Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Denouement

Why does a fire roar so loudly? Why
does it consume the oxygen in its midst,
begging for attention among indifferent people?
Why does it make logs prance about,
hissing heat in a sweltering treat?

Sparks steam into the breeze, trying
to draw eyes. But the wind is too strong.

Spluttering, gasping for breath. People walk around,
tossing sticks of wood into the forest. Their ignorance
is freezing, letting a chill pervade
the orange, flickering tongues. The flames
falter for a second, hiccuping. Feeling
the hood of neglect beat down on their skin.

Knowing that they will be appreciated
only when they turn dark, a soft black,
a contrast. And a few glimmers of golden,
letting shivering skin, watering eyes
know the treasures
they had missed.

Friday, February 19, 2016

Eddying Eras

First published in The Tower Journal 

A preternatural rush of flowing air,
a bewildering twirl of my surroundings.
Colors merge to form perplexing hues
my searching eyes have never seen before.
The ring of earth that encircles me
melts to form a swirling mass of confused tones,
that fade with the elapsing backdrops
as I stand rooted in one place
traveling through the disorienting fabric of space--
that transforms as each second wears away,
gaining me the rare, precious minutes
I had let go by without my noticing
as each sun set, as every single day
ticked by while I remained shackled by blissful oblivion
that is represented by slumber, of all the other times
the hours had passed at a confounding speed
to which I was unable to pay heed.
A disorderly mesh of voices
like multicolored strings of yarn,
incapable of disentangling themselves,
drift like confused currents to my listening ears,
of different pitches, varying tones,
blending to form one,
which I can't discern beyond a single word
because there are so many.
Altering temperatures, rising from a freezing chill
to sweltering heat,
interspersed with cascades of rain
that disappear as suddenly as they arrived.
The sun rises and sets disarmingly fast,
carving an immaculate arc across the sky,
darkening and lightening intermittently
of fluctuating intensities,
giving way to the moon and stars
once it completes its course
predetermined by forces beyond our command.
And in a trice, it all stops-
and I find myself in the past,
at a time exceeding my powers of comprehension,
having artfully escaped the pressures of the present,
to find solace in the rapture
of not having been born yet--
just a mere spirit lingering about,
attached to the clouds of the century-old skies.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Hiraeth

memories slither back,
    soft, serpentining their way,
        insidious. crawling into her
            mind as she rests on a strange,
               unfamiliar floor. next to a dark,
                   locked door, chained.   foreign
                    trees grow on the other side, red
                      and rosy, blooming in spirals, alien
                        flowers of a midnight blue. a past
                        can be broken down, but that
                       takes years, centuries. a native
                     bird's call can never disappear,
                   it remains hidden, painfully
                shackled at the back  of  her
              mind. until she dreams of it,
          of that enchanting rhythm, its
        beautiful tone. it slinks, eerie,
      to a place she dreads, its tunes
    leading her from  the  fettered
    abodes, down the mud-caked
     roads, through the ravines of
       a past she seeks to forget.
         going back in time, echoes,
             tides of lost voices spilling
               across, sidling back, sinister.
                  waves snake along, old voices,
                     remembrances of old sights, of
                     twinges of a gentle agony. her
                    sleeping soul takes her back, to
                    a place that closed its doors to
                    her wistful, glassy eyes. to a
               realm of reminiscence, past an
           ocean of pain. serpentining, the
         memory waltzes away, leaving
      an explicable ache when the sun
   shakes her shivering soul awake.
       

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Alone

Trees overlook, her footsteps resonate,
far from the crowd, far from the noise
that rises up into the air--like swirls
of mist. Mist that saturates, mist that occupies
the mind, that doesn't let us think.

Mist that chains our thoughts in our physique,
urging us to bow before the current. It's hard to
raise one's head when an invisible force pushes
it back down. It's hard for her to raise her hand
when a million others are grasping the breeze, gasping
for attention, waiting to be released.

Eyes stare when she carves her own design. But
listening to her musical footsteps, the sound
of her feet claiming the land they walk on--is
so much more heartening, more empowering
than having them lost. Lost like a black speck in a
trail of ants, like a single note in an endless symphony,
like a single star in the darkened galaxy.

She can hear herself breathe, conscious of every
flutter of her eyelash. It's so much more enlivening
than inhaling the mist that was exhaled by billions of
souls. She can sense her body working, hear it
chugging in the silence of solitude, hear her thoughts
speak louder than the babble of voices she left behind.

A babble of voices with no meaning. A sorry mixture
of bass and falsetto, tears and laughs--a trail with no
destination, a pathless concoction. Minds that don't agree
can never create a beautiful musical piece, a harmonious
canvas. Her solitary mind can, though. Because a single
drop of water is more precious than a torrent, because a lone
star in the universe can give birth to life--while a medley
of them only destroy what was never conceived.