If you must know, my past tears at me.
A wide mesh screen door,
Swinging free on its pinions,
its ribs, sinews visible to all.
No secrets
Just questions
What happened to you, you ask.
How did you come to this?
Hey. I feel content.
I live within my means in scale
Impossible anywhere else.
People leave me alone; except my dogs.
But my past
that swinging screen door
no substance there
no critical path connecting one scene to another.
That rubs at me
nudges like my Griffon’s nose at my thigh.
What have you done?
Where’s your legacy?
How do you account for your LIFE?
I cannot;
except;
Accept.
I lie alone on my futon
between the Husky and the Griffon.
I live.
I eat.
I write.
I stay out of the light.
I stay out of the Light.
What? From where did that emerge?
Did the ME29 ever return Home, Home from India, the ME74 asks.
I think not.
Odysseus, Ithaca gone, sails on without destination.
A tramp steamer vagabond from one bed to the next.
Jonah flees eternal his divine assignments,
He cannot forgive his enemies.
Well, until now.
Now, I sit in my ashram on the shores of Africa.
I work on my song of India
A love song like many others,
All such stories end, you know
They can never be
Chaos always follows
A story of forbidden love
Was it worth “it” given all that followed?
Jasmine fills the evening air,
Chilies roasting in oil with ground black pepper, NIM leaves, anise, cumin, garlic, ginger.
Shirtless boys riding on the backs of patient black water buffaloes plodding home.
Women fresh from their evening ablutions,
tend rice pots over dung fires,
sweeping the entrances of their mud huts,
white rice powder Kollams, neat, geometric designs
surround the doorways.
To catch the Evil Eye in their wire like lines.
Men returning from fields, temples, factories, market stalls.
Weary patient steps plodding home
greeted by adolescent boys,
bare bottomed babies,
young maidens standing by with restraint.
Grandmothers, squatting by doorways
Orange and black saris with white tops,
gold marriage chains around their cafe-au-lait colored necks
their white hair pulled back by granddaughters’ loving hands.
Parrots, the iridescent colors of neon rainbows,
race overhead
for the best perch in the Banyan tree for the night.
Rose light of evening, crimson clouds with yellow gold trim,
the earth’s shadow rises against the cyan celestial dome to the east,
the jagged peaks of the Western Ghats way to the west
edge the rising terrestrial shadow,
send alternating rayons purple and magenta overhead
to a gathering point
where the sun will rise tomorrow.
I sit on my blanket against a brocade bolster of raw silk surrounded by this Symphony of Sensations
I close my eyes
Ah yes;
the tingling sense of vertigo
Through the vortex
I tumble through gray blue clouds
Into the endless Tyrian Purple sea of Being.
Eyes open; night
“Hello?”
Two clay oil lamps glow at the edge of the blanket.
From where did they come?
A tall form stands to the left.
Her emerald green sari with red trim glows from the amber light
She wears the end about her head
Like a Cobra’s hood,
Her face in shadow
Her eyes radiant above her sari veil.
She approaches
Sitting on her haunches,
She leans close
her breath sweet as honey on my cheek.
“What do you want,” I ask.
Krishna Blue night
Flower scent
Sandalwood powder
The coconut oil in her hair.
Her sari parts
Her skin the color of basalt
taut sinews
smooth
Her hands take my cheeks,
her eyes press mine,
“I want you.”
Coiling about me
Enfolding me
She pushes me back
her hungry mouth
breathing in breathing out.
Anyway; where were we?
Oh yeah,
You asking if it was worth the aimlessness that followed.
Does that Love remain?
Are you serious?
You Betcha.