emerging from its burrow

the flake falls

bewildered

shivering in its own chill

gliding from seas

to skies, skies to seas,

clouds to lashes,

lashes to cheeks,

like tears

so poignant in its trek

as it shakes

like a tremor

in its trail

into the pause

between the sighs

in your chest

where it dies –

a most lived moist.

When you are gone,

I do not miss you

When you are gone,

You are missing

From me

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Narrow gaps

Between crooked teeth

In the cave

Of your orifice,

Driving air in and out

Then in again,

But in slow heavings

Of the burnt chest

Of the holes

In paper heart

And dents

In stainless lungs,

Coughing cheap shiraz

In your marred palms

With the lines

Twisted and bent

Into a single line,

(Divulging)

in hushed tones:

You breathe.

dwell

Wherever I am is home, you said. I said

Wake up, wake up, I left.

I could not wrap my arms around you;

you were bigger than the world

but from the sky, I watched you - 

a single speck of gold 

traveling in the speed 

of light from the lamp to my palm.

I dream a dream where I am where you are

You were a dream

I woke, and you were gone.

Have you any plans with me?

By my bedroom window, overlooking

the fields you plowed prematurely

pregnant with tomatoes

plumped and flushed in red

bathing in the sunrise of January,

run it by me.

By my bedroom window, while I sit

rocking back and forth, then back again

on a backdrop of autumn –

a curtain of sunset orange

over a famine of the soul,

run it by me.

Valediction

We plug our ears with bellows of wind

To drown the echoes of words

Lost between tongues, jammed in praise

We dance to the beat of our own descending tears

Ripped from ducts delivered to their new home

– a pool of sorrow on our concave laps

And we look each other in the eye

A thick glass of indifference between us

And listen to the wind come tumbling down

In the distance, the future burns

Like a two-toned sky in the horizon

And we are too blind to take it all in

Rise and Fall

It has begun: that which you fear. The end is never

Abrupt. Like a story, it begins, progresses

in the middle, peaks into climax,

And then slowly

Ends.

I. Beginning

Waiting amongst nervous pacers, and those whose knees

Are too weak for standing. Newspapers provide no comfort

Like the embrace of cold white walls. The TV is out of place,

Provides only noise to break the silence, entertaining only

The unaffected nurses in passing. Coffee turns

Cold, between trembling hands.

Furrowed eyebrows, eyes on the ground. The faces

Of early lament and waiting. Light, careful footsteps

treading back and forth,

Then back again.

II. Middle

You once confessed fear, of age and all

That comes with it. To witness none of the bellows of your youngest’

First born. To be forgotten like the image of a portrait

That fades away through time.

Sadness hangs beneath tired eyes, and a set of luggage

From sleepless nights. End breeds new beginnings.

But they are endings nonetheless.

III. Climax

No one is groomed for terrible news.

But there is no good one here. One by one,

Heads lift to receive it, word per word, when there is no need.

Except to signal tears. Except to confirm what the cold white walls

Already knew. Except to send the minute fires of blind hopes to ashes.

IV. End

Nothing but silence and sounds of heavy breathing. The faces of grief:

calm and subdued. The grave says Daughter, mother

and lelang. Will always be remembered. Like the image in a portrait,

That hangs on a museum. Beguiling and venerated.

But when night time comes, the spectators walk

One by one.

To leave the dead alone.