The Train Rider

Brooklyn, April 2011

She wore yellow boots and a nervous face.
She chewed her finger nails 
when she wasn't pushing back

the black-framed glasses that kept slipping down
her tapered nose,
back to their proper place.

(Plastic shutters on the windows
of a burrowing soul)

She could not help it
they kept slipping down,
yet still she would not raise her eyes 
to meet his unnoticing gaze
that hovered somewhere on a poster
above her right shoulder;
some banal picture
to help the subway travelers' minds wander,

roused momentarily,
intermittently, 
by the flat tone, the equally bored voice
of the conductor announcing
the next destination.

Both her feet tapped on the dirty ground
quick, tap, tap, tap,
heels in the air, toes never shifting,
as if held on by the need for contact 
perhaps, with something firm
something sure,
the slits of her eyes blinking, 
almost as fast
as the soles of her feet
the fingers in her mouth,
she frowned,
as the train hurtled
through the underground.

 

Three Arts of the I Am

Meditating is the Art of Listening
In Silence
Learning the Grace
Of the Breath,
The Give and Take
Accepting and Giving
All the Gifts of Life
And Seasons of Time
With Overstanding

Yoga is the Art of Holy Communion
Of Greeting
The Holy Trinity:
Mind, Body and Soul
Taking a Moment 
To Honor Each
Their Conversation

Love is the Art of the Vessel
Cleaned
By the Unobstructed Flow
Of a Universe that Roars
In Be-Ing

Rosewater on Fujiyama

Under the lantern swaying in the cherry blossom breeze
we observe,
the petals float in the sky
and cover Fujiyama with snow white hair and a light pink blush cloud.

Hear how 
the spring giggles through the streams
as it plays amongst the boulders
joyous for the sun’s long awaited embrace
Its kind regard upon their stony faces.

The dusk air shimmers with a million tiny stars
The fire flies scintillating in flight
Rising to kiss the indigo sky
Smell the enfolding of lovers found home
The salt, the sweet the bitter the kiss

Of A thousand memories
    That live their sepia colored days
                In the cherished part of my brain
        This is the one I keep

Ode to the Revolutions

Ode to Arab Revolutions
April 17th, 2011

Pullulating masses seep
bulging crevasses creep
cracks disintegrate walls
the integration of the classes
no longer held back
by the heel of a boot
or the sores on their feet

A Tale of Isuk

[working draft]

Vast brush strokes of stars swept the moonless night like the trail of Onyadi’s crystalline breath when the God of Wind blew Earth into shape.   Only the waves responded to the cry over the deserted beach, but even the moon was too shy to be final witness and she turned her ivory eye away from the tattered shapes on the sand, hiding behind a cloud.  The battle field lay strewn with the carcasses of the young and old, enemy and ally alike whose military colors dissolved under death’s unifying, glistening camouflage.  Only the weeping , only the weeping carried over the tide’s cruel indifference and the stars’ cold stares, but not even Her weeping could reach across the galaxies to return the lives She had shed in that moment of folly.

The news of the battle and the subsequent massacre spread like wildfire through the coastal hamlets, and the wind carried the air of viciousness back into the heartland to stoke the anger that had grown amongst populace.  “Bitch…”…”witch”….Bitch…When the Governor finally heard the whispered venom that traveled into his palace on the loose lips of one of his regular whores, he understood the time had come for the guillotine, that favorite of French toys, to end the life of the one being on earth he feared above all else.  She was going to die, the people finally hated her and everything she stood for, she couldn’t even leave the island if she wanted to, the fisherfolk feared her more than the land people.  That night, he fucked with a ferocity his surprised courtesan failed to match despite her usual prowess and after she was dispatched, the Governor of the largest Negro plantation island in the Western Hemisphere slept for the first time [].  “She’s going to die” was his final thought before the insomnia foretold at the time of his birth dissipated like the fog of a tempestuous season.  The bitch is finally going to die.

:: Children in Playground :: Frida ::

Children in the Playground, New York city
Harlem, April 4th

There are two classes of children
Those that run in the grass
And those that play with cement on the ground
One learns the freedom of space
The other learns the fence that frames
And cages their little world, their little mind
Bars at the windows of pink-walled tower blocks
Hiding the sky



Frida
April 4th

Unbridled liberty
    in chaos of self
         a certain deity
 
You utter the ultimate war cry


   






~ Dedicated to a Muse~

Peacock

The Pilgrim stood outside the gate and stared in amazement at its ornate splendor.  Made of dark wood, it rose high into the sky, with red sandstone walls stretching on either side, hugging the citadel that sat in the middle of immense fields of giant rippling stalks that waved languorously under the playful springtime breeze. In the distance,  the smoky blue mountains stood watchful, silent,  like formidable guardians. 

The Pilgrim touched the surface of the giant doors – it was unlike any wood she had ever seen or felt before.  Carved with intricate designs molded with filaments of gold, bronze and copper,  it was inlaid with polished precious stones.  The pilgrim reached out to caress a turquoise that glittered an emerald hue.  The woodwork was so seamless, that when closed, the gates did not appear to be made of two immense doors but rather, the radiant fantail of a peacock.

How beautiful, she thought. 

Behind her, young fig trees rustled in the dry breeze and the chorus of birds that had so heralded the morning, quietened underneath the buzz of the noon-day heat.  

The dome of a golden citadel shimmered above the turrets of the wall, but all around her, she could see no one. The magnificent wood was too thick for her to knock and be heard, and there seemed to be no guard in the watchtowers built at intervals along the fortress. How did one make their presence known in these parts?

The old farmer had told her a wealthy man owned the sea of sugar that ran into the stretching horizon, as well as an extensive library famed for its breadth and depth of learning.  The man himself was supposedly very wise, a wide-traveled man reputed equally for the magnanimity with which he treated the laborers of his fields as the ferocity with which he crushed any challenge to the superiority of his sugar empire.

Perhaps he was a person to guide the pilgrim back to the correct path to the coast-lands.

“Have no fear, you will not be lost long!” her host the farmer had cheerfully declared just that morning, as he had poured her a cup of a pungent dark coffee that they shared for break fast. The pilgrim, used to milk, frowned at the uncertainty of both these affairs.