Headlong

I fell hard

And the delicate blow glass shapes in me

Shattered into smithereens

The curves, the bends, the swells and the mounds

Came down

Shriveled into sparkling grains of nothing

                        

My eyes rolled to the tilted corner of the rickety table I fell on

Eyes of jade

With specks of quartz

I saw my brow

Lying flat on the ground

A marble slab carved with a void

My sparkling tongue of topaz blue

Lay nearby

Pulsating with the last bits of life

My ruby lips, turned to garnet where blood dried

My hands snagging on the thick sheets of time

With shrapnel in place of finger nails

My feet are still planted firmly

But the cracks in the ground run up my ankles

To my knees, into my chest

There will be cracks in my heart

There is blood

Oozing out of crystalline pureness of glass

There is pain resting in each broken chard

I try to recall the moment of divinity

The moment of grace

The moment of nirvana

The point from where I fell

I fell hard

Through the arms of those who could have caught me

Or so I wanted to believe

Love Walks With Me the Empty Street

Love walks with me the empty street

Through nagging cries coaxing retreat

Stepping around an old defeat

Rags of dust over aching feet

Love walks with me the empty street

Facing all odds, all exceptions

Steering past lies, shams, deceptions

Hopes which die before inception

Love walks with me the empty street

On storm beaten paths, in ditches and puddles

Where seasons of past have rendered a muddle

I ramble, I shuffle, I lag, I huddle

Love walks with me the empty street

Through treacherous climbs of pathways so steep

Curbsides lay laden with milestones in heaps

Where salt crusted eyes wait begging to weep

Love walks with me the empty street

Turning a corner it happens by chance

When into its eyes I manage a glance

It bats them at me in fetching conceit

Love walks with me the empty street

The Tenacious Traveler

And he began

From within the capricious shadows of the night

Under destiny’s fickle eye

The tenacious traveler set his travel afoot

Though the voices called him to linger by


For the dark is deceitful and the moment obscure

Lest the journey is arduous than presumed

The path could be darker than perceived by any

Leading endless to a murky gloom


He began still, the tenacious traveler


His was the courage, the conviction and the valor

Truth was his light for all which was dark

His was the belief, profound and stellar

Stars were his guide for the journey embarked


The tenacious traveler travelled


The tenacious traveler travelled in the night

And the night travelled with him

The belief sat firmly perched on his shoulder

And the valor stayed put within


But the light which shimmered at the deepest end

Did not grow into a star

The conniving flame, it flickered the same

From near, as it did from afar


The skyline did not rise into a city at all

It tapered to tombstones instead

Where the sounds were lost in the stillness of time

And the living were replaced with dead


The fires were cold and cries were quiet

And tears had nowhere to flow

The saplings of passion were hammered back into ground

By convention’s fateful blows



And echoes there, never left the walls

Of caverns where screams were formed

Where blood never oozed from gaping wounds

On bodies mangled and torn

So

The tenacious traveler’s hopes plummeted

As he swallowed his rage and pride

With a bigoted sword, he slit his throat

And lay down by a forgotten grave’s side!

The Willows on Danube

I grow on my own

I spread like a weed

I let pools of water

Sit next to my feet

I ripe without fuss

I flower with ease

I watch every season

Sprout stories on me

Bound into verses

By poets of yore

Lived through the chapters

Of legend and lore

You picture me tall

You picture me bent

You picture me spread

From end to an end

In sunlight I shimmer

In twilight I swoon

My tales can be told

Under a full moon

Who am I?