Nonet

That  window without curtains invites the eye. At night

the glass reveals round table, open book, plate

pink tulips in a vase that match 

the tablecloth. The halo of light

from the lamp shows nothing

more. No one there.

A still life

Not ideas

Things

Mirror

In no mirror

mind appears. Or

unsought, is there?

Skin as cover

eyes flicker forth

reflect on naught

I.  A mystery

mined, diamond ore

Mirage the core

(Novem - form invented by R. Skelton: tercets, three words per line of one and two syllables, two syllable word moving in each line from last to middle to first. Each tercet should also contain one consonant four times.)

 

  

 

Leaf, Road, Heart

It's April, full of bud and leaf 

Sky too wide and blue for grief

Yet somewhere clouds the rain forebode 

The day is long, but joy is brief

Basho walked the lonely road

turned whatever life bestowed

into haiku. That was his art

Writing, so the ordinary glowed

The child's already made a start

He finds the gold in every part

of every day. My prayer for him --

He never have a heavy heart

(Interlocking Rubaiyat: aaba, bbcb, and so on, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by R. Frost being a lovely example.)

Why is life like this?

It's April, full of bud and leaf 

Sky too wide and blue for grief

Yet somewhere clouds the rain forebode 

The day is long, but joy is brief

Child

You, in the throes of everything being new

and caught up in the jeopardy of names

such that each thing has one, none or a few

while No No No-ing the conflicting claims

of impertinent others especially fathers 

and mothers who tell you what to do

and gravity which exerts its power

tyrannically, relentlessly, on you

Dearest, to climb is to fall, but kisses make 

bumps better. And when it's time to sleep, 

don't weep - bees will fill your dreams with honey 

When the sun calls your name, it's time to leap

out of bed and play. Being human takes

more learning how than being a bunny

Intimations

Sometimes I turn as if I've heard a bell

and listen. I hear its echo, or so

it seems, like a stone dropped in a deep well

Almost silence, then voices hush and swell 

words whispered in a language I don't know

except one. I hear it clear as a bell

Something's very near, a familiar smell

brings back some memory of long ago

ripples after a stone dropped into a well

Close enough to touch, cool caress felt

inside the dream, some music very low

I turn turn turn and wake before the bell

Lips as light as snowflakes drift and melt

The hand that takes my hand is very cold

pulls me to the edge of the secret well

Whisper, a breath, It's almost time to go

So close. Death, is it this patient and slow?

Somewhere there is a ringing, like a bell

The sound of the moon. It's fallen in the well

Time and the body

As white overruled black

thick thinned, thin thickened

smooth grew grooved

cross hatch shadowed

words blurred

misheard, misread

fall on death ears

The brain of my existence

handwringing on the wall

my constellation prize --

Good radiance!

I tuned a blind eye.

One way ticket

The path is made by walking, what more

         is there to say? 

No matter how far

you're going, you find out where

        when you get there

What do you pack? 

Nothing. There's nothing

         you lack

Keep track of the journey

        You can't go back

One way street

I asked someone, Do you know the time?

What was I trying to find out? 

My place in a continuum I suppose

Indeterminate, just as I reached it

A rock in a rushing stream too slippery to hold

The moment itself washed away

I with it

The traffic light turned green

I walked, restless

In the warmth of that beguiling spring

In the warmth of that beguiling spring

I walked, restless

The traffic light turned green

I with it

The moment itself washed away

A rock in a rushing stream too slippery to hold

Indeterminate, just as I reached it

My place in a continuum I suppose

What was I trying to find out? 

I asked someone, Do you know the time? 

Waste

My grandmother cut the skin from fruit 

so thin, even that minimum, not wasted

fed to the cow. The mangoes she sliced tasted

like kisses after quarrels, transmuted

And she bargained hard with the man who sold

fish he'd caught and brought, small, silver 

in the basket, slivers of the river

cooked with grated coconut, eaten whole.

When I was naughty, she would bargain

to lessen how many whacks I should be given

She used to pray that my sins were forgiven

so I could be with her in heaven

I have nothing of hers, except a photo 

Her gaze, out of deep shadow

pierces. It takes me by surprise

that I have her eyes.

Cynopterus sphinx

Richard Wilbur says the mind is like a bat.

