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Morning Hearth

We sat on the morning embers of a waking bed,

the centre hearth of our camp as dawn comes.

Each brought their dream the shadows had spoken, brushed their head with. The fading impressions a little remembered.

The Polish lady asking concerned in a sparce room
only a table, the neighbors catching a boar down our street,

some boys at school picking up cellos to learn.

The drunkenness of sleep so filling
the cavities of the skull,

padding,
insulating from the night sounds,

then slipping away through the holes in bone.

When Soul Realised

When Soul realised who was there,
whose breath warmed and moved the air
Who’s low voice was that accepting, loving resonance,
Soul came out and lay in the basket of arms
Not remembering who to return to.

Asking

‘What is the colour of blood in the veins?

What is the colour of bones in the flesh

Before the sun sees them?

Are they black like the river through snow?

Are they gold and iron until exposed to air?’

When Soul recognised who was there
Surprised by the veins and grains of wood
The absurdity of humanness,
Who’s flame is playing on the wall?
Who brought the Sun in the palm of their hand?
Then Soul came out and lay in the clay hearth of sleeping people
Not caring where to return to.

Asking

‘What is the colour of thought before spoken?

Doesn’t breath leaving the body sound grey?

What is the colour of love in the silence?

Left there…’

Pani is Urdu for water.

Pani

You do not know me

I do not know you.

Let me call you Pani and float this out to you

I have not seen you on TV

Or in a picture in a newspaper.

You have not appeared in figures or statistics
There is not record of you yet.

But allow me to float this out to you

A folded paper lotus veined in words

As a 1000 ties of chords are yearning for you

Willing you to be found, mother, father, uncles, aunts

Cousins, their criss-crossed net of longing trawls for you

But you slip through like water, Pani.

You are water, you are current

The rice paper thinness of life got too wet and tore

You flipped and turned, dust washed from your feet.

My arms are too short, my voice is too weak

My anger does nothing, only flair and burn on a wick

Keeps me awake, moves shadows on the walls
Like eddies until I am distracted again.

The vanity of words

The conceit of poetry

To float folded lotus,

Origami torches on a

Country of water.

You see for all it’s emptiness it’s all I have

You have flowed away Pani

In the company of singers, dancers,

Doctors and farmers teachers, sisters,

Daughters, lovers, sons and brothers

Heads of wheat that will

Find no solid ground

Unheard voices flow together

From dialects to one.

I have heard you Pani

Because I say I have

I say you were

Because I said you were

You do not know me

I do not know you

But allow me to float this out to you

I have not seen you on TV

Or in a picture in a newspaper

You have not appeared in figures or statistics

There is no record of your drowning yet

But allow me to float this out to you.

To donate to the relief efforts in Pakistan click on this link

Hare

Gold eyed with amulet pupils, the hare ran to me,

So confident of flicking, turning,
In it’s fist flexing muscle, one force of direction,
An eerie thousand year gaze
It moved through my space,
A coin or arrowhead turned up from a ploughed field

Could not have been formed, pressed and embossed
More of another time.

The Lock Maker

The blossoms catch the dust at

the gate of the old city, Lahore

The old man had opaque cloudy eyes,

peacocks eggs with a tiny hint of green and blue,

a smile of Pan stained gums, but a real smile.

The heat was caught in the narrow street on

the back of the goats and in

the folds of the black shalwar kameez.

He fitted the parts of locks,

each cut and filed into synapse snapping shapes

that slipped over each other.

He lifted up a steel skull of moving parts and rivets,

repeatedly turned the key displaying it’s ability to

lock, unlock, lock, unlock

Urging me to try he pushed it towards me

I nod, smile, and pay the first price asked

in damp, dust stained notes,

Touching his forehead we share the joke

that I’ve paid far too much.

Between the Heavy Gold Ear Rings I Kissed Her

Between the heavy gold earrings I kissed her,

so expensive they hung weighted by their full gold content.

At the end of the line of jaw, her mouth.

She chose to shape that mouth,
not in words, but a kiss,

for all the words it forms, the mouth’s kiss is

the only that means nothing done alone.

How do you write a kiss?

Between the heavy gold earrings I kissed her.

For all we are in our end of terrace by the field,

The edge of the small town,

It mattered somewhere else

Where, I don’t know,

But more than that

I mattered here.

Night

Longitude.

Here comes the night, the tide turning against receding day, they over lap It will hide the breathing world and coral houses under it’s own exhale and draw. We will bob on our raft bed and turn on swells as it rises. Night must be carrying us between continents, always seas are pushed between edges, contained by barriers, defined by limitations. The night between days.

Latitude.

The wind has been strong, so the traveling will be turbulent. No fear in the absence of light, children we are under covers of change, later we must be serious. God in the parting curtain clouds,
the vaulted and invisible bedroom ceiling, is blowing gently
the exposed heart, it spasms,clenches, plays like a shell of chambers, conical deep throated. The dim mind glows clearer in the absence of light.

Here comes the night, there are no watches no bells to mark time between the living and the dead, leaving and arriving. No mapped triangulated points. The cold wind that carried night’s smell ahead, whispered it was here, and will be long. Untie moorings or break,
do the journey or it will buffet, lift and drop,
shaking deep dreams from us like bilge.