Now I’m awake

And it’s too late,

Now I’m awake

And the night is gone.

There was noise in the night

And I needed you to make it

Whisper,

Crooning sounds;

Holding my mind down,

But now I’m awake

And you’re too late.

I couldn't hear 
the kaliedoscope speak,
It jangled and hummed,
But I wasn't in me.
Scared of beauty, words;

These erstwhile friends,

I fell asleep, 
and so the night ends.

City Man

Man, you fool.
You go away and leave me,
you come back and need me.
Your morning smile from my voice,
your sleeping sigh on my thighs.
Still you go, you fool,
my man.

Man, you fool.
You forget me now,
like a song that comes only with rain,
but it will thunder again
and you'll sing it from your heart.
Yet you soak the sun, you fool,
my man.

You love and love,
I do not know how
With the simplicity of breath,
And the inevitability of living,
Just love and no pause,
You're all heart, you fool,
my man.

The Cleaner

Rip goes the photo of my 
tear blotched sari,
Whooshing out is my guilty ache,
My mother kills herself
but never dies
I absolutely deny all blame.
Blood turned into muddy brown
Now it's blooming red,
The cobbler stitched up my torn shoe
And so my toe puffs out his chest.
My child has no home
she keeps running away
from all the things that live in it
the broken, the weak and the lame
Now she's gone forever away
She'll come back yet
You're here 
and the junk is withering away.

Commitment

Things don’t always tie in neatly and nor should words.

They should be fragmented,

discordant,

sta.cca.to,
fluid like neraids wearing flowing green silk doing the backstroke,

hollow,

empty,

leaping off

the page in

pogo-sticked

exuberance

shouting their mad joy

SMACK

in the reader’s unsuspecting face,

intimate as the nook in your lover’s neck where he smells the gentlest,

turbulent like the blood in your heart,

constant like you.

They should be what you are, who you are, where you are, how you are. When you give up on them, they give up on you.

How can you?