walk this way…

Some say that a woman is for sleeping with
Long winter nights…

Some say that a woman is for play-likewalk this way
Like a sexy dancer on a green harvest ground
To make her dance with nine-castanets…

Some say she is my spouse…
Some say she is the spiritual debt
That I carry around my neck

Some say; she’s the one who leavens my bread,
Some say; she’s one who gives my children birth…She’s neither this nor that, not a sexy dancer, not a spouse, not a debt, none of that!

She is my arms and my legs and my head..
My mother, my wife, my sister, my lover-confidant
She is My Lifelong Bosom Friend…

-Nazım Hikmet –

ask me…

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.

gone are the birds that were our summer guests…

looking legsThe crickets are raucous; wild for a reason, I guess.
The wind feels like… courage.
(Like that, only simpler.)
The fire pit smoulders; my hair smells of ash.
Tonite.
A season comes to pass framed by silky memories
and eventual, hopeful strains for some near-distant night.
You. Me. This.
We spread ourselves wide to the horizon that cradles our future –
the velvet expanse of our yet-to-be-known.
Awash in the restlessness of almost-goneness
I wish I had more time
grateful I can leave some of all that was behind.
A fruition of time that on this eve
blossoms and wilts.

Leaving is bittersweet.
It always is.
L

– Lola Moi –

after all is set and done…

There was that time
You traced the top of my hipbone
with the tip of your warm finger
and you shivered before me.

Once.

You came so hard
your brain froze and you looked
at me utterly amazed
wondering aloud how I could’ve happened to you
when here I thot you’d happened to me.

There is no remembering room.

Dance cards fill up.
Eggs crack in nests and never hatch.
Washed hands don’t stay clean.

After all.

happy boy