End of Line

I see the light
from firecrackers dim,
as if poured into hidden spaces.

The sky is a blank wall.
Not one star blinks
or glows,

Like a poem whose thoughts
are unexpressed, halted
past the end of line.

I hear the horns fading,
isolating the echo
of a breath.

The air does not waver
like you do,
words stalling in their place.

In the powder-filled air,
my words were clobbered
by the mist.

Fill of You

It's never been clear to me
how close we could have been,
no matter how many times I rise up
at dawn to engage you in the light.

I walk just close by
everywhere you try to reach me,
pushing little rocks out of the way,
and teasing me with your splash.

We never had any conversations,
just quiet promenades until the sun
was golden in your skin, in my eyes
until they hurt with golden tears-

That's when I knew
I had my fill of you.

Threads

If life were measured like a thread, who will cut off
the fly from a spider's fiber, dead and swinging like a pendulum?

How many threads can bury a spider with legs dismembered
by soldier ants crawling over his upside-down body?

Stirring the mud, the rain digs on the earth a shallow grave.

My Diary

is cycles of fragments,
reflected like mirrors
of clouds, water over water
pushing forward towards water,
lost in a crowd of aggregation,
thousand details and choices
to look for. No wonder,
the breeze keeps pushing away
the present picture,
like clouds that never settle
in one place. They group and re-group
like false memory whose pieces
are from different puzzles.
In the end, they get recorded
like Egyptian history.

My Holiday Plans

Be like a timber, fallen on my earth,
and wet by the early mist

Or be like the vine, spreading out and creeping
across my length.

I could be the water seeping
into the base of your feet, rising up to your knees.

I could be the sun, peeking at you
from the clouds

Or the rain, pouring down on you,
or the shirt, wet and clinging tight on your body

Or the soil, dried on your skin
if you would only let me.

Shall we eat?

When offered as an invitation,
say for a wedding reception,
where you find an RSVP request
in a colored card paper, and you go,

you get mixed up like coffee, cream and sugar,
swirling indefinitely in a cup,
in this complex group dynamics,
and when placed in a table,
I know the meal has come to its end.

Whenever I see your smiling face
I like to write simile myself,
about the light that fell on my hands,
still holding fork and knife,

enjoying this new web of interactions,
an eye for an eye, a hand for a hand,
forging our social contract, mutually licensing
you and me, to ask the question.

Wide Screen

Your icon appeared in my wide-screen
laptop, like a flash of lightning,
an electric discharge, yielding
to the strength of attraction
between opposites, of protons
and electrons who orbit around
a nucleus, the apparent center
of things, to re-arrange
their structure,
through chemical reactions,
for example, making my eyes gleam
from the reflection.

One Way Street

The movement has gone way beyond
the one small step for man. Even tried
to step back twice, to move this forward.
'That's all folks!' blurted out now
would be like premature ejaculation.
Can you hold back for one more minute
and let me finish first? But these drivers
are like cabbies. When you delay, you pay.
When the service is delayed,
you can try getting discounts 'til elections come.
But on the one hand, the end may be nigh
with priests and merchants accelerating
the turn on the bend. You know it yourself
when you catch sight of a policeman
flagging you down from the other end.
You entered a one way street, man.

Be There

Taking unknown turns slam like a heavy foot
on the brake pedal. What if I had misplaced my map
and my liters of diesel were not good enough?

You have taken me into one of those turns.
I won't get off your track. Just be there
at the next turn.

Link

The sunlight
breaks through glass,

to warm me up
like this laptop.

But how can I be
any warmer

without you,
missing

like a WiFi link,
from it?

Falling Off

Your eyes lost their fear of heights.
You used to hold fast
on something you can grasp.

Not anymore.
You just let go of my hands,
falling off from life to death.

" . "

If you read this poem
to find words
to burn in your mental furnace,
to extract from it precious lines,
and to dismiss the rest as dross,
to be removed,
dumped in some trash bin,
I tell you, in the end,
this is what you will find-
a period.

