I have tried to forget you
on numerous days
and in numerous ways.

But you say invariably,
"I am yours, sincerely".

And I search yet again
for the vestigial chains
that bind you and me.

I think of you;
and your fascinated face
peeps artlessly through
the haze of a former age:
Oh! those inaugural, elegant days.

I look up.....
expectantly, readily.......

A hesitant keenness surges......
timidly, momentarily,
then bleeds away briskly, desolately
..........mortally.

Just a few fossils abide:
Some frosty images
and evaporating voices,
......sobbing quietly
through the nasty silence
of the night

Unpredictable and often occasional
there are abrupt, viscous spells -

      asphyxiating, grim, austere -

when you incompetently beseech

rather
ineptly squeeze

the unmoored mind -

     vagrant, erratic, blind -

to somehow concoct a reasonable rhyme
in which you could artfully arrange -

     this-a-way-that-a-way -

unwarranted, disfigured, discolored

bunch of rogue thoughts.

But the mental friction does not sanction
the end to this sluggish, incongruous trend.

Towards the end, some patchy amends are all you can dispense

to a taunting and tipsy

blob

of trivial poetry.

I am fairly sure
that
you have given up too much
to procure;
what you considered the healing touch
of my thin fingers.

And I;
unbelievingly realize
that no matter how hard I try,
I may never be able to provide
all that you may have sacrificed
to get me by your side.

All I can do
is to continue
to yield to your point of view
and to share and care
for your dreams and schemes
about life.

But after all this time
it is unfortunate to find
that so much care
robs the deepest love
of its flair
till;
we begin to choke
in our own holes of loneliness
and without intention
your sacrifice
and my devotion
become inside-out versions
of each other......

young people,

they think nobody has the
same thoughts as them
they take great pride in some made up
originality

as if really nobody ever thought up
scenarios of themselves descending
some rope from some helicopter and
dropping in the middle of enemy forces and
starting to shoot around, all movie like ‘an ****
and killing all the bad guys while not
taking one bullet
One man army

or there’s those other thoughts
of being simply the greatest at some
sport and being admired and envied for it

also, the thoughts of *** in all its forms

the thoughts of mindless violence

of saving the day

of being somewhere else and doing something else

all kinds of thoughts
and all the minds who think them label them as original

but they’re not original

they’re every young person’s thoughts

and me,
I also have thoughts I consider original

I think of how it is to be old
pretty much every **** day
I think of me being old and dried up and weak
and waiting for death

it’s not a very pleasant thought
especially for someone in their twenties
but it’s my way of labeling my thoughts original

maybe in some wheel chair
with a nurse pushing me from behind
No kids
no family
no fortune
no achievements
a life wasted
death watching from above
mockingly

and myself looking up at it
smiling
*******, you think you got me
but little do you know that
while I was able, while I was more lively than
a rotting carrot
I defied you by ripping apart pieces of me
that will stick with the world
long after I’m gone

Oh, they might not be great pieces or even good ones
but behind they remain as you take me away

and all of them branded with my name
It’s through them that I am
immortal

and there’s nothing you can do about it

great, good
or bad,
you cannot **** a poet

With closed eyes, I inwardly spy on the enormously arbitrary stockpile.

Her picture drifts by, escorted by a brisk convoy of memory -
those strikingly timeworn matrices of hoary but lasting stories
from her youth, then from the wrong side of forty…
and now about the beginning of wrinkles on her rickety little fingers –
feeble and gentle.

There she is…smiling unconditionally at me, not concerned with my status or money,
or, for that matter, my other silly intimacies that keep waxing and waning like an isochronal scream.
With all her warmth and affection – unqualified and plenary
she waits at the doorway…across time…ever-ready to accept me
for whatever I was, am and may continue to become.

While I have ignorantly swerved this way and the other
erring, straying, scouring the world over, she has been invariably there -
my unabridged blessing, my true well-wisher.

My mother, any mother –
The best girl-friend ever.

"Dim light please",
I softly wheeze,
as you seductively tease
the nape of my neck
and I sensuously shudder
in my fleshly hearth.

Playfully,
I break away
as my heart sways
in a hitherto unknown desire....
a desire;
that took its time coming
and which is now ablaze
in your eyes so scintillating
that it makes me skip
an already fluttery heart-beat.

You proceed gently
and speak softly
about my mischievous smile,
my expressive eyes,
the curve of my lip,
...... my shapely hip.......

You stroke my hair
with ardent flair
and I listen blithely
to your unfeigned oratory
about a man's intensity,
...his unbridled frenzy.

I hearken reverently
to your admission of piety
and pledge you my fidelity
as long as there is light
in my impractical, dreamy eyes.

As we submit
to the fiery delight
I finally see
beyond the crevice of duality;
into my integrated embodiment
of anatomy and sentiment;
...that I am
and always was
a unique, solitary singularity.