On the Train Home

5/19/11

On the Train Home

Skyscrapers tumble backwards

Like grey memories.

Yellow lights, green lights, white lights

Blend lightly into the mix of stars

In the sky

In the windows.

Goodbye, old city,

Whose buildings duck back like dominos

With the current;

Goodbye, great alloy –

Of green and blue, red and yellow

Violet and grey, black and white,

I shall not forget your face

And your intimate stone grasp,

Which squeezes like a child for its father. 

Voice of Earth

5/18/11

Voice of Earth

If one, at some point in his life –

Ticking ticking ticking away –

Stopped

And walked to a river, or a forest, or a field,

And stopped

To listen

Beyond the trains grinding the earth

And airplanes ripping the sky,

Beyond all sounds stirring in the air –

Even the birds

Even the creek

Even the crumpled murmur of a leaf –

One would hear, beyond all this, the

Fluent, vibrant voice of earth.

Night

5/17/11

Night

Rain drops drop down from big black sky.

Wide black sky, no stars, no moon,

Only golden lamplights floating in the air

Like idle suns, isolated,

Below big black sky.

Rivulets of rain water run

By the sides of streets,

Paved golden by lamplights,

Floating still

In the air.

Night.

I thought I knew you.

Black puddles shine gold

In the still light of golden lamplights

Like black glass.

Air blows its breath and

Limp limbs of trees sway in the night.

I miss your arms.

I thought I knew you.

No eyes in the sky

Only big black blackness

Wide in the sky –

Only golden lamplights floating in the air.

Golden like your eyes,

But they are not your eyes.

Night.

I thought I knew you.

The Chase

5/16/11

The Chase

When morn had just come with daylight bright

I sat before the page to write

Of orange clouds and clear blue skies,

Of nature’s breath blowing by…

The Poem vanished from my sight,

Slipped from my mind and into flight

With lucent wings right over me

And settled soft right on a tree.

“That’s not so bad, that’s not too high”

I said,

And watched it fly into the sky

And settle with the others in a crowd,

A bunch of Poems on a cloud.

“Great! I’ll never catch them there!” I yelled

And right there then a Poem fell,

Like a meteor through the air,

And plopped into a library chair.

I hid behind a shelf and spied

As the Poem wandered by,

Sifting through the yellow pages

Poking fun at poets’ faces,

Then shifting through like water, even,

It settled in a book of Stevens.

I crouched and crawled to it, sly,

To smack and catch it like a fly,

But it grew some feet and ran astray

A few too many meters away

And settled ‘tween a girl’s legs

“I should not write of that,” I said,

And waited till it chose to go

And luckily it flew right home.

I came back home

And sat before the page to write

With Poem in mind, shining bright,

 Of orange clouds and clear blue skies,

Of nature’s breath blowing by…

And Poem complied.

Mopping the Floors at Yogojoy

5/14/11

Mopping the Floors at Yogojoy

Sliding the wet mop

Over white tiles –

White, save black shoe prints

Stampeding across the floor

And sticky chocolate yogurt –

I think it’s yogurt –

Goo and gunk,

What strange things one may find

At the end of the day.

The night shift is over soon

And the night outside creeps in

Through the windows,

Beckoning with fresh cool breath.

I dip the hairy mop

Back in the bucket –

Soak, squeeze,

And slide.

I hear the wheels of the train

Roll in the night

Outside the windows

And I remember

With a rock in my throat

Three years ago

You died.