The path ahead is unknown,
but when the path is dark
may a light shine in you.
And when the path diverges
may love be your guide.
And whatever path you choose
may joy follow you!

A road that diverges
Starts at a point
And plies in two directions.
Where these roads meet
You hear two different heartbeats;
One of a boy,
One of a girl.
They were destined to be,
But they walked in a V
Separating themselves
From what God only sees.

Walking astray from each
They continue to grow distant.
Not a word to be said
Just a silent whisper,
“This connection will not whither.”
A mental image
Remains in the mind.
Though they are disjoined
Their hearts have been coined
To become reunited
No matter where they end up going.

Heading on the right track
Senses begin to kick in.
Though it is not yet known,
Their love is already scripted
It’s just, love likes to remain encrypted.
It’s not random;
It’s fate.
Their paths begin to converge,
But they still lack the nerve
To acknowledge what’s inside
And let the love emerge.

It’s coming to a point
Where everything’s inevitable.
The obvious feels right;
Plight is soon to be made.
Fate begins to pervade.
With two precious rings
They promise
To love each other forever
On this journey to endeavor.
Hence the coining of the phrase,
“Diamonds are forever.”

She...she responds to a soothing bath.
He...he prefers a different path.

They each disrobe from the day's affairs,
the formal restraints they each do share.

Their clothes lay scattered about the floor,
both stand naked at a tiled shore.

She eases herself into this sleeve,
a temperate knitted liquid weave.

He guides the stream from it’s perched spout,
the water finding the perfect route.

His face is wet, his eyes are shut tight.
She prefers ambient candle-light.

She gently sponges her supple skin.
He grips the soap...oh, so masculine.

She contemplates his rugged terrain,
he puts his hands out to feel the rain.

His caress yields a lathery foam,
her fingers begin a downward roam.

He too diverges, or so rather,
deviates from the task to lather.

Much attention in just one region,
cleaning can’t motivate this legion.

His thoughts of her, and her thoughts of him,
nothing stops what’s about to begin.

Tremors start from her head to her toes,
a smile blossoms as she plateaus.

He feels the pressure stiffly increase,
it brings to him an immense release.

She savours the last rippling quiver.
His knees weak from such an endeavour.

They catch their breath, and resume their chores,
have they been remiss in these detours?

Excuse the news they misuse shampoos,
they choose to amuse with such taboos.

One can’t ignore in the aftermath: he takes showers
... and she takes a bath.

