Poem published in Gloom Cupboard #115

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Night

Empty sounds emanate from
Elongated lobes, like torsos of
Desireable women with plastic smiles
The wind is an unwelcome guest
At this odd hour, shattering any
Hope of ennui on a Sunday night

Candles flicker like half grown
Adults eager for love. Smells of
Fish fry aromas signal the fall
Of some unkempt bachelor’s
Bastion to womankind. Flies
Survey my banal diet with
The pure interest of capitalists

Meanwhile my old gardener
Romances the blossoms to the
Haunting orchestra of twilight

Street

There is no fragrance of flowers
People do not fashion some things
Anymore. Somewhere winter
Lazes around, like an idle snake
In hibernation, refusing to stir
Thunders taunt with no promise
Of rain. Everything is stoned

Crows head home like failed
Clerical missions. The sky is
Crimson with the dying day
Clandestine gazes exchange
Messages in twilight.Only
The street bears silent testimony
To a stray catfight.

Somewhere a lovelorn loafer
Seduces passing women
With a sly smile.

A Poem Comes Of Age

We cannot walk together anymore
Man and woman. These days it
Is not safe to say things in the open
There are revolutionaries out there
And Patriots . Sons of the soil
Who may not like us, taunt us
Earlier no one cared who loved
And lost. Which king advanced;
Or the fallacies of nubile age.

Instead we can communicate
In this indifferent clatter.
I can very well understand
The language of these lazy
Womanly aromas invading my
Nostrils. Another bomb blast
And we shall very soon pretend
To like this banal silence

Meanwhile, while each day recedes
Into a drunken lullaby, I understand
The wisdom of love. Just another
Futile, distant possibility in twilight

Winter

I never understood these mute chasms
Which separate us in this hopeless exile
These shadows cast by the fire in our hearts
Many long winters have passed and
Yet I brandish this forgotten childhood
Like a talisman to ward off evil

My mother is concerned with rice and gold
She wants me to go to the fields and reap
Hope in this wintry haze. But beloved, only
You and I know the pains of this indifferent
Existence, living like strangers
In this misty rain

Meanwhile, Winter comes like a
Shy widow, unveiling its lust in
The smoke of an early morning fag.

My mother makes tea for me

Voyage

I love the smell of smoke in the mornings
The stony stupor of this vagabond mind
Sometimes in these macabre afternoons
I embark upon a lowly odyssey in some
Scarecrow alley, haunted by some failed god
Armed with this futile obsession to unearth
The ancient pain of this widowed night

I love to watch these hills in winter
Clothe themselves in ragged shawls
Of white. Like old women, these hills
Know things more important than
The fear of hunger or war, or love.

And as these lines die into the sounds
Of this breathless ramble, beloved
Let this evening wind confine you in
The lifeless thirst of our hearts.

Winter

These days are long and dusty
Do not blame me if I turn to stone
Like a false god. I have seen many a
Sullen afternoon die a slow death
Baring themselves to the hungry night
Like unwilling women selling love

This day, beloved, will it be any different?
Today, like other days, you shall not rouse
As this indifferent commotion recedes
Into the lull of this sunlit funeral
Today, I shall roam these streets again, this
Ancient burden of being a man, weighing
On me, like an insipid, forgotten sin

And we shall remain mere tombstones
In these dusty graves. Will this winter
Promise another bout of hazy memory?
Only these lifeless lines shall banish us
To the hope of this brutal love, and us...
Strangers in this tepid, misty rain