Insanities Ignored

I’ve lifted fallen leaves 

reversed embroideries 

rinsed dreams in inexplicable inks 

dipped words into oceans 

and sent them brine-drenched 

into distant thunder, 

I’ve worshipped silence 

venerated the opaque 

and borne weary days 

pretending they sit light on shoulders;

I know it’s I that walked,

but it’s as though I’ve sat still all along

on a park bench or at a precipice 

a bus stop and at the edge of a war

sat still and still sit still,

only, there’s you laughing

and despite all evidence

refusing to exclaim

‘you are crazy!’

Love is a simple thing

A little boy by a stream 

sitting on a rock

tosses a pebble;

splash 

ripple 

and water flowing 

as it always has

oblivious almost

to interruption

and the boy

oblivious to oblivion 

tosses a pebble

waits 

for what, he does not know

and does not wonder about. 

The book of love

Light steps, not baby ones

so light they don't leave prints

but tattoos all over my heart

you've written a new book

and allowed me to read it

slowly, syllable by syllable

"The ayanna-aayanna of love"

Weavers' Song

We weave even when we are too poor

and are without needle or thread

we weave and we are woven 

by accident and choice 

trapped and freed at the same time

and only when one condition is met,

and that is a subject forbidden

Contemporaneity

In another land as I write

there’s an explosion and a scream

there’s a quite sob and grief-weary eyes

that just cannot in tear find release

there’s horror that cannot congeal into scream

funerals and burials;

right now, as I write 

it’s early evening in certain cities

and late night in others

there’s love-making and festivity

babies are being born 

death by natural causes recorded;

right now, as I write

there’s life and death

encased in the eternal verities 

the ata lo dahama 

acknowledged or not;

right now, as I write

there’s a heartbeat 

in primordial irregularity 

saying ‘write, write

for death must come

and you don’t know when’;

right now, as I write

there’s a ticking in my heart

a time-bomb it is

that the world calls ‘love’.

Ode to Sleep

When you fall asleep

it is I who dreams 

suspended in vacancy

watching things that wander

unmoored from gravity

beds and bedrooms

libraries and brooms

names untagged from things

all of which will come down

and return to identities

when you awake

Teas

Mid-morning tea is not morning tea

one is for throat-wetting 

and the other a pick-me-up

of a flagging day

but then there are other hot drinks

laced with words picked 

from conversations 

from touch and memory

a smile, a laugh, silence and a kiss;

there's tea in give and tea in receiving

and I don't know what lifts more