I love the singers who ask

whos gonna save my soul now
who will comfort me
what about now

from an after shudder
sitting on the wreck
they just escaped

Now comes with the know of
cessation of a soul damned
and an unanointed vuln

Now sing on with a heart of
sand and silt

Web of words

Now I learn how an archaelogist
is different from geologist
The tectonic plates are the
builders like the architects

Cuter than ever

A white cat is lying still
posing sleep
Hard to find cats lying still
with a bottle next to them
and a tell-tale patch
of piss or booze on the ground

no movement of the heart
no ripple in the whole body
Did the monster cat hater get him
but no signs of such
which grose the paper on which
his 'Most Wanted' was printed

Scare Cat

I am the hungry cat
who first mews
enough till fed

I chivvy you for
more milk until
you hide in
fear.

Springbok

With a white mask for a face
the dark brown stripe
a shadow below the
hard brown skeleton
the soft white belly
slid in from under
like the work of a
taxidermist distorted.

Tsessebe

Mothers hold babies
in their arms
prodding their gaze
towards the camera

bellies covered
in clothes
only faces show
satiated or not

Mary and Infant Jesus.

Half knowledge is dangerous

Knowledge
Route A (right)
and B (on left)
form a loop

Intended Route
go on A and dont take B (at the beginning)
turn back after the peak

Half knowledge
Dont take B

Detour
when half knowledge
is deployed
each step away
from the destination
The Beginning.

Coffee

forever on the mind
when unavailable
easily forgotten
on the shelf
in a refrigerator

On Turning 45

I will be mad on the road
at the speed limit

A Wallace Stevens poem

is a cemetry of words

Whereways

Early in the morning
as the male black
cat with white feet
and a female cat
belonging to him
hurry down
so does the hiker

A pair of strangers

If I could rise
as high as the lamp
post I could tell
what the bird with
white underbelly
and light sandstone
feathers was

If some go far
some go high
to elude you
In sight
out of reach

Trees at Work

My tea time companion at home
an ash throated flycatcher
its voice reverberating
in the calls of its brethren
at office parking lot.

A different bird call
sent me into a slow tap dance
as my feet followed
as projection of
the birds movement on
the branches onto the
horizontal axis

A Gila Woodpecker
to keep me company
until the end of
migration.

The Golden bough

A pomegranate tree
at the bottom
of Grand Canyon

A pumpkin patch

in November.

The could have been pies
and the jack-o-lantern eyes
the brittle that
it can still be

Merwins little children

With shards dispelled
on account of a fall

landing on a carpet
not missing to
ricochet off a chair

there lay a shark
with its jaws open

Upside down a tooth
or protome of an
elephant

As a vase
it had a nice rim.

Mudra

The Antlers
uneven fingers
spread
beseech

Experiments in the lab of a surrealist

I kneel on the road
to greet a baby
and her purple animated
stuffed antelope with
caribbean hairdo.

I hope the
white truck and
its driver
take whats
left of the road.


*****************

Peeling unwieldy
layers - hard to
separate puff
pastry sheets-
from soap

Audit Earth

One morning the
post-it pad with
a curlicue P
on the white fridge
said " Audit Moon"

Lying on the floor
I caught a bit of
it at the edge
of the top of the window:
It sure is shy.

A visitor could
find the faults
on Earth
not one speck
but many Earthians.

More than four directions

It takes a breezy morning
after months of taking the
same road east
to slowly reveal some
more mountains

In the city of mountains
in every direction
each road
is a new direction.

On the ground

Flashing lights and a squeaky long alarm
Respite only when you hear
The cause for this alarm is being investigated

This continues.

The plane was delayed
maybe to not miss this show.

***************

An obnoxious sound from the intercomm
the distress of many can
be saved by one's
largesse of holding down a button.

Eustachian tubes

A child bawls
when the plane
is about to descend

I know his name
Raghav
called out to
stop him each time
he would run out of
sight

My pride in my
Eustachian tubes
took a blow
when skydiving
I thought
I would die

Fawns

are born without odor
says Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Not odorless like
Aveeno's fragrance free
daily moisturising lotion
which has a medicinal odor.

Pure water has no taste.

*************
The Hidden Life of Deer.

In the wild

an animal
is safe
lonely

Paper cycle

One evening
I waited for a tricycle
one that would hide
if my dad couldnt bring it

why do we stop at that?
Why not ask for a
plane
boat
palace

****************
If you are teaching how to make a paper boat, learn how to make a T shirt out of it along with the story.

Kafka's feast

A woman is
adding red to the
pepperoni pizza

Grease kills appetite.

Chop stick at Benihana

It cannot be
grain by grain
as my colleague suggests
Chop Stick joined at the top
gets you eating before
you can greet them:
"How to eat with this?"

An Ad

in British accent
for USA audience
If I were the announcer
I would doubt every bit
of what if I spoke right

And then

When the floods take us
let us get comfortable
living in water
with no posessions

If I were a hummingbird

I could not say no to
the white bubbles
in the red fluid
in the rose petal

Hijacked words

A pedestrian walking
with green lights
for the cars
A set of big birds
flying over the road
duck!!