Blind-side

After removing my glasses,
the smoke muffled the words, shuffled
the meaning, twisted the view like a slur.

The acridity bites my ears
like angry dogs tearing away not just fabric
but my flesh from flesh.

Outside this open window of the top-most floor,
the air is sucked out to the edge of the concrete
where I stood.

The Last Time

I recall the last time I saw you like a glow
scattering in a sky, cloud-less and full of wings,
as if to bring the light closer over waters,
rippling like recollections, glistening like my eyes.

On the sand, I used to feel their grain on my feet,
sinking into them as if falling to your embrace.
The light's warmth dispersed the breeze disheveling
my hair. Your glances, then, so generous with smiles.

You swirl in my memories like wind-tossed grains
of sand, crimson in the light.

Blur

I have become a window-glass, wind-splashed by rain.
The outside view blurs like words disappearing
from dreams. With my reflection gone,
I have no more thoughts welling-up from springs
that burst forth lyrics from my head.

The window glass is immobile like I am, battered
with heat of dry wind over a wilderness,
grass-less, where thoughts die like cattle,
their flesh wasting away. Then, the rain comes
to wash away the skin left clinging to the bones.

Between Our Eyes

Hi. Don't tinker with that screen
where your eyes have been.
Not sure you follow? Notice how many stops
and crossings I have taken you. You
have come this far. I like you
just being here.

I wish you can see me
from a superzoom's viewpoint.
Don't take for granted visual limits
or find yourself crossing to the blurred.
I tweak the control buttons to see
your smiles, round eyes,
and long, eye lashes. Then, I snap.

Viewers would later notice
how you enjoyed my attention,
how pretty you were from their screens,
wishing with their own cameras,
snap that way.

Don't worry. I won't disclose
the secret we keep between our eyes.

Appraisal

It seems to be in the nature of things
to be viewed at, gaped, then dismissed,
when treated like an artifact, on display, hanging
on a walk-way like a sign, mutual, visual
interactions reduced to the quick, transactional.

But I am your difference after taking out
the value of my visual attributes, or whatever
is left from your reductions. Do I owe you residuals
every time you peer into my features,
watching shifts in my color or lines?

I am neither an artifact nor your entertainment.
I don’t intend to keep hanging on walls.

Just Checking

Whenever I recall a need to check you out,
I turn and shift my gaze in your direction,
a reflex you imprinted with every sound bite

from the pitch of your laughter,
the shuffling of your shoes on the carpet,
to the heavy thud of your bag on the desk.

How does one unlearn the associations,
flush out from consciousness the residue
of formerly familiar pleasures?

When will I stop checking you out
in spaces you quietly abandoned,
and accept the absence that settled there?

Space in the City

is expensive. Some poor don't clutter theirs
with many things. Just themselves. So,
when the memo came out about enforcing
a clean-desk policy, I realized how physical
I was. There arrayed for display
are my worldly possessions-

my digital clock, black;
perpetual calendar, in metal, bronze;
pen holder, full of vendor-branded pens;
magnetic stick-on, as souvenirs;
company-issued laptop;
telephone unit (with my local number);
my PDA on its cradle;

and a picture of you,
big and in color.

Darling, there is an explicit instruction
to take your picture off my desk.
Like the city's poor removed
from squatting on private spaces,
I have to remove your picture
from theirs.

How to Dismiss a Non-Performing Lover

It is difficult when lovers treat each other
like sales agents, mutually asking for a love forecast,
and demanding each other’s commitment.

But the problem with prediction is the future,
not the predilection for unexpected roses,
but love reduced to  appearances.

If lovers were businessmen, non-performance
could be a development issue. Coaching may or may not
save the lovers. And when it doesn’t,

To dismiss need not be abrasive. Give each other dignity,
not insanity. Shake hands and hug each other if you must.
It’s all business. Find someone else who can deliver.