I’m utterly thrilled to have 3 poems published in Columbia Journal, the literary magazine based at Columbia University School of the Arts.
The poems can be read on their site: columbiajournal.org
Columbia Journal
new poems
Conduit
Absolutely raving to have two poems in the latest issue of Conduit.
You can find it in select bookstores across the US or may purchase it here: https://www.conduit.org/shop/current-issue
groundless
Something dwells hungry
by the moonlight,
that measure now
vulnerable as clod
of experience,
recognizable by all,
below naturally
impermanent stride.
How did one
of these commonplace
collide with gravity,
clung magnetized
like heaviest descendant,
literally,
descending to stillness,
something so neatly
tucked in by white,
almost aluminum light.
Who hurries
to lift dear thing
so organized like organ
that means to sleep
sturdy like breath
woven to stone,
dance married
to mineral.
What energy travels
rough as arrow
through fluid eye
to catch the body
of the thing,
radiating borrowed sun
from borrowed sun.
It is hungry
but to consume
some ailment,
some human angst,
that lingers primarily
as longing,
until contact is made,
suddenly,
with the surprise.
Something,
not yet named,
remains motionless
meditating below
the slanting moonlight
that cannot keep
its curtain of glow
still.
Someone
roams like dust
ringing around
the room.
The moon
is half sharp
with light,
half naked
alike the rest
of the night.
terms and conditions
why don’t
YOU
walk down history
as through a great avenue
to deliver the good news
to a decaying world
why don’t
YOU
speak a language
whose every word
is a cup filled
with beatific light
why don’t
YOU
become
the blossoming bud
of fire that will consume
the wasteland of the earth
why don’t
YOU
release mankind
from its immemorial shackles
and carry the heavy light of truth
to the eyes of every man, woman
and child
why don’t
YOU
reveal the gates of salvation,
or the ultimate purpose
of our petty lives
why don’t
YOU
add up all divinities
and multiply them
into one enormous entity
why don’t
YOU
unite all opposites
sensual and ideal
material spiritual
past future
life death
into a totality of all
totalities
why don’t
YOU
wrestle from the grip
of science and religion
the meaning of all
being
why don’t
YOU
lift the veil of illusion
and disclose the essence
behind this all-
embracing chaos
then, only then
I will follow you.
Contemporary Poetry
Pose for me
Take off your clothes.
Peel off every last layer.
Squat, further down.
Place your left arm over your left knee. There.
Bend your upper body to the right. Just there.
Right foot a tad over to the right. Lean forward
the other arm straight down touching
the coldness of the earth. Don’t look
at me, look down as if something
great and heavy was pushing you down
restraining your mobility, locking you
with the awkward chain of the body itself.
Untighten your abdomen. Relax the brow,
look defiant as if you’ve been angry
for years, but tired and nearing hopelessness,
like an irrational animal that’s exhausted
from growling in its cage.
There, let your member hang. Let the
pain of the bones and joints led
to convulsions, feel the crush and the pendulum.
Begin to accept this position as your end,
as your skin’s predestination.
There, that’s it. It will be over soon.
I almost got it.
It will be over …. soon.
Contemporary Poetry
a minute’s 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
carnivorous cosmology
Don’t be shy
I’ve suckled that nipple
called sky
the universal figure of smoke,
whose body I call yours
and time’s standstill has been glimpsed
in the trunks of blood
that our tongues have enacted
what then is not an instant
but creation that will swell either
like an echo or a myth
don’t pretend like you
don’t understand
this carnivorous cosmology
don’t pretend like your
intelligence was flared and pure
and bubbling like open
lawns of lava
return to me tumultuous
and with gales amongst those
fluttering eyes
and and – and turn
your cold torso
towards the permanence of
the flare
don’t be shy
I’ve conquered without
logic the theory
of your lips
this is the only day left
for us —
to spill
like assassins
the bleeding cup
of night.
Contemporary Poetry
an erection (an absurd poem)
While the cloud
held silence like
a baby in mother’s arm
this vain head
swirled like vane
to the roar
of the orphan night,
the cataract of minutes
and other entities,
but at the other
end love coruscating
lonely through black
echoes of memories,
on the white pale
body of the earth
having the only
organ capable of
perpetuating some fabled race
pointed at the moon – a spear
to break the firmament
and bury this iota of being
under the shattering flood
of entropy
Soon the path is fog
While these hands
have broken bread,
caressed drooling
lips of pleasure,
while grey wax streams
down these cheeks
for soon the path is fog,
a dotted line of street lamps,
lumps of light
doses of darkness,
nothing but cold in the event
silence in the hour;
a particle swinging between cars
and the busy lives of chimeras
this shadow amongst transparencies
this elevation without certainties
I navigate like lost wind
through edifices and glow
seeking a new contradiction
a newer totality
or the last
dust of god.
How would any sensitive soul react to this Fate?
I could
have loved
the fire
and hummingbird
little winters
stacked and trembling
my hand
wild and rodent
treading the
earth
but looks like
young time
nothing is nothing
my prayer being
when death comes:
may this consciousness
be that of a stone
stripped of its rock
Beyond Language 
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