Book In Hand, Late

There are lights beyond, I dream.

Someone faintly ascends
wooden steps, creaking like old
age, and steals the amber drizzling
across half-open books, ageless.
Hey, come back, the words
softly crackle on my tongue.

Sleep, a word slips gently
into sleep, where the lights
flow once more, like a river.

..

What is beautiful? Robert Frost and the smell of winter. Sleepy mornings and green jackets. Ice cubes and long walks. Heartbeats and mountains. Brittle leaves and the lone bird at 3 AM. You in my head. Music flowing in a mist. Wet palms and flickering streetlamps. White moon in a black sky. Crumpled paper and silent puddles. Mangoes and Norah Jones. Random words in last day's newspaper. Everytime I decide to say Baby and stop. Shoulder taps that mean nothing. The promise of change. Images that make me feel I'm dreaming. The word butterfly and not the insect. Everytime someone says Hello when I thought someone never would.  Littleness and strangeness and pretty pretty vagueness. Plumcakes and blue cars. The feeling that there's more to what is left. Songs I want to hear a million times. Idle afternoons and laidback future plans. Flamboyant football and laughter. Moments and moments and moments. And yes. 

Possession

Cut-out photos, your nose 

glued on my dusty green

schoolbag, the one left

in the cupboard to

rest. ( There was a torn 

letter in the upper chain, 

words glimmer still, or

so I dream, still heady, half-

curious .) 

Eyes encircled using black

dot pens, perforated balls : 

model of an ant's craftmanship- 

scattered in square little 

boxes on a floor smelling

of late summer love. 

Give it to me, I said,

and the face came apart, 

like weak clouds, or weak 

names, or weak sticks 

supporting a painting. Given,

I trembled to hold. Maybe there

was a breeze that evening, shadow

of a howling storm.  

Lips pasted on the other

side of an unread maga-

zine, the only promise

can be your kiss. ( Or, that is

what my interested friend

tells me. You're dead, I

gesture, a lefthand swipe. 

He likes it. The thought of other-sided-

ness, love and darkness, candles

and ghosts, almost arouses

his imagination.) 

And When We Meet Again

M : Do you remember the days when I stared at you, from a distance, like there could not be anything more interesting and different than your face, your strange blue eyes and the
soft laughter waiting behind your lips to fall like a fountain of tulips? 

W : I saw a different man, a different nose and eyebrows too thick for my liking, a sadness beneath a battered smile, a slow blinking as if time held no meaning anymore, a grave shake of the head as if the world had been conquered and spat out and nothing remained to be achieved, to be played and forsaken and loved. 

M : Do you know that the evening mist was just an idea, like your footsteps tinkling like fragile winter bells was an idea, like the magic in your words was an idea, or maybe a dream, or a thought that made my heart feel significant?  

W : I saw him put out his hand, dirty and crumpled like a wasted oil painting of a promising landscape, I felt him press my hand like a tired man, dead passion resounding in a soft squish, I felt him say Hello like it was being repeated in an eternal phone conversation, I felt him like he was not there, I felt him like a stranger for the first time since I lost him. 

M : Do you know I told you love was what departure means, what the beginning of absence made you feel, and you shook your head and took my hand and felt it against your ears as if I was the only sound you wanted? 

W : I saw what I would not have wanted to see, what was worse than absence, than a memory which felt like needles and numbness, I saw a memory extinguish itself and become nothing. 

M : Do you know? 

Remains

You told me happiness was not far away,

that a broken cause is actually the

strongest there can be, that laughter was

the first word, you told me to wipe

the frown off and laugh, and so



I'm angry, I'm angry

that you didn't tell me

that your words

would not die

with you.

A Writer's Discourse

Often, while lines broke off, words
streaming wayward, pages and pages
disappearing in magical puffs, often
in the middle of such incongruity

I wondered if silence was a better
way of saying it.

Affirmation

I, Everything. 

Pop.