Softer still

Freshly unfolded leaves

breeze touch at a desert sunset 

light drops at a high altitude sunrise 

a baby's cheek

after bath, after wipes

and talcum blush

all soft
as other things unnamed

and yet

softer still is 

moment-after gaze

birthed by love's timeless submissions

and yet again

the silence 

of departures

inevitable

[in the name of love]

is softer still

so much, 

so much

softer.  

Identity-Fake

The classic version:
Steal a face
make a mould
then the mask
sell it back
demand and obtain gratitude.

Or alternatively:
Destroy spirit
Conjure replacement
lace it with the usual poisons --
poor, underdeveloped, backward
and as Gourevitch said
the robbed inhabit
the robber's version
of their reality
and look up whispering
'rich, developed, advanced'.

But today
an identity was stolen:
picture pick
same name
new page 
and yet
hearts are hearts
like heartbeats of nations
a hundred fakes 
cannot draw spirit
cannot impoverish
cannot say 'this is who you are'.

Some hearts are not for sale
and not for stealing. 

Swipe-freeze

Road ribbons of blue
wander among the green locks;
sorrow stains wash city cheeks
in the unending monsoon of absence. 

Proximities

On the other side of the rain mirror
in the lush comfort of blurry seasons
sun-drop and rain-drop
in wild carnalilty 
print an immemorial tease.

On this side of deceit
there's a floodplain 
where word-debris eyesore
forces blink or look-away.

For she's diminished 
in a conspiracy of circumstances 
where a harsh-word summoned
a dimensional-swirl and necessary silence.

She's close.
Though.

Closer than rain-drench
right here in dismissal and neglect
in the lost pages of unwritten books
that resist translation 
closer now in the eloping of ink
where ignorant rush
hangs broken heart-bits of blue and green
from the edge of night-trysts that came undone.

Close.
Same size
same butterflies 
in same back-forth flutter
of crazy words 
where love-scripts are re-written
in the lucidity of silence
rising as black-white monologue
and tracing the inevitable:
the floral pattern
of post-kiss time-freeze. 

Softness

Love in requitedness 
unfolds into butterflies and petals
and in its going and gone
collapses into voids so blessed 
that screams are exquisitely private
all kiss-me-nots and exquisite brambles
conscious venture into known traps
nights of lunacy
and deaths that never arrive,
softness that brims in eyes
and the edge of daybreaks;
soft hurts are hard-takes
and will not roll fingers into fist
stops at lip-edge 
is nudged from the high plateaus of innocence
but will not be embraced by earth-slip;
it's hard, so hard that it floats
among brigands and ghosts
the pickpockets of hope,
so soft is soft push-away
it yields a fragrance exquisite and lethal
tortures, but never kills.  

The beginning and end of forever

Forever begins

with heart-stop,

a virginal rebirthing

and umbilical dissolve

that separates and erases

all illusion

of heart, touch and things mis

named.

Forever never ends, though;

it just gets lost in the

Alzheimeic plains

of reason and other encounters

The first love is also the last, I think. 

[From the collection 'Some texts are made of leaves', shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize 2011]

Ode to banishment

Beyond the railway track
parallel lives merge 
with words and laughter
and unexpected meeting of eyes
that obliterate narrative 
they are airlifted
from the island of  sorrow;
beyond lunchtime exchanges
heart-food digests 
with the after-wash
of spray and rain
tosses the gospels of love
re-numbers time's sad pages;
and in the later this-side
of trains and food
I am told
'I am sick of words'
and banished
to vast word-less continents
unparalleled 
and unhappily un-merged.