.

For the wily girl, I listened to him,
Walking side by side
In the parkless city's puzzling maze.

Blood

Blood,

the clour

of the baby’s cry

for Mom for milk,

the first since

breaking the tent

of the placenta

when the baby is carried

Downstream on the crest

of incarnadine –

fruitful blood, that is.

Blood,

the colour of the bullet head,

a metallic organ

singing of death

squeezing the natal tent

lending a liquid apple

the colour of the baby never born –

fruitless blood, that is.

Her Treasures and His Trinkets

My silver ingots lie rebuked

Beside the splendor of your bullion of gold

My glass marbles stop and cease their chimes

When your gems roll and begin their song

The more your treasures come to light and shine

The more my trinkets prove tinsel and turn pale.

An Invitation

You said you’d take me to the mountains--

(there we’d play hide-and-seek in caves and grottos) --

In stead of easy swims in the blue ocean

In the strange land where watermelon is the bloody staple

Smearing the mouths and lips raw-red at every meal

But, honey, what more ordeals are needed

After bruising, grazing climbs of steep you

For the proof of my hanging tenacity?

Haven’t we mastered yet the art of spelunking,

Like children let loose in the mansion of a thousand doors,

Delicately moving our spread palms and rooting fingers over each other?

A Prayer to my Beloved in the Levant

Before we enter the land of Canaan

We’ll take a naked swim in the blue Mediterranean

And a dip in the baptismal water of the river Jordan

And get converted to our secret religion.

I’ll make you my devi and high Priestess

Who’ll ask for nothing but a pure sacrifice of kisses.

My Beatrice……my Laura …….. my Light Empyrean!

Grant me a little niche in your holy pantheon;

This is your Dante’s, your Petrarch’s sole petition.