Delilah

You offer your heart
As incense
On unholy altars
Of irreverence.
Your priest sacrilegious
With twisted hands
Lifts your sacrifice
To the heavens…

Then dashes it to hell.

How should I read poetry?

Fast or slow

From scroll to scrolling, manuscript to manga

How should one reflect on verse or stanza

Time forever an enemy so I read quick …

Anthologies – flick, lick, click

Some like Frost and Hughes put me in a loop

And like an old cassette I need to reset

Rewind, Pause, Rewind

Till my mind digests and heart relates

Between spaces of each paragraph

C’est la vie

You know what,

Everyone is broken in some way.

And if you’re not,

 You will be some day.

Geber

At her father’s feet

Two hundred Philistine foreskins

For his bride to be;

 

At the Father’s feet

One hundred songs and hymns

For his soul to keep.

 

His sword is sharp and swift

And his soul flows like desert streams

For he is a man elite

Flashes

Like footage after a robbery, she still has photographs of us

I surrendered the receipt to those digitized memories

When she determined my affections were deceit

 

Indeed, I might concede that there was,

In my heart, conceit

Treachery in every kiss,

For my heart was never in it

 

At the tip of my tongue, a concoction:

Curiosity – the cloak of my lips – and she tasted

Dose after dose – these fed my prose – till alas!

She discovered my mind to be no wonderland

And this, a chapter she must close.

Platform 6

Before you left, I prayed

(prayed to a God you don’t believe in)

for an earthquake, a monsoon,

anything, anything that would jolt you

into my arms like a javelin

and keep you here for good,

yet, empty handed I stood

for the earth and moon remained unmoved

Haiku XXXVIII

Summer’s golden locs

Shimmering in autumn’s breeze

Wither in winter