Ode to Judgment

In the high table they sat
pondering fact and fiction
law and order
right and wrong
crime and punishment
and down below
the judged waited
for word and execution;
from up above
the truth-sun beamed
in cloudless moments
of brevity and insanity,
and down below
the worms were patient:
death comes, now and then,
sooner or later. 

An A-Z of love

The mountains look blue
and trees green
distance robs blemish
paints a pastorality
that immediacy will not concede;
she is lovely to hold
and lovelier beyond reach;
and that too
is an A-Z
of love and loving.

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Independence Unlimited

Pic by Hiranya Malwatta

Freedom is a name
of many syllables 
places and people,
a leap of faith that defies
constitutional edict 
executive directive
judicial verdict,
it takes restrictive arm
as dancer takes partner
takes rule and bends with smile
takes book and scrambles
chapter and verse
reconfigures flag-color
re-mixes anthem
without proclamation 
without anger or regret;
freedom is another name
left out
of the Dictionary of Being
to stop definer
to stump purchaser
to trip destroyer.

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A prisoner’s love song

There are walled cities
I am told,
marshalled by regimen
where minds open
and doors close
at appointed hour;
where life ebbs
as in other cities
as splendid and poor
as structured and free,
moment to moment
task to task,
where custom rules
and custom-break
subverts unyielding earth
for root to seek
and leaf to upturn 
decree’s hard unsanctioned soil,
but here
the apparitions of the forgotten
recovered corporeal form
flattened barbed wire,
rose above wall
to ask
‘who among you is free
and who among us is not?’

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This other ocean

Not king-made
but king-envisioned,
speaks of eyes 
that drew from contour
drew for lay-of-land
and lay-of-life
that saw land that would grain
people who would sow 
and reap
from century to century
and today we stand
on history’s shores
and are stilled by the blues
and so standing draw
from the tap root 
of heritage
resolution and magnitude
humility and pride
as we cross the hour-to-hour
in the vessels of choice
and fashion a next moment
as wholesome, as tender.

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Interface

Open eyes
and then enters
rock, pebble, sand granule
blue, red and yellow
in their specific intimacies
lines that curve
with and without light
shades that toss and turn
in anxiety and agitation
mystery and bewilderment
surprise and sorrow
but framed
always and always
by eye-limit
and poverties of imagination;
and in the long corridors
and vast halls of extraction
there’s a world that bends
to lens and mouse-click
warps known dimension
finger-flips the heart,
still even,
and there
in interface and union
we are cursed or blessed
by and eye and world
now and forever.

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Ode to a finger-nation

Ours is a finger-nation
at times clenched
at times open
to hold
to give
to take
ours is a finger-nation
that can index anger
that can accuse,
but a five-finger land
is hand
because thumb
must break bread
with other digits
or starve
because hand is not hand
that is all indexed;
we were always fingered
in our horror
in our recoil
in our accusation
in our grief and remorse,
fingered
in recovery too.

 

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