'in the midst of life we are in debt' etc etc

The skies are everything.

Constellation of branches
Mark the dialling suns that pass.

Severely, spokes of Ashoka Chakra
Break & scatter along Chembra Peak
As Vishnu’s ribs ripped by
Cro-magnon butcher.

Meadow scarecrows
Unfurl hands downwards
As sunflowers spiral
Against breath of death.

Darling, I must whisper this:
Words are laid out against white sky
Banked on the porous pile of rocks.

At the river’s jaw, eyelids creak open,
In craters of corpse-hollows
                                   like a handi
Flowing o’er with memory sediment,
(Reliquary of the soul) :
In those other places
Grass in the rain
Thunder
Dust on a scrapped car.

Beheaded temples bleed into the soil
Barefoot, Tagore climbs back into his poems.
Genuflect to the dead
Eat rotten fruit from their chests;
Flesh of berries, mouths and holes
Of skin tattooed by smoke, ash
And the claws of God.  

In the silence of our wounding
We can get mistaken for ourselves.
Reveille burgles the comfort of sleep,
Sorrowful strum of an unstringed guitar
Rain falls as ballerina’s tears.
In all-angled light we step from the shade.

Darling, I must sing this:
‘Burn Baby Burn’
Dance to the devil on pirate radio,
Vinyasa towards the flames.

All rivers are one, confluences of
Diesel, jasmine, sewage, incense
Swallows gulfs, bays and harbours.
The oceans are the great feeders
Swarming, holding dreams in her
Softly hissing waves, suckling for oxygen -
To allow whales sing their love song
In choral chambers of the depths.
‘Waiting around the bend’
There is me.

In the distance, which
Forces open your heart,
Cross-stitch poetry + passion
To lapels of your nav(p)e.

The skies are emptying.
Lung trees breathe for the kestrel
Hunting his brethren,
Fugitive to geometry of stars.

Red kites stringed by children
Abstract splash for the next generation,
Let them smuggle jewels into their dreams
Roam free across all borders.

The skies are held together by love.
The birds remember their songs of grief
Line cloud pulpits in finest tweed,
They know the harmonies of sadness
Of the world wearing rags
Of love.



* 'waiting around the bend' from Moon River