"La petite mort" ~ Sunday, 30 April 2017

Today, I'm heartbroken. I don't know why I'm here. There must be a reason.

I still search for answers as to why this happened. I don't know whom to ask. 

Still, I am here for now. I don't remember how I arrived at this point.

The questions are many. They are ready-to-hand. A blindfold for treason?

Hanging or firing squad? How long before I die? If I don't die, what then?

Exit the womb stillborn? Would that have been better? Why am I still alive?

Someone must love this life. Even I have moments. Fleeting in solitude.

Even I taste the tart raspberries with honey in Greek yogurt and bask

As if the summer sun across my bronze flesh in the ocean, buoyant,

Surfing the perfect waves, tubular in motion, gliding with my body

Over the jet surface then crashing to the depths, deep where a mermaid's den

Nestled under the sea, awaiting a sailor, drowned, hungry to survive.

Fortress of solitude, where the creative spark lights at high altitude,

Origin of lightning, cosmic forces collide in the Crab Nebula,

Radiate beyond space, beyond time, beyond breath, where consciousness resides.

Jubilation! I found the reason I am here, beyond all enquiry,

Ordained to suffer life, old age, sickness and death, wisdom spectacular,

Yoni surrounds lingam, the origin of joy, where the death drive presides.

Sonnet ~ Tuesday, 18 April 2017

There was that night I met DJ 5K spinning bhangra hits straight out of Punjab dressed head to toe in traditional Sikh gear like an ancient guru born in Bombay. I sat mindfully at the box office in yet again another dead end job, working to shuck pistachio shells, beer in hand for my end of the night shift drink.

He took one look at me, the artifice of a poet, my salt and pepper beard, long hair flowing in resplendent black locks, and lean runner's figure then thought how weird to find a sadhu in a pair of Docs in a nightclub, stout in hand, made him think...

"On the Pain of Not Returning" ~ Thursday, 6 April 2017

Unless the stars align in the fourth dimension, I win the lottery, and heaven rains manna from dark, fulgurant skies, I will never return to study at this school, this institute of art in the Chicago Loop. Instead I will perform anarchic acts of love: I will plant raspberries on golf courses, they grow like kudzu in Memphis, burn like wild brush on fire in the hills of Southern California, away from the salty, beach air.

If I were to return to this school my classmates with whom I came to climb the ladder of degrees would all by now be gone, writers who came to learn the fine art of gliding like a flying squirrel in a squadron, a troupe of performing artists on the flying trapeze, graduates in forget me nots and hoops on fire like lions trained to leap bravely straight through the gyre of heat and flames, the scent of fur singed at the mane, golden yet worn for wear.

Remember me, I doubt you will ever forget our time together, time spent at the local bar, wasting our days and nights drinking and toasting Joyce with Bushmills and Guinness if we got paid that day, if not we drank cheap beer and spoke of better days, when we have enough dough to place a winning bet or send some home to mom and dad, earn their respect, as laughable a choice as studying writing at the local art school, it matters not, I fear.