Once again, the moths covet flame over famine


Moths hovering round
burning bulbs – we deride.
Sigh. We too opt scorch.

***

Magnetic  healthy.
Go ask the moth clipped clean,
blaze incarnation.










Evening melody


Walking home from work, leaving the grey
of office cubicle, the street lights snapped
off, as if dying sun beams had seduced
the light away. I could see the blue black

sky, riots of shadow, store fronts clouded
in mystery. The old in me cautions
night is for the young, not the aesthete
drawn in by austere beauty, the minimalism

of buildings captured in outline. The minds
of youth are a cotillion, whirling
to grace and frequent shifts of desires. Rapid
movement unnerves me — the city streets gape

as my steps trace the spine
of an accordion, stretching
to and fro, elation
of well-traveled notes.

My meanderings bring me to a door: I hear
the whistle of the closing frame, the electric rush
against darkness.







The English lesson from the 5-year-old Chinese boy


His youth language convects
the air. He bears the voice

that has not succumbed
to moderation, but vacillates
to tantrum or glee. He may
be pontificating to his mother
about the draft of subway, a constriction
of jacket. Perhaps he is frigid

with longing, at a phrase
where everything is want
and satisfaction. His speech warms
my brain to expanses; synapses burn
with novel energy. His voice

escapes, the lexicon
of life dwindles, I impose
my own grammar, again the world:
like dictionary, a compression.







After Sai Maddi, Age 27, is Convicted to 15


Just one sliver, waning.
As if she sought the face
of the almost-perfect moon.
The one bite of chin he clamped.









Murmurs rising from a firm pillow


Name erupts from my throat –
reverence. Spice scents

the air. Imagine the sweet
journey of your body. Ache

for whisper’s delicacy, a dry husk
arched in the prayerless night.









ImageNation


“Britain is interesting from a dental standpoint.
They won the war, but they lost their teeth.”
— Mike Myers in April 1999 Vanity Fair: Hollywood Issue

When the empire disintegrated, the world
shattered like a glass Pepsi bottle, a fiasco
where the shards of former colonies flow

into a syrupy run, crashing and jostling
the other. The grand corporeal
vessel dissolves though corporations

rush to suture the lacerations, to coalesce
the bodies under a fortune flag. Perhaps

middle-aged women and beer-bellied
men ponder such concerns at yoga
class, stretching their souls alongside the throbbing
machines of physical enhancement. The pulleys burn
to and fro like a bad episode of the Industrial

Revolution while the surplus holy conduct
the journey from Home to Om. In our States,

the Spirit arrives imported, waits
for the cell phones to stop ringing, acts
the patient profit for global souls.

In the spill of national borders, the mystic
resides on the other edge of the waters,
or in Rumi’s case, the other side

of the grave. His flushed readers ruminate
through visions which translate death
into transitory celebration, poetry

into carnal knowledge. Amidst this carnival, posed
like a bharatanatyam beauty, Mike Myers palms
a personal organizer, Om legible like the cross

of lifelines on rough hand. Unlike the syrup turned

to sores, the dental to decay, infection
of cross-cultural contaminants
inciting the boundaries to fester,

we know Mike is healthy and wise
because he still possesses a proper set
of sparkling North American teeth.