First Signs of Summer

Now there are only the deposits
The smell of smoke after a fire

The goose-bumped skins,
The chill of spines, like frozen electricity
Must hibernate

The leaves have been drooping
Their lives suspended only
By snake-like roots,
As if they wished to falter

Now they tremble lightly,
Like giggling children
Tickled by the bare breeze
Of the morning

The songs of birds
Renounce to spring
Their choppy chirps
Are nature's orchestra
For the arrival

A single ray of light -
Its sliver like a sword -
Punctures the corner
Of my windowpane,
Taps it gently with its
Edge, as if to say:
"Here it comes"

Riverdale Diaries

May 19, 2013

To my left, outside of the square glass windows of my new living room, light rain is falling. It is not pouring; it is rather a sprinkle – quiet and soft, like the dance of ballerinas. I decided not to go out today. Not to the city, anyways. I woke up very early this morning, 6am, with a strange anticipation – a feeling of unknown productivity. At 1:37 pm, it is still unknown. But I’ve been reading. And I’ve been reading about reading, and about writing, and about Beauty. And maybe the strangeness that woke me up this morning, even before it woke up the sun, was just that: Beauty. The beautiful recognition that I have the day sprawled naked before me. That I can dress it however I please. The beautiful recognition that time, for the first time in a very long time, is now yielding, like a tamed lion – an obedient watch dog – letting me do with it whatever I desire. But those things are just beautiful… they’re not truly Beauty in itself, which of course, I know is unattainable. But from time to time, like it did this morning, it whispers tenderly in my ear, like a child that wants to play, urging me to search for it. And so I do. Today I will read. I’ll watch movies. And I’ll read some more. And during intervals, try to search for the beautiful child. I’ll follow it, always from a distance, until it goes back to hiding in between the creases. 

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life... For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

-Ernest Hemingway

Living By Myself

My eyes followed the car

As it rode down the street

Like a tremendous whale surfing

Out to a sea I no longer swim in

Absence

The world seemed vast,

Surroundings widened  

And I was like a child on the shores

Watching the waves recede

I’m small –

Inconsequential –

More singular

Than ever before 

Spring Blues

               After reading Sexton 

I smoked
With a mild hangover –   

Residues of last night’s laughter

My legs, unsteady
Hands, vacillating – two fingers
Firmly holding the cigarette butt


From its head, an innocuous flame flared
Like an extension of the sun 

Maybe my hands knew  

And held life from fleeting,

Deceived by smoke and lust for flying,
Their rigid grasp, like the strains
Of a determined survivor

The warmth does not console me
Spring is late to bud
Within me, a stale fear has chilled
My skin – burned it dry

I never notice ants in winter, but now
They crawl toward me, like weeping puppies
My feet have lost their danger, I must have lost
My strength, and now my head is low,
Like a drooping flower, bent as if pulled
By the ocean’s tide

The garden echoes the voices
Of strangers,
Like a ricochet of crickets
But my mouth is stuffed
With cotton balls,
The tongue, jammed
Like a swollen thumb 

...I cannot speak

From afar I saw a girl
As timid as a ladybug
Silent, like May rains

I used to know you, but I left
To follow the trail of time barefoot,
My bare back facing ashes
That never stopped burning

The past looks down
Upon my naked corpse
Its eyes, red-veined with panic

But although my head sags
Like candle wax, my gaze remains
Afloat, like the eyes of a sailor
That refuses to drown 

Journal

You implore

Answers that I cannot provide

Your stare is blank – absent –

Like the white of my pages

As we sit still – naked silhouettes –

Penciled by the shadows

Of midnight

Beneath the coppered outline  

Of a swollen moon, you rise

Your eyes heavy with slumber

To reproach me with silent accusations

Your looming fingers,

Feeble – like broken twigs

They do not supply, you say

As you proceed to tear me,

A masochistic ritual you endure 

Forgetting that I can only confess

Truths you have already discovered 

Portrait of My Mother

Let me place you on the deck, like it should have been

With the tips of your toes grazing the water

I’ll make it so that it quivers

 Lazily with the brush of a breeze

And let the color be green

Or pastel turquoise, like your necklace  

So that it does not overshadow

The radiance of your lips 

Which I’ll curve gently

In a casual smile, as if you didn’t know

That I was there, and you were just happy

Stretched bellow the blades of orange light

I’ll make them razor sharp

Puncturing the center

Of your belly, poking

Playfully like a child

Not fire bright,

Carrot orange –

The last fuming flickers of the day

Before the chilling moon

Which, I’d make silver like cold metal 

But I want the day to look mild, not too warm

So that it does not take from the comfortable

Grip of your lustrous eyes

I’ll gloss them neatly, like polished pearls

They’ll be perfect spheres of tender

Brown, to complement the smoothness

Of your suntanned skin

Glazed in russet

Like a dress of wet sand,

And auburn hair will latch

Faithfully to your freckled shoulders

The damp ends spread out like the fingers 
Of an open hand 
And it’ll all look blissful

As if no one was ever there