Hope

is not in the waiting, Eliot.
 
No, not in her lot.
Hope is in the swing
waltzing with the wind
and the jolt of a young girl's legs
hanging down loosely;
in that oscillating back and forth
between downright naivety
and comforting joy.
 
She could have wrought Love from silence
and not one graceful No
if she'd believed in you, Eliot,
and sowed Hope in the waiting.

TALK

Our eyes will snatch a moment
amid all that glitzy hussle
of the make-up arrangements,
mishaps of forgettable size
and what-if-I-got-to-pees,
hastened calls to the groom
for paying perfectionism its due;
you trying to hush your mum's
final polish-ups to your manners
by wide opening your eyes
and pressing the lips tight 
while twisting your head to see your face
in the mirror in its entirety,
(familiarly and expectedly beautiful it will be);
and that moment so fleeting and full
where our eyes talk a brief silent talk,
will wet those mascaraed lashes.
But rest assured. Yours will be water-proof
and fleeting moments don't leave a mark.
 

V3

What they did not teach
When they showed us the ways of Go
Was that sixteen years later
That same verb
In a sentence with only one
Adjoining component
Could drill beneath my left breast
Like a corkscrew
Reeling streaks of blood,
Changing costume as it reels
To find the one that fits best.

How I learned this language
Fails to convey that feel.
Reel on, Go.
The missing keys are tell-tale.
Went. Reel on,
Stop at number three:
He's Gone.

Undone

June twenty fifth, eleven pm
Rue St. Florentin
I will grin and close your eyes
the wind sweeping down my back.

On the dim-lit Avenue d'Iéna
save the few whizzing cars
no one but I will recognize
the moving shadow on your neck.

*

Fancies always larger than life
speckless and refined.
Desire, a most unfaithful whim,
is the scavenger in the weakened mind.

I'll keep waltzing with your spectre
you go back to sailing alone.
The real is not the real feat.

Open your eyes, ring the curtain down
deny me the feel of your meat.




November, 2008

Quasi-

You were sitting before me on a table
jolly and bright like always
and telling me what I meant for you
(how relieved I was)
until
something cracked,
you stopped talking and let die
the five seconds old word
in the arms of that uneasy look
you shot into my face
the wrinkles over your eye-brows
your stiff unpursed lips
and it all got bleary and churned
(your magenta lip gloss)
just as I was waking up
to a lightning-beaten morning.

Unburdening

It was the sooty half of one friday
in a room full of Daisy Buchanans
clad in their lavish guise
on a par with those pinup girls
sporting their frilly frocks
and sardonic smiles.
At the dawn of a curious feat,
in the middle of that ego jungle
I could feel the air thick with sequins
and fragrant human meat.

I saw her at the corner of the hall
dancing in her Dionysian ways.
I said:
Succumb to me, unwind your inhibitions,
take me to the dungeons of your soul.
But I cannot see the pores of your face.
Are you hiding yourself in defense?
Is it the makeup you wear
or the star-studded Venetian mask
of piety, chastity or innocence?

Will you keep telling me your candid lies,
shower me with tailored gestures
and whet my appetite for more of your flesh?
Now may I strangle your slender neck, miss?
Or shall I die with your sultry truth
revealed to me on a sooty night like this?

Les touchers oublieux

Les limailles d'or gonflent sur la mer,
et bougent avec la brise qui frôle la surface
en disant une chanson douce-amère.
Le soleil, lui aussi, remplit ton absence:
Sa chaleur frotte ma peau, tient mes bras.

La couleur du silence est cendrée.
Il tue les étincelles de l'âme, débilite mon corps.
Mais maintenant la mer m'accompagne.
Ses vagues frappent le quai, mouillent mes pieds,
et la brise, en me serrant, siffle encore.

Because She Never Loved Him

The girl with a slim frame
and denim shorts rolled up to her thighs
and a white tank top
was there on the quay at noon
standing by the river.
She slightly leaned her torso to the side,
softly rose upon her left foot,
puckered her lips cockily
and cast her eyes to the car
dwindling across the west bank.
Her hip in one hand,
and a cigarette in the other,
she narrowed her gaze,
crushed the butt under her sandal,
released the smoke through her lips
and walked away.

4 Elements In Nature Discovered by a Solitary Traveler

Down below the wind-whipped sky,
rafting inside the seething waters
between thumping valleys.

The Return

I hold my breath and clench my fist,
then I lift the iron bars of my pride.
A brazen gesture.
My heart is pounding
with a quick gush of wavering emotion.
I quit saving my own hide
as my coquettish lips go ajar
and release the long-shackled words.
I see you have not changed, my love.
I remember this ice-jammed soul
and the cyclical life of a diligent capitalist.
Twenty three minutes of small talk
and then your voice will be wafting
through the ashen corridors of my mind,
lukewarm and relaxed.
And I will take me to a brief walk
back in those days of two thousand and seven.

Only forgetting, they say, can treat
the wounds received in a losing battle.
But oblivion cannot undo the fact of loss,
hence oblivion is only a part of my defeat.

But shall I forget you, my love
when icicles will hang down the roofs
and testify dripping Time?
They will remind me of your frosty soul
and perhaps, they will numb mine too.

Oh tender waiting, oh my only love,
Time will be wearing out,
my love will be dying in its arms
and my last breath will blow out your name.
A brooding sea will damp my feet in the shore
but I,
I will not fear the coming of the tide now.