Twilight Fears

Everytime I open the newspaper –
Man, blood, thunder and a shroud
Whirling to shreds – and I - a sleepwalker like
Stare meaninglessly into my heart.
Alone, with a wistful smile, I neglect
The uncurbed fistfuls of mundane events
I choked upon yesterday.

Today, a new shroud is shredded,
The tatters I collect in painted Papers.
Designs groan at the stains of pain
And the acid mood of metaphors
Walking loosely with outstretched arms
Groping in the twilight of dream and waking,
Only a scream, a touch or time
Could bail out the ‘I’
Form this well of saturation.

Buildings, narrow alleys, winding stairs
All known and simultaneously unknown
But always challenging me to attempt,
Faces strange or familiar, yet nonetheless
Frightening as if real,
Bloodied fur, new clothes, hungry fires
Humanized bullets and trained weapons,
Uncontainable waters and depressed winds –
Can anyone retrieve true hope of peace?
Can these wild fantasies day in and out end?
Can the bird lightly on my shoulder descend?
Can I smile as I glean tomorrow’s paper?

Intensity

(To Denise Fujiwara)

Stop, people, do not hurl stones at her!
Hail her unusual persistence,
Her impassionate love and unswerving faith
In the promise of time
That which childhood bequeaths to age.

Never can a miserable seeker find less
Than in the moment's open arms
Vacant with its spacious suspense,
Always providing for chance.

Run in to fill that void, Denise
Pick those four sticks of cane
Sweep with them in search of the fate
For your lost child may lie there,
Look on, now, now and just on.

Who calls you mad, who insane?
Who forgets that it is intuition
which prompts an unchartered life?

Cascading mind’s windowpane – a sequence
Gripping in a strange passion free drama
Shields memory from guilt and regret,
Pain or despair. Denise, I know,
This fabric of your frantic search;
Madness is the fringe of intensity
That holds the only succour,
To the hopeful and the hopeless!

You have spoken of love,
Of pain and your benumbed senses.
I, having lost words to respond,
Remain encrypted in silence.
Creatures bear the pulls and pushes,
The knots and raps of destiny,
Yes, that word much uttered,
Seldom truly understood.
A cryptic clue remains
Entombed in this state
Of my present silence.

It implores you to understand.

Come, let’s simply return
To our homeland,
Then further back
Into our childhood
Till we reach
Our mother’s womb
To plunge into eternity;
Lets get unbegun, and
Have nowhere to go
Or come from!