5.30.2021

labyrinth

 


What is it I keep in the center of my labyrinth?

The letters on the spines of the books on my shelf?

The secrets I keep unknown, even to myself?

All the potions that will cure me, or simple absinthe?

 

What are the contours of the walls seen from overhead?

How high I launch my mind with mighty escapism?

How bright is the fall, with light scattered through prisms?

Until you reach the darkness, the center of my dread?

 

Mazes made for a reason, do you understand?

To keep safe what’s most valued? Or hide what is most base?

In a world where both are the same, you’ll find the rat race

Questions neverending supplanting all demands.

 

What is it I search for? Where my Daedalus?

Who designed this latest monstrosity?

Puzzling and exhausting me

With many ways in but no way out

5.26.2021

Shyamali

Consummate professional

One with the dust

Settled on the floor

Sweeping from this door to that door

Back unbroken

So it seemed

Spirit unbowed

Although

Your life was labor

And to us, what more?

Your Hindi must have met

My Bengali

Further along the line

Hand on hip, smiling

Accepting your lot in life

Not having any options

Maybe

But finding respite

In what never changed

a rag, a jhaaro, and the light

in your eyes




5.18.2021

Unifinity-vid


I see constellations

in blind frustration

warriors made

out of the good red clay

stomping on tomorrow’s yield

with injuries from yesterday


firing in the kiln-

manmade artifice

no new newspaper mills-

the thirst for kill

that you-or-me thrill


so pull the water out the well

heaving hard on hope

quench ourselves from fire

because today we could just find

an oasis or a mire


dissolving in solutions-

when the problems loom so large

so close, so loud, deafening- shards

when we already have selective hearing

and our ear drums are dead to

music


then music takes its turn

moving the ocean of mood


please


Turn

It

Down

A

Little (a lot)


w omb sounds begin

a rtistic creation

v olume just so to remind us of

e xistatic

s ilence


now we (I, U, Me, Them, Us- the theme is unity)


We can either

arrive at heaven’s gate

at the rate of fate

Or eat what we have planted-

fruition on our plate


Add in all the flavors

that repelled us oh so much

bitter, sour, sweet

pungent, umami

spicy

Stomach every poison

Our tongues have let speak


Subdue our gazes

Learn from our neighbors

freedom of immigration and customs

respect for difference

especially what is individual

never to exclude the ones longing

for basic belonging-

(who isn’t?)


No One knows the uncharted way

of this united vision

Though we all are rays

In the Sun’s Vision

This mirror world we live in

pointing at each other

Criticisms and all the isms

bouncing back onto ourselves

compounding each and every hatred

and each and every joy

each and every kind act we deploy

each and every dream we pass on to another

each and every apology to our mothers

each and every insult we bomb onto the weak

Each and every cruelty we attach to when we think

Each and every disrespect to a people or a person

Each and every movement to a better version

Of Me, I, us (once I meet with U), WE (once them/us does not divide us any further thus)


This is my hope, that we stay dissolved in the solutions, that the water brigade may meet every fire brigade, and that the fire brigade will only be the water brigade, in reality. For accidents may happen, but I am responsible for me. I am responsible for my part in us. Us and Them are responsible for becoming WE. It maybe what it is, but We are who we are; We are what we think, feel, say, do, together, and for the silence that we will return to, the shadow of the light, the emptiness inside us, the beauty burning bright.