Souls trapped in form, live by instinct,
nurturing self-esteem
but being not by bliss mists inked,
God’s light do not redeem.
Without employing force,
shedding lower mind coarse,
we can change our life’s course.
Lost in lust’s storm ~
Souls trapped in form
Neither dusk nor dawn can delude me,
says the leaves that fall in the autumn.
Everywhere they are feeling the earth and the soil.
All these days, from a height, they have seen it.
It’s now the time to touch,
feel,
and be part of the earth
with their skin upon it.
The leaves of the trees
happy to be with the soil,
but a longing and a miss—
its mother-like tree
and its caring branches.
But nearing its roots
is like strength gained.
Though dried its colour,
the coarse nature of texture,
and the experience of being green all round,
and now the season of autumn—
the evening in their life.
And these leaves
always add life to our lives.
As humans,
we enjoy watching the leaves change colour,
turn different from the way they sprouted—
still they serve us humans.
And neither dusk nor dawn can delude them.
They are from nature
and always remain as one—
though autumn or spring.
I ready my mark
Put my fingers just before the line
On your marks, the referee shouts
A bead of sweat drips down my face
Boiling the skin it touches
Leaving a moist trail behind it
Curls around my chin
Hanging in suspense
But it can't support its own weight
It falls
Falls in slow motion
It hits the track
Instantly evaporated against the track
The blank fires
My legs shoot forward
With each stride, my shoes dig into the rubber
I see the finish line
The lactate hits hard
My breathing is ragged and coarse
I can't give up now
My eyes go black
My brain shuts off
I wake up with rub burns on my face
But I finished first
Victory is mine
The warp and the weft, repeating the beat
The weave of the ware of the fabric of life
What's looming? What's left? What pattern repeats
In this tapestry seems to be sweetness or strife
Shuttling between them's emotional whiplash
A journey in learning the middle is midrash
Extremes between seams can leave something coarse
The coin of the realm, from barter to bourse
The subtleties woven and worn of whole cloth
Become torn and tattered when the weaver is wroth
Weaving's deceiving if not done in good faith
Leaving a tale more frail than the wraith
But if the tapestry woven is living with care
Not mediocre but choosing what's apt
The tale leaves a pattern not tattered or bare
And a story that's left the reader enrapt
Her feet crush the coarse dirt,
settling from foot to foot in approach.
Tendons flex; bones remember weather.
Wings—thin bone, taut skin—rise,
each feather catching a gale it cannot see the end of.
The body lunges.
Wings propel upward as a single draft is caught.
Legs lock into a streamlined stance,
and the body relaxes, gliding on years to come.
The dirt seems never to have existed;
storm gales he dark sea below.
Flying spray and rising mist crust her beak with salt.
Endless currents shepherd the locked wings through thick fog.
Half in repose,
sweeping the air—never too high, never too low.
She has always been this far from land, and never.
Seasons crust her wings like old weather she can’t shed.
Then the wind snaps. A warning.
Wings unfold.
A wall of petrichor and sulfur rises ahead.
Feathers shudder.
Tendons unlock. Her body loosens.
Feet strike giving soil,
legs search for footing as friction returns.
Salt gives way to soil.
The dirt is dirt again.
Without a doubt Life is absolutely filled
With moments of the sublime
Moments which come from somewhere
And somehow never ever really disappear
Even when something else comes along
Something coarse and loud
Able to drown out everything before
The sublime is still there
Patiently waiting, unflappable, nonjudgemental
Waiting till the room stills
And its own light can be seen again.
Yin and yang you may say
Or something closer to home
The mood swings of a child
Or anxious broken hearted lover
But still only the passing phases
That make a life not only interesting
But sublimely worth living.
(7/25/26)
Known through every heart's
Wild urge and fun side;
Forbids nothing, including
Desire to escape
What Summer, especially
Along its sea coasts
Reveals, laying us half stripped
About its nature
If coarse, is one glad to cure.
Laughing at our shape!
lay down with lion
Ireland livestock
Australian Shepherd
fleecy fluffy flocks
super soft t-shirts
lovely babies
born in the spring
Amish afghan
Mennonite wool
Montana
New Zealand
Australia
wooly
coarse haired
lamb
I need to unsheath myself
from comfort, the layered distance
separating nerve ends from the cold,
to feel the coarse scrape of the world
and not just the intimacy of its downy touch.
I lounge too much in the quiet of myself
away from the hoarse sound
of the wind straining through
the trees, waves tearing water apart
and the screech of angry gulls.
I am too given to the notion
that the gods speak only in the calm
of perfect mornings, find voice
in places cleared of movement.
The heave and spill of the world,
its rupturing crust, fire, flood
and suffering are surely places
where the gods cannot reside.
