along the sea shore

By the bedlam of roving
footsteps
the slight shudder of her shoulder
unchains streaming shards
of amber rays oblivious to minds
wandering around.
An unfaltering gaze
pierces distant shores
guarded from meaner sights. In another life,
borrowing a vestige
of loveliness, she
becomes
the carrier for one
poet-son's verse. In
the here and now of my own
wandering she conjures
the whiff of cities distant
and never to be seen. Never
breaking her gaze to meet
another crawling over the serpentine
contours of her back, never choosing to watch
the world watching her as time passes
by, she waits. And the sun sinks
through the tangled
mazes of her hair.

desert

So simply you cut them down, taking
what little we had to offer,
taking the wandering alleys flowing towards
unknown destinations into your
grasp, washing them down
with a simple, soft, quiet sprinkle of nectars
we never tasted as younger boys, giving us forgotten
men a flavour of delirium, begging,
pleading with us, pleasing us so subtly,
while asking us for little and a little
more than we ever knew we could give.

So sudden and hopeful your requests,
our unlearned minds couldn't hope
to resist the charm of your ruby-red
fingertips

(familiar as they were
from unending nights
when we muttered thrashing about
wondering, waking to wander and step
onto the one path that would always,
eventually, find us another; yet so strange:
those caresses from your worldly hands
left us ashook, our minds astray, those
senses, still seeming to resist the world)

blossoming.

Never could we hope to enslave you as we had
all others we encountered, while quietly
stepping aside so as to deflect
blame that we would nonetheless meet
on uncobbled paths the city had lain out
for us. We were special;
and you knew.

We never expected you,
you see,
walking so idly amongst us,
in utter rags like ours.
Then you raged (and bloomed),
then you called out to us,
and hummed a ditty somehow
known, which we failed to resist.

We never thought,
you see, that you could
swoop
so silently upon lost boys,
that these little fortifications that we troubled with
could so easily give in
to subtle requests that you presented
so silently to our naked minds.

Our humanity we forgot, taking pleasure
in the animal games we
played and taught
each other – the world
looking
on would shudder then shrug,
not once did it break past
the fortifications we unknowingly built till
you, of course you,
stepped in.

The little touches
of our dying skins, minuscule turns of our brimming
heads: dying:
breaking up the complex harmony
our little universe had invented such
aeons ago, slowly withering, saying
goodbye to each other, missing quietly the traces
of sweat that lingered
past bedtime, far beyond the hours
that our mothers had thought
us gone.

So simply you cut them down then,
so easily nudging our prayers down the chasms
of unending doubt far worse than
the doubts the prophets warned would
befall those of us who lingered still,
and forever,
within the chasms of haunting odours
of each other, the touch of our dying
skins, the long-forgotten touches of our skins,
those wondering mornings, and unending askances
of everlasting wandering within
the desert that has but one path,
one cobblestoned path we treaded ever
so slowly that long ago.

Commanding
an army of peons,
he conquered divisions
cast by human foibles, taking
in stride all that he must
because, of course, the future
generations need sustenance.

Each wrinkle folds over itself
tells a story of Faridkot and Amritsar,
of Burrabazar and Lake Town,
his dying grounds are decided:
the embers haunt these environs and
our minds. Faltering steps assume mythical arguments
of survival. He knew he was immortal:
now his grandsons watch him
waste away
ever so slowly. The sunken
eyeballs that watch us lose
their gleam-over ever so quickly, the days
wash by: my father. And his brothers look
on in disbelief, the giver of life going
so cheaply, undone by simple diseases,
by afflictions to our basest urges. We watch
him shrink,
slip
into reveries and dreams:
they summon memories that trouble us so.

Wishes wash over, trying to cling onto
all that they have done without ever knowing
what they even thought,
their was done, ours we offer for
we know not what we want.