Ode to Your Feet

Ode to Your Feet

Kiss the feet
suck the finger
I know you get wet
when tickled behind
the kneeeeeeeee.

Good riddance
to poetic license,
let me tell the truth
that
I love you…

even when
there is
nothing worth
to keep you
loving me.

Woman,
you are one person
who could spell the word
’love’ for me
in Latin and Greek;

Keep the rain
pouring in
a barrage of light
while
I drift.

Let it be a gentle,
gentle breeze
or a gust
that plays
the pied-piper’s tune;

I’ll rest
in your shadow
and try
touching the sky
in cloudless nudity.

Now, when I
want to meet
your eyes
in the heat
of passion,

grant me
the vision
of falling in
the ocean
of endless fervor.

Look in my eyes,
see the indelible
yellow of trust
crying for your
kindness.

Twist your toes;
hold the digits
in contortion,
so that I can puff
away to glory

the last cigarette
held between
your toes,
before I awake
into a sleep of intoxication.

Lady,
in all mistaken
sense of irrelevance,
allow me to ask -
Do you want to sleep alone?

THREE CANTOS ON DEATHS IN DYAL SINGH

“When a big tree falls…, the earth trembles”, decreed the Emperor.


History tells many such
tales of programmed
tremors and genocide,
justified in thy name,
mother earth.

The truth is,
When a tree falls…,
needless to say big or small,
the earth cries.
Full stop.

But when you kill a tree…
the earth cries in anger…
Mourns the death
of birds, nests, eggs.
Of life, love, man.
******************************
The morning after,
do not rush in urgent haste
and smuggle the cut trees
to the nearby crematorium
to burn the dead.

Let the trees rest
in the lap of mother earth
let the bough kiss
the soil for the first
and last time.

Let the branches
smell the earth;
taste the soil
in the leaves:
Let the kiss last a minute longer…
******************************
Remember,
a dead body
on a butchered trunk
won’t catch fire
that easily.

The wetness
of its blood-soaked memory
will put out the
pyre many times
and make you lit again.

Mourners and Murderers,
assemble in the crematorium -
(S)laughter in the name of commonwealth
will beget burnt embers in your eyes
and make you weep for real.
*******************************************************