My mind wrestles with what
seems like an unsolvable koan -
to exist, good gods
must find in such tortured places,
a home.
The orchardist held the apple tight,
Staring deep into its being,
As if it had something more to show him than its rotten skin.
Unwilling to admit it to its predestined fate,
He first peeled the apple to view its innards.
Unsatisfied by the inedible flesh,
He continued:
Deeper and deeper,
Until his hands were coarse and knife dull.
Finally upon reaching the core,
His anger released itself in a swift action,
As he hurled the apple core towards the wall.
Quickly though, he ran towards the remaining mush.
Grasping at anything, hoping to get his apple back.
However, it would not be,
Nor was it ever so,
its rancidness was sown in its creation
Upwards is his destination
Lost is his designation
No call from Stars above
No message of half-hearted love
Green reconnects with Red to combine
As our Smith relaxes his invisible spine
His journey so far has been to hone and refine
It is all he can muster, so far out of line
No matter his blindness, he saunters past
The Fire's Cot, mid-molten blast
Making Names wander, til' the Bellows blow
Up stairways, they travel, where our Smith now goes
Steep and coarse, the walkway is cobbled
Thrown together, stone and metal were knobbled
Though our Smith travels slowly with a slippery crawl
He soon gains some confidence, and takes steps, small
Almost like a snail with it's juice left behind
Our Smith leaves a trail a hunter could find
Green and Red splotches on a watery rind
Moving unbothered by secrets enshrined
He shivers and coils to the top of this 'case
Wriggling his body to scream from his face
"CaN i PlEaSe ReTuRn To ThE BoSs' GrAcE?!
i KnOw I'm NoT aLoNe In ThIs SpAcE!"
The steps begin to brightly glow
A clear departure from ash and shadow
The metal grey shifts to a sharpened Pink
"A fallen Smith is a missing Link."
Five decades ago, one dusk after field duty
I stood at Moirang Lamkhai by the roadside
waiting for the passenger bus.
No bus came the last one might had gone I feared.
Then I spied an old man, dhoty hitched to knees,
shirt of cotton coarse sleeves long.
Bare foot he strode in the hush of the twilight.
I hailed, " Uncle has the last bus gone ? "
" Yes, it has gone, no more tonight." he replied,
" Homeward bound ? Don't worry stay at my house tonight."
No hotel in the bazaar but a pure hospitality.
We walked the road, his voice was gentle.
" See how the land developed - going on the road
feels like going on my home's floor (earthen)."
Then Gopaljee Sharma,Asstt Registrar C.S.
rolled in by office jeep post duty.
He called me aboard : I thanked the kind elder,
bade farewell, returned to my residence.
Now Moirang Bazar boasts hotels.
But such a kind hospitable old man,
which was the characteristics of people in the old days,
is not seen again.
coarse sand forms brown rills
hard scree, rock cleft trills
fine clouds frame red kite
string slack; old maid wills
Avoiding the girl-scouts
I hasten out of the store
trying hard not to see the people
huddled in their thin coats
as they wait for an infrequent bus.
This ice-chilled evening
with its stark revelations
is like the nag of an irregular heartbeat
sheathed like a thorn in my shoe.
Later, by a warm fire
sitting in an upholstered armchair,
a despondency chews at my breastbone,
it is a reaction hard to pin down,
to objectify,
a lingering presence.
My mind shifts through a symbolic iconography
effigies depicting:
a lost and hungry dog,
an ill-treated child,
a stranger I refuse to call brother,
places long deserted,
places found far too late.
A love unpicked from a now withering vine.
That same presence
sets a table and chair before me
that I may write, try to explain
this tumbleweed of unnamable sorrows,
a phantom, that even in happier times,
I recognize it as a coarse impression
akin to a grating scar
beneath a tender tongue.
Tomorrow may emerge as a frail old lady,
struggling with full shopping bags,
head bent to a cold uncaring wind.
Many might offer her a lift
but in my present brittle mood
I probably would frighten her,
so,
I don’t.
Does a nightingale speak of the source of her song?
Do any peacocks proclaim the cause of their dance?
Doesn't music flow in the vibrance of a gong?
Don't nature's notes put existence into a trance?
I thought my poems would change this world. I was wrong.
Who reads poems these days? If so, shouldn't I write?
With coarse words and mute cords, I still sing all day long;
it's not with swords or guns—it's with my pen I fight.
My notebooks and diaries are scattered around.
Penury has devoured the roof of my old hut.
I feel as though in my own silence I am drowned;
like a cracked gramophone, my worn-out words I rut.
When buds bloom full and nectar feeds the birds,
Must I remain so choked to speak my words?
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