In the temple, you smell their guano

acrid, harsh at the back of the throat

in the passage to the sanctum sanctorum

High up in the carved crevices, upside down

sleeping through the offerings of camphor

the flowers, the bells, the prayers, the blown

conch. At twilight they wake and fly forth

Is that mind, somewhere in the carved dark 

of the head, in flight to meet the night's dark?

 

Daily Riyaaz

I used to think that poetry was not for me

Anannya convinced me otherwise

Now I wonder what would April be

Without this practice, that's not

as it once seemed, the setting down of words

It's the attending to, the being caught

by something seen, or hardly seen

that grammar can barely hold

Mist rising from the stream

of consciousness, 

the words the X

that marks the spot,

no more than that.

Trigger warning

Worst marriage ever

Jason and Medea

Craziest rape 

Zeus/swan and Leda

Painfulest torture

Poor Prometheus

or Tantalus or Sisyphus

Not good parents either

Cronus ate his offspring

Agammemnon sacrificed his daughter

Hera flung

her crippled son off a cliff

Don't say I didn't warn you

The old stories are NSFW

I keep on reading them. Why?

Perhaps they tell me 

something I need to know

about myself. That's one theory

that Freud and Jung promoted

Or maybe they are cautionary

tales: What not to do

Lying Eyes

I can't get over that it's not

the sun at daybreak

but a trick of light

waves curved upward

by air, over that other

illusion, the horizon

Seeing, deceived 

into believing

How fast the days are getting longer

Shaking off my dreams I find the sun

already dripping honey on the floor

beneath the curtains. Two minutes, more 

or less, equinox to solstice. Someone's

done the complicated calculations

taking into consideration that

the sun cresting the horizon, in fact

is illusion. We're tricked by refraction

every day. Maybe that's why in myth Dawn

the goddess comes before the Sun, soft rays

to drive the terrors of the night away.

Then seven horses bring illumination

The god who dazzles, frightens, brightens, burns

Feel, the sun rise;  know, the Earth turns

Lessons

This is what I've learned - of sorrow

If not today, for sure tomorrow

Joy is wondrous bright though brief

yet will outweigh our sodden grief 

Hearts that break are made like bone

to mend. Better that than hearts of stone

When you're young you get thing wrong

that's the way to grow up strong

The earth will turn without your care

So why not just stand and stare?

Why not find time to rhyme?

Bad poetry is not a crime

Remind yourself, as morning breaks

Only the dead make no mistakes

Dance to every song

Life is short, death is long

Sour grapes

I seem to be writing again and again

the same poem, rearranging those thoughts

I've been thinking all my life: nothing's gained

without pain. So banal an insight, that 

even oysters know it

and so much better show it

Dance is not the same 

nothing remains

except the aches and pains

Names

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

                                                                                               Henri Poincaré

The baby can't go by a puddle

a fountain or the wet grass

without saying 'aqua'

And your nose, his nose

his father's nose, he knows 

and must affirm 'nose'

'Moon' he says. Whenever

it can be found, it stops his tears

But the wide river reflecting sunset

pink and gray like a shell, rippled 

and vast, he's not so sure

is the same thing he splashed he drank

Bad Poetry

I could sit down to write a verse or two

about the wrens, they've started building nests

in the golden cedar by the gate through

which I enter, their chirping does suggest

a poem could be made of that. Or else

the hellebores, that all this wintertime

have been making blooms, drooping copper bells

under the snow, that's finally melted. Rhymes

I'll say it so myself, rather clichéd.

And yet, for some archaeologist

digging  in a thousand years, a laundry list

would do as well.  This poem that I've made

so flawed, is just one part, the part with words.

I looked at the flowers, I listened to the birds.

Daily Riyaaz

The habit of thinking in meter and rhyme

is hard to give up once April is done

The most mediocre thoughts seem sublime

when nouns and verbs into sonnets are spun

at least to the writer. It's in thinking

playing with meaning and words on the page

appearing from nothing when pen and ink

make marks that start garbled, a message

that slowly deciphered, makes more than the sense

We conjure, from chaos, the order of tense

future, past, present time's pauses and swells

Somehow the spelling transforms into spells

charms, incantations, or curses with which

A poem turns words into ways to bewitch