existential poetry

Against finality

savage_offspring

 

There must be beasts
that crawl like moons
behind the city buildings

I stare at their fumes
that spiral toward solitude
and the streets like swollen
veins struggling against
the violence of light

I have not spied them enough
nor have I done fair scholarship
to deduce their silences

I am more of a theologian
deducing with furious axioms
their temptation to laugh
and recording the syllogism
of wings that chisel
the silk of decay

they are beasts of atmosphere
and dawn and the noise of eclipses
and in one ambitious hallucination
we coexist with their rosy disasters

who are they, the monsters
these vehicles of modern destiny?

I cannot answer.
There is no final system.
The roads are covered with
the round tears of the desert.

The news has not reached paradise.
we are here to stay – on earth, at noon –
with our blue and sentimental beasts;
whatever savage offspring of our dreams.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

a minute’s peace

minute_of_peace

when 3:13
it was foggy
and too careless
to measure the vastness of solitude

when 3:15
a slither of divine ache
clashed against a clump
of earth
probably though
it was against my
awfully wakeful heart.

when 3:17
my extended hand
kneads the air
and the eyes slough
a peel of memory
towards a new gloriousness

when 3:29
I show my membership card
staff smiles. They know me.
I ask: what’s the time?
3:29, they say.

3: 38
the southernmost minute’s gone

3:39
without consenting to our isolated reasons

when 3:43
I begin reading:

Religion is the last subject that the intellect beings to understand. In our youth we may have resented, with proud superiority, its cherished incredibilities; in our less confident years we marvel at its prosperous survival in a secular and scientific age, its patient resurrections after whatever deadly blows by Epicurus, or Lucretius, or Lucian, or Machiavelli, or Hume, or Voltaire. What are the secrets of this resilience?

when 3:45
I don’t want to smear eternity
with another coat of futility

when 3:59
got up comically
confusedly
coquettishly
can’t wait for spring to come

when 4:01
outside again
ready to concoct
some opaque purpose.

when 4:05
with a beer
throwing away the wreaths
of opinion that cling to my hair.

when 4:26
murmuring:
everyman’s angelic grave

4:26
surrender the surrounding suffering

4:27
for a sparse minute of peace.

 

Contemporary Poetry

towards a quiet curve

language_of_clouds

The first day the mechanism
was hard to endure
as kissing one’s objectives goodbye.
Really, you’re lost and sick with ennui.
If years are all that’s left, better die
in a second. Ever after, total laugh,
in a blot of obscurity, forever,
without ever understanding or
being understood or caring whether
life was worth it, because once you die,
your theory of the universe, the entirety
of what was known returns to a pool
of nondescript silence. Rejoice, the only witness
to absurdity is dead. Soon, in a flash and no one
can change that. No god, no medicine, no spirituality,
no delusion. Postponement, yes. But death and its
miracle is near. Don’t grieve, rejoice, like hot flames
atop a mirror looking down at their fleeting brilliance;
rejoice as the sailor – which is everyone –in a fever
crossing the sea of life, singing with a sigh
in the language of the clouds.

Contemporary Poetry

I have discovered nothing

the_outsider

I have discovered nothing

no potent spasm in truth’s tinge
no certain depth in writhing divinity

I have no enlightenment

no broad scar laid on the slope of thought
no electrifying branch igniting the empty length

I have not discovered any principle

no sinking song hardening the stone
no plaited temple wall where war reclines exhausted

I have no message

no filament of yarn towards Ariadne’s love
no hidden sarcophagus where suffering lies embalmed

I have discovered no primeval essence

no visiting visage vanishing vastly
no substitute for this sum of smoke

Contemporary Poetry

origin.

origins

origin.
When nothing had yet
lured electron.

Before beginnings,
when totality
was numb and coiled
like a tongue.

The buds
savoring
a patch of permanence.

Illumine the solace
when the folds of eternity
were not yet

outstretched.

Omnipresence
was a droplet deep
of dense darkness.

Then a slither of light scarred the night.

A new hunger
clung to the breast
of heaven
till
it began to bleed
a timeless light.

Becoming.
Outpouring curls of colors.

The clouds
the mud
and the appearance
swathed in shadows
& painful pulse.

Contemporary Poetry

ultracold

car_speed_india

 

Relieved bowels
before pain is áh vowel,
consumed
me ended. Death
is a petty leaf, to sleep beneath
a pretty earth. What word will last
and last
oracle come past
my lips
when I’m almost stiff
and conclusive gasp. ‘A
Spanish mutter or aspect
while curling and reaching
for aspirin,
could be a joke and I laugh
blue with smoke blurring
the vision
of what existence
once
was but no more mission
but rest
but forgetfulness
but lo and behold
I shall say, it is time! me
becoming ultra-cold.

Contemporary Poetry

book of hours

book_of_hours

This is the book of hours.

It starts
with something
much earlier
than life.

Brighter than
a halo,
shorter than
a sigh.

As you begin
to flip the pages,
there is
something of elements
and monumental drift.

Every letter
glides as a cloud
in exquisite detail.

It is all there,
frail and impermanent,
the stones and
the race.

It is an exercise
of contemplation
within this verse
of sight.

The mother
holding
the pendulum
of her breasts

and the hours
careening by
as dry

leaves
from nowhere.

This is the book of hours.

Contemporary Poetry

twigs of being

twigs_of_Being_poem

I would call it rain,
but it’s just a drop,
that slithers through
the contours of the
heartbeat.

I suddenly
become still,
like a branch
suddenly strapped
to a shaft of sunlight.

If I could peek
inside
to witness
a constellation of twigs,
flickering and shudders,
after each clinch,
as the hungry drop
tunnels through
the expanse of feeling.

At that moment,
language tangles up
into a yarn of illusion.

It falls still wet with joy.

I am planet
eroded by pleasure,
a hard knot of memory.

But everything is quiet,
only for a chime
every time
the drop clinks
against an organ
or a thought.

Contemporary Poetry

nuance of sense

edge_of_creation

It was in 2013
when I started
dancing –
in the moral sense
of the word.

It was this
year when in
my hole, still
timeworn with despair
that I laughed –
in the philosophical
sense of the word.

It was under
a pale circle
in the sky
that I shouted:
‘more, more!’ –
in the maternal
sense of the word.

It was in
momentary empty
flight when I shot
over the aching nothing
to touch the inchoate
rim of creation –
in the real
sense of the word.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

black earth

black_earth

That once I found mirrors
sprawled on the floor, and I
looked for the mountains
of my eyes.

There were many
but lightly had I
taken flecks of skin
to cover the mirrors;
that I wanted to see
no more my reflection
but only feel the caress
of silence,
it was about blood
that trickles like a mute river
around the architecture of bones.

An aura,
myriad of angles,
a hollow breeze trapped
but circulating from one
morsel to the next,
the opulent scattering
of cavities and memories.

I would never comprehend
the purpose but once
inside I could walk
counting the domes
of each mystery
like beads in a rosary.

I could even step upon
the slabs of shadow
for I was only
an invisible thought
measuring the joy
of the black earth.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry