Your Beautifulness
The nice middleaged man walks up, points to the ground and says,
"Excuse me Ma'am, but I believe you dropped your Beautifulness."
My wife looks reflexively at her feet,
And then he adds: "Ah Nah - You still got it; you still got it."
What a line.
Wish I'd thought of it.
Because it's true:
You['ve still got it.
The Blazehaired Beauty
That stunned all the youthful boys
Is still there,
Just beneath the skin.
You'll always be that Beauty
My Darling,
Because what you have,
Doesn't age.
It thrives, unto itself;
How I deserved it;
If I ever did,
I'll never know.
But when you lie with me
In the pitch of the night,
I know I'm blessed among men
For your love.
I am disaster incarnate
So I know.
How you endure me,
I do not grasp.
But know this;
You carry your Beautifulness everywhere
And never drop it.
I need to let it go when its run its course.
But this pain... this lacking. I always feel the hole it leaves. Letting it go feels wrong.
But Why?!
Like im losing a piece that sustains me...
But it hurts. Everytime. More and more.
I reflexively look for it everywhere.
How I do I shut that off?
And that is what scares me.
How do you stop something that feels as involuntary as breathing?
And if you do... Will what it sustains die?
Would it return in the face of it?
And that question that haunts me.
What would be worse?
Living. Hoping. Crashing. Repairing. Repeating
Or finding a way to stop the involuntary?
But that feels like dying when I imagine it.
Are those really my only choices?
Bear it till the end?
Or bury it?
"I not afraid" His upper lip trembles,
ears twitch.
The rest of his body
does not like the view inside his head,
A dead headmaster returns as a rat.
Out from his knuckles,
yellowing stiletto teeth stretch, to tap, tap, tap
on a much-scratched mahogany desk,
the sound makes the silence gnaw itself.
Fifty years on, a screech owl wakes up,
screaks once.
"I not afraid" says a scared mouse,
who then reflexively scurries deeper
into his pillow.
The old man’s head
manages a slight uncertain nod,
while his sanity
slips away into a pen-stained inkwell.
One screak is all it took.
It’s evening rush hour on 101
Parched hills burn golden
Hemmed gnarled oaks see no road
Crowded between cars heading home
Smell the sage with windows rolled
God’s garnish perfumes my nose
His acres shrinking like my heart
AC on, car windows are closed
Distant lovers wait while hills burn
My off-ramp leads to no homecoming
I close my eyes and count to five
Grip the wheel terror wakes me at two
Whisper to me, live this rush hour
The hills grow darker by the minute
The oak stretches its shadowy arms
No one to welcome me this Tuesday
Two cats starving hastens not this drive
Soon twilight's violet will consume this gold
The oak, the hills, and I'll return to darkness
Return to the natural hue of the universe
If not for hope, I and our galaxy are devoid
We reflexively wait for a revolution
I unable to count to ten on the road
If not for hope, no exit welcomes
Because of hope, I came home
To the company of my screen
We humans, we tend to do a lot of things reflexively as an instinct.
If we cannot fight, we flight.
When we flight, we spend a majority of our time thinking.
We tend to dwell on a lot of bad memories.
We tend to grieve on our problems for way too long.
And even if we try to get ourselves out of the thought cycle we find ourselves failing. Why would that be?
I mean we as humans can not guarantee the next breath we take, can we?
Then why bother about the future that I am not even sure of?
I mean every single one of us suffers from something or the other, whether we show it or not.
We are all suffering.
So if my suffering today will be something i will forget tomorrow, I wish to not suffer anymore in the present.
Rather i shall live for the moment, forget about my past and the future.
For today, i will live and be thankful that i got to sleep sound, eat well and breathe another moment.
I take the world's pain.
Reflexively
Unconsciously
With such great facility
The globe's own personal Giver
Autologous torment on the other hand
Hides in a maze of inaccessibility.
It is hazy, out of focus
Like a distant memory of a past dream
Oh, but external pain
Beckons with a frequency only I am attuned to
It is palpable
Cuts me with sharpness
It draws me like a magnet to the north
I soak it in through every pore
When my body is too full
I stack it on my shoulders
Hunched under the weight
My feet move slowly and deliberately
Don't fall. Don't drop it.
I stay on 2 feet
Yet buildings crumble around me
And within me
Agony bullets ping pong off my organs
Leaving visceral holes,
On ramps for poison to seep into my blood stream
There must be a cure
A way to shield and deflect
And to purge my bones of the venom
But without the weighted blanket of torment
My own bones would be exposed
I couldn't stand the sight of their brittleness
So I continue to cushion them with quilts of despondency.
At least they have something to lean on.
•My breath wont let me say that you’re gone.
• This continuous pressure your mere memory forces on me pins me to this Earth
•won't you please let me go?
•At night I hear you unintelligibly shout to me through my pillow, your seething laugh haunts what precious moments I actually do sleep.
•Your visits should comfort me but they don’t, I dread seeing your baleful face.
•Especially since they come at 3AM.
•With a sweaty brow, and quivering heart.
•Thump. Thump. Thump.
•Was it my own heart? Incessantly beating, throbbing, quaking at the thought of you?
•No.. I just know its you.
•Thump. Thump. Thump.
•With every step the memory of your hateful fingertips burns the skin around my neck. I reflexively reach up to touch my throat and swear.. I can almost feel you there.
•Thump. Thump. Thump.
•I reach for the doorknob of my bedroom, the bedroom we used share, where you would leave me crying, bloodied and bruised…and with a shaking hand tighten my grip.
•THUMP!
•I pull the door open aggressively, being fully prepared to meet with your ghost face to face, but was only met with a cool breeze.
•Its like this every night.
Moody.
He is absolutely blameless
Illogical, moral, and ethical arguments
He doesn't say anything; he simply does
It's conceivable he's behaving reflexively
It arrives, then vanishes
A kid is born and then dies
He lacks intelligence and emotional empathy
And the importance of balancing his relationships
It appears to be cruel and horrible
In both words and deeds
written: May 09, 2022
An old lion limps,
bones crumbling with each step.
Hyenas must kill him.
The once strong cannot remain
to infirm the thriving.
Antelope reflexively run
from hair-triggering scents.
A young pride hunts;
death lives at ease with life.
Fawns and calves are born
into needy mouths.
Windblown dust scatters scraps
of sun-clawed pelts.
Collective self-consciousness,
the well where I draw
old voices and struggles
lie deep in its craw
What’s shared but unstated,
reflexively pawned
to borrow ungiven
the right to what’s wrong
Collective self-consciousness,
polarity’s friend
unspoken meridian
between fact and pretend
To wait in the memory
of what’s yet to come
released by the moment
—humanity won
(The New Room: February, 2022)
When she stepped into the traffic
did she see the oncoming,
judge the distance;
the fleet footedness
of her thoughts calculating
the crossing,
or did she read the red end of her life
the way a deer might
caught in a blind light,
paralyzed by decisions?
I watched,
perhaps other eyes were on her
too far away from the moment
to save or rescue her time.
When planes break apart
the passengers fall out of it
thinking, calculating,
& dying before the end.
Possums lay in the road
gambling on deadness
to fend off an 18 wheelers.
Did a ghost of a thought
push her back,
keep her swaying
like a cartoon road-runner
on the curb edge,
or did she plunge into the truck
gambling that she would
always be
a moment away?
Was she already lost
as she unraveled a tangle
at the other side of town.
This we cannot say,
for most of us reflexively
looked away.
As the rod of living pulsating light
Humming with energy does magnetise
The elixirous divine current of delight
Manifests joy within we cannot describe
Imagine polarities within in divine union
An intimate lingering lovers caress
Fusion causing a slow motion explosion
Renewal of rapturous bliss climax
As one of the limbs of Shivas attributes
Divine bliss liberates & captivates
Love in love with love reflexively resolute
The seductive dance within elates
Thus becoming a transmutation heavenly
Hollowed out empty form ignited
As the explosion renews within continuously
Bliss hypnotic holds us delighted
04-August-2020
Conundrum
This confounding conundrum,
This continuing act of untying the pesky knots of existence,
This conniving, beating whirlwind of ever-swirling stresses,
Again served up on a plate mixed with legumes and angst,
Is taking all of us to the brink of aqueous insanity.
Life is eating at our gonads like a ravenous chigger,
And the madness of it all bites at our minds and hearts,
Leaving half dead infected people with terminal frowns.
We wake up every morning dreading the endless daily tasks,
The endless psycho-dramas concerning trivial insignificances,
The never-ending shuffles through the busy, hopeful turnstiles, to
Another turn of the page, another interminable trip to Magic City,
Where we all find our share of romantic nirvana dressed in grey suede.
But a dollar must be earned to pay the bill of the one who must pay his.
And so, we continue to breathe on reflexively and instinctively,
Like fat whales pulsing in a green bay.
entered said market seconds later,
and dye motioned (to her) as she sigh
lent lee reached same idle sturdy cart,
which ordinarily requires a quarter to pry
loose from a train of chained property.
I unthinkingly, reflexively, and blithely my
deferred politesse she took possession of cart.
Within instantaneous affirmation je
nais sais quais consent given for her
to load groceries in sought after cart, this guy
noir got fast impression immediately formed,
whereby visually this chic chica to die
for spurred enticement as very pleasing
Halloween eye candy, hence desirable allie
madamoiselle in question totally tubularly
unaware of lovelorn spate. Minutes before
tardy reaction (and perfect comeback
ex post facto) momentarily preoccupied chore
viz reviewing mental check list, my intent
to act with courage and acknowledge a door
quick to close. Her (unbeknownst)
attractiveness to me. Upon inadvertently
froze me like Eeyore
Ultra Sound Tickles (By Moji Agha)
Ultrasound tickles tickle soundly;
Or do they?
Do they have a choice in the matter?
Or they tickle the trunk of pain reflexively,
to cause reflective pained chuckles
at our deep folly?
Do ultrasound tickles
tickle soundly by nature?
Or do they learn,
by nurture,
to cause ultra tickles?
Or alas,
do nature and nurture
are tickle-dancing together,
as they always have?
Now,
talking about my tickled trunk:
Does a lonely tree
fallen in the forest
of human ignorance
make a sound (perhaps an ultra sound),
when tickled by the seeing sounds of climate change?
Can the ultra sounds
of the worried hearts,
of those who have "washed their eyes"
see one another?
Can they see, hear, touch, smell, and taste
the fallen tree's sound of ultra pain?
Of ultra warning?
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