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.