Molding

Babies of yore
came with bonnets
frilly around the face

Today I saw a pink baby
with a white helmet

Adolf

I was reading The Burning baby by Dylan Thomas from Telling Stories, anthology.I did not finish the story. A line that read in it reminded me of D H Lawrence's Adolf story we read in high school.

The rabbit's head was riddled with pellets, the dogs whad torn open its belly, and the marks of a ferret's teeth were upon its throat. He lifted it gently up, tickling it behind the ears.

Its the ears, may be my text book had an illustration.

Pick Eye

How long can you let it stay in your eye?
easy to feel but not find

The search agitates the eye
more than the intruder
forgotten for the day
until the evening when
the lash sticks its one end
out like a kid
crawling out the door
in a hurry to evade
the mother

More than happy to
pick the eye
like an expert
without
the help of a mirror

**********************
Pick your ear - Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking - O. Henry

Repoussoir

Concentric circles
of dried minerals
into the bowl
on its first day
of being a bird bath

********************
Aldegrever Heinrich - Joos van Cleve - Jachim Patinir - Repoussoir
|
Encyclopaedia

Olympia Marblewing

Note this steno's
antennae
a modern mic
her sparse stole
how pure to reflect
fresh white petals
and green sepals
that she lands on

A zebra swallowtail egg

A tiny green grape
so small
that its spherical

A Pudin Hara pearl

A sweater button

In it is encoded the
recognition of pawpaw
leaves

Bird bands

of different sizes
next to each other
like measuring cups
of 100ml, 200ml, 500ml, 1l, 2l
of an Indian milkman
or an oil grocer

Young clothespin

How old is migration?
Older than its first viewer.
Everything has a time stamp
A banded bird
Its band

Radiometric dating
Fossils

Sails down

She sat on a bench           Black Crowned night heron
still in grey         stood fixed like a statue

a flock of birds             In its dormant time
could have made             the heron was no good
her move with them            to distract when its even
to the next thought             hard to notice

Some wind pushed her to move on while the heron stuck to its ground

As the post

beneath

the cormorant
extends itself
on the roosting board
like a wicker on fire
in a lantern
tuned to its
brightest

Another great week at Jube School! Stay tuned for our next animal lantern creation! #jubeschool #lanterns #puppets #wolf #buffalo #yycarts pic.twitter.com/w09P1Xyy2T

— Green Fools Theatre (@GreenFools) October 26, 2018

The stilts

stand ankle deep
in the still water
all in the same direction
anticipating waves to wash
them off their feet

On the back of an envelope

Writing down
  ingredients
    for a Pistachio
      cake from yellow mix

for the ones
  at the grocers
      and at home

What does club soda
  do in a cake with a box
    of pistachio pudding in
      and another on top

Following another envelope
  will take us there
    to a mountain top
      pinnacle peak

*************************
Format from Invitation poem from "Red Bird Poems by Mary Oliver"

Threshold half way up

A stocky wooden door
placed sideways
on the wall
like a frame

On a close look
I recall a
huge cuboid log
that slides from the
inside from the wall
on one side of the
door to the other
to hold the
door halves

****************

Cafe Krishna, Chandler

The Spectrum

of varying colors
on the steps
at Nukus Art Museum
coaxes you to find
a lateral pattern
while moving up

Enigma of languages

Everyday morning, in high school I awaited for the language classes, happy with the last days homework. When I moved to the high school, all the Telugu I would learn was done. All the later classes had what I had already learnt. I think it was this reason, that gave the chance for experimenting. The homework consisted of using words in forming sentences. Around the same time I got into Hindi class, I had just learnt the letters, while the rest of the class was way ahead. I cried in the class, when I didnt understand the words.
Once we get comfortable with the basics,then there are possibilities!!

A language for a bird

There are more than
8000 bird species
There are more than
7000 languages
spoken in the world*

Eliezer Nowordwoski,
" And how many more have
disappeared over time?
Probably 12000"

For each lost bird
a language lost
for each birds song
a language unheard

#########################

*Resurrecting Hebrew, Ilan Stavans (pg 50)

Big picture

Sipping water with no ice
waiting for white mocha
an article claiming
continuation
of the part I missed
in read-flip of
yesterdays newspaper.

On finishing the whole of it
I realise the main article
on the front page which
my eyes skipped

hijacked by a
small picture of a troubled
child

Donut Peaches

Orange - tomato and basil green - spinach and veggie tortillas are a break from the brown. Ordinary looking Organic onions should come in a fancy form too like Donut Peaches for the hefty price.

8.1.2021

Exactly 12 years after posting this, on Jul 4, 2021, a afriend got donut peaches. I got to taste them.

Last night

I visited a place where

A baby warthog
had hair around
its ear that
could light up
like a glow-worm

A overripe brinjal
in a egg holder
tasted sweet.