white as the perspired block, black as tame spiders, red as the withered leaf on mooncall, brown as daybreak tending rivers -
tethered night
to think the night kind is to believe in song say it is kind, but not so loud in an other song, you can hear it think but not as loud it is kind, this night with lost dream and lost language bereft song, lost to kindness and dream -
night with its many deaths is a song read with the eye of a pen dipped in unfettered ink with a hunger leavened and fit to taste - remnants of what I knew but longed to dislodge from arid haunts & inarticulate wounds -
if the tethering of night to stillness were a given, I could believe in riversand enough to conjure up the absence of sky - if imaginings of the tether were to roam skysand I could believe again in riversong -
the moth of beginnings
the castle, most watered down, shrieks - its bottom spared the moth of beginnings, it hums an ancient bawl the river, riven in its gutted wear, bends - its weave turned in to speak of beginnings, it gnaws an ancient crawl
doors that are voices
see me through doors that are voices carrying asphalt when it should be loam - dream me through doors that are voices, silting hue - when will the sun sit with me, remember sunken sky & play with half-lives? see me through lives that are doors that are voices carrying the silt of days, banks that are salt & hue -
the burden of ghosts
how much burden do the ghosts of everyday scars carry? the faint smell of their nonpresence is all it takes to weigh down their mourn theirs is the past and the circle theirs is the next day and the next rounding off the circle the scars of nonbeing go about their childlike ways tracking noons fearing the thought of the coming dark and the next & the weight of it all -
In gorges, dragons voice age-old explanations. In pools ten hundred feet deep, you hear them. Cruel waves keep strict accounts, drinking blood to nurture children and grandchildren, but without ancient Kao Yao’s gentle justice, feasting on prison-drowned spirits is empty. Something there, mystery haunting darkness, the futile talk of ghosts goes on and ever on, gorges hearing cascades cry lament, gorges mourning widowed gibbons. There’s nothing human in the sound of gorges, gorges where blades of churning water slice at themselves, and now, sage hearts all hidden away here, who marshals these bitter and drowned pleas? - Meng Chiao, from Laments of the Gorges
The tidyness of verse
The tidyness of verse: grain that is smaller than earth's witnessing girth home that is Larger than the pronouns of wasted wish sound that is vice, skin and rupture this is The tidyness of verse sharp as the smell of knowing the birth of grain, home & sound -
the loneliness of Meeraji
what seeks the would of war, the hallowed gorge1 & spill of light in want of light?2 the seethe that seeks the feel of night furiously free, joyously I3 seek alone the crux of flight who seeks the should of war?
(1) Who can welcome laments of the gorges, gorges saying What will come will come. - Meng Chiao, from "Laments of the Gorges"
(2)
I hear it singing, / I sit up, awake. / It is a mountain rising, / lovely and immense.
I see myself / in the shine of it / and I want light.
I am full / with greed. Give to me
light.
– Linda Hogan
(3)
maiN hooN aazaad —- mujhe fikar naheeN hai koi
aik ghanghor sakooN, aik kaDi tanhaai
mera andoKhta hai –
– Meeraji
the hallowed veil
what seeks the retch of war, the hallowed veil & tempered scream of make & remake? the seethe that seeks the harm of arms those arms that brook no care to take, retake and build & bake who seeks the retch of war?
parable illegit
protector of secrets1, harbinger, truth-in-stain as the scream that wills as a parable illegit as a mountain-stone rolling threads of incomprehension So that in the depths of the darkest night The sun shines forever a tell us that story again2, of the flow and its night as the sandgrain that wills as a parable illegit as a mountain-stone rolling waves of inconstancy So that in the depths of the darkest night The sun shines forever worshiping love alone3, subsisting in subsistence alone, so that in the depths of the darkest night, the sun shines forever - harbinger, truth-in-stain parable illegit as a mountain-stone, I, sandgrain, subsist, scream -
(1)
– from ‘haraami’ by Meeraji
qudrat ke puraane bhedoN may jo bhaid chhupaae chhup na sakay, is bhaid ki tu rakhwaali hai
(a)
– from ‘Songs That Cannot Be Silenced’ by Hien Luong from Vietnam
So that in the depths of the darkest night
The sun shines forever
(2)
– from ‘aik thee aurat’ by Meeraji
puraani kahaani may kya lutf aae, hamay aaj kis nay kaha tha — puraani kahaani sunaao
(3)
– from ‘haraami’ by Meeraji
jo chaahay reet ki baat kahay, hum peet hi ke matwaalay haiN
Gratitude lost
Used to be the bird settled down on the green you sowed, its chirp saying thanks Gaia glad now when it perches on some green, there is a riddle for the sky - and you - to solve how can the bird even speak to the sun's flare with such flutter? Gaia spins an urgent tale no sooner has it been said than the words are felt futile then forgotten
koi kahe ye kis ne kaha tha, keh do jo kuch kehna hai
meeraji keh kar pachtaaya aur phir kehna bhool gayawho said say what you have to say?
Meeraji
I said, regretted, then forgot to say