“We read to know we’re not alone.”
C.S. Lewis says, as a character in the film Shadowland

~~~

my lovers mumble when they leer and clear the
assorted sordid, livres with dust jackets, spines,
and notable ideas, POV’s that dare to offend; me
thinking seeing they’re uneasily resting uneasy, for
there appears to be some scales, mountains that need
mounting before they can successful scale my
heights, a big BE WARY atmospheric global warning
signs prior to enter my magic kingdom,
quizzes  they are unassuaged they will pass
with  any color schema,
let alone flying ones…

that amuses me, ah well, a sign of my changes, when
those  days when a merely handsome man turned this
now skeptical-woman agog, and flushes of heat made
a breast beat,  a flesh and blood chin, ***, eyes, rock me
like a movie poster definition of movie poster handsome

they are smarter and when they cautiously inquire re my
diversity, a broadening array of fiction, philosophical disput-
ations, that lay and lie with me, they, and I bare skinned,
open to the ah ha! of titillating notions of human endeavor,
or British ****** mysteries, and lots and lots of history…

this commends and cerifies
my screening choices for,
when alone, I read
to know I am are not alone,
for my thoughts need hot
company, and my caress
of divers words diverges,
in so many directions, I need
assurance, insurance that the
men who wish to bed me are
capable of making love to my
mind, where stimulus and that
they can feed me endlessly a
variety of bouchées amusantes,
that wet my appetite for their
entirety

should they fail,
to for want of trying,
I comfort them obliquely,
informing them that
*”We need to read to know we are not alone!”

Upon a web strung across vast fields of
pure and distant velvet nothing,
perfect back-traces of the flickering past
revolve in place, in silence,
signs puddled for an instant from abandoned
corners of clusters. Polaris sieves a movement,
severs Octantis in a slated blink of being as quiet
reaches from further clutches, as a light quivers against
the dark, enshrined in its own solace, drinking from
a garden of heaviness; a sigh slips, echoes and lingers.

A tidy emptiness wavers in the tide of
time-shifting constellations, pulses lost in the single
night that never stems. A fine dust propagates
under the breath-patterns of its own constituency.
No symbol spoken, the still moment reaches and
encompasses all, heaving in glass moments compressing
beneath layers, bathed ablaze and curling through its
own precessing maw. Gathering, spiralling pieces of
uncoalesced millenia hurtle against an again hurtling
arm of a freckle gathered on a point of dust drifting
between caverns diving through the weight of walls holding
all that support their standing. A drop of light quivers
from each mouth, hides in crevices where smaller droplets
stand firmer at each junction, stand shining quietly with
no motive, dials slipping. The dripping lays down sheets,
climbs no corridor, designs a movement of no consequence;
dries out, knowing full well all the while. A ghost remains,
or a breath, both ultimately of finite import:
an exhalation or mote of dust.

Rain won't fall, the creek remains and, in tumult etched of
rigid symmetries, forges splits in azure. A broken fullness,
a glimmering product to permute and dissipate repetitions,
the slow formation of a complete emptiness.
In fine tapestry woven through the murk bellowed, the pattern
twists, coiling fingers through itself, the coalescing rotations
play out silence in no coda. The creek was never there.
Rain makes its way.                                                                  
                                       Capsular soil gives, capitulates petrichor,
defies dust aridity to cling in soft bundles about the child,
clothed in broken wings, tail clambering, all fine splits decided
upon countless repetitions passed. Light hovers and lights stand,
spin, in turn, as intervals chew tails through no static
motif, each gesture a mockery of predecessing broken ground
as fingers sliver ever toward known constancy,
blankets of warmth, an unclosing eyelid. Thus shuffles
awake the clamberer, to stretch and arc against potentials,
to fluoresce and bathe in radiance. A greater scheme
mingles at the tips of outstretched arms carrying wings
to break and flesh to guide a canopied architecture into
clearings laid out below twinkling webs to fold through
and let breath be taken as pawprints slowly form the
fingertips of a new architect. The children of the
child watch silent as motion trickles from centuries'
fortune. An emblem hangs in soft light on a ripple over
all-but-still water, cohort as glittering fragments strewn
beside. A bird's cry is lost in the marsh.                        
                                                      Again,
moments of absolute movement lay out beds of stillness, of reprieve.

At sea level, the curling faultlines feed open plain from
glass tears and monuments fleck the landscape of horizon.
To a pivoting sequence carves tiny bound structures in
self-image, a boiled-down replication to forge immemorial
traverse, a hairline fracture led blind through lakes of ice.
Still, to carry forward in a display of conviction, fine
splitting lineage diverges and cross-pollinates. First a
step, then a meadow, a panorama, three scores of
underbrush, seven mountains cradling a single pass,
two endless expanses of peat, one river for the life
of a child, three nights of no sleep, a resolve,
six iterations, one modification, seventeen snowfalls,
one feat built slow to grandeur, three months at sea,
three years at sea, three thousand years, seven oceans,
four hundred billion innovations, a blink of an eye. From
closed wings rise ordered patterns to clamber, always
asleep, to punctuate that immutable grove of light now
organized in transient gleams of projection and
nomenclative claim. Hollowed bellies of these
unstirring colossi, in turn, self-assemble and
writhe against an upturned gradient: disorder
bares teeth, crafts homogeneity and stumbles
on as Polaris dutifully continues in slow march
and reclaim of a ghost still cycling and hiding.

Finally, the moment takes grasp of all else
and itself, and parts tides of now-distant lights
through the ceiling and collapses where, between
word-laden walls, a tiny and terrified piece of
it attempts to reveal to all else that the moment
is already
gone.

Something calm
Something soothing
Vigorous dark
Surrounds smoothing.

Tonight in evil clutches
There caged my sense,
Like pigeon’s first flight
My swift and dense delight.

All stars having their query
Twinkles like murmuring together
As if they recall my past hours
Fairy Venus twinkles to me some more.

You are not a bard in conscience,
You were never fair in Love remarks
Reckon follies of your worthy mind,
Find your heart in flames and sparks .

Fair Moon chide me not,
No guilty am I but that love knot
That early lost the strength
I lost there my lot in affections.

Here lay I, in torturing sea shore
In slopes of tough pebbles,
Frequent thoughts or blustering bubbles!

I glared you constant Venus
Constant with swollen eye *****
In Midnight flow of sea or tears!

Until you fade away from my sight
Until its orange sun light
Until that chirping diverges my mind.

*-Anurag A. Sharma

sam i yam not,
     nor will this 'lo bot go away
cuz, every coordinate in cyber space allows,
     enables and provides
     an opportunity to bray,

and thence get access
     to each excel lent power full point
     one among the beguiling bajillion,
thus this ming boggling concept proffers

     (even the generic mom and pop hacker
     tubby in her/his element field gloating
     as if they won
     the Irish Sweepstakes that day

despite neither could claim
     direct lineage, sans Emerald Eire
  analogous to Celtic temptress,
     whose grand geography

     beckons toward entranceway,
where sensory, levity,
     and ecstasy punctuate foray
boot that diverges one hundred

      and eighty degrees asper gateway
onrush of spam enters electronic hatchway
spilling forth like
     offal horrific bilge interlay

sloshing violently, revoltingly,
     and nauseatingly, witnessing a jay
bird donning mask (yule hating)
     beak coming contrivance fashioned keyway.

force full brainstorm to firewall
     to place on indefinite layaway
inundation of spam midway
between now and eternity,

     essentially noway
no more, and if necessary
     hermetically seal myself
     stationing a pal in drone willingly overpay!