The morning sun rays bathing the soul
Waking it up from the dreaming consciousness
Eyes soaking in the awakened beauty
Taking off the cover of night, to reveal a new day
Sun rays swathing over the valley
A watercolor painting over the Earth’s canvas
Vivid colors are splashed to create a spectacle to behold
A wave of warm embrace caresses us
As we get ready to rise up to the occasion
To usher a new day and new dreams in our heart




© Amitav (Radiance)

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He played his usual game of pretending to consider the palatable array of music which graced his iPod before settling for an Arctic Monkeys song, as always, just in time for the 7AM school bus that revved up the road with a satisfying crunch of gravel. The morning had a deliciously crisp quality to it, with swirls of fog swathing the trees in mild ambiguity while the sun danced a waltz in a rose and custard sky, the colour of cakes sold in Pastéis de Belém, the best patisserie in Lisbon.

He realised he hadn't eaten breakfast just as he boarded the bus.
Ah, well. **** it.

The sun skipped between the spaces in the leaves, playing hopscotch with his imagination as he dazedly looked out the window, lost in his music. Although the people on his bus were nice, he didn't exactly like them. The boys wore low pants and branded caps, the girls caked on makeup and tittered vapidly at everything the boys said. A few others quietly occupied the back seats like him, engrossed in their own world. He felt a stronger connection with these people, although he'd barely spoken to them before.

He lapsed back into his reverie while looking out the bus window, lazily tracing patterns in the cracks of the broken walls of the empty restaurants and hotels that passed by. The economic crisis had rendered hollows of places previously choked with people, now haunted with the after image of busy commerce and make-believe vignettes of scenes occurred in these skeleton remains. They were darkly beautiful, modern bones of the city that held a history too close to his own.

He forcefully snapped out of his running internal monologue just as the bus pulled up the driveway outside school. The distance of a block stood between him and school, a block fraught with danger, for he'd been robbed on a previous occasion (not that his school bag had much else besides lunch money and books). At least they hadn't nicked his iPod. He'd be helpless without it.

Music was his poison. He drank it in like the alcoholics of the night drank scotch. Every drum beat was a ricochet echo of his own heart, every guitar string picked was a twanging of his veins.

And music got him through the day. The last bell had already rung and school was over. The kids rushing out the hall blurred into an exquisite pointillism of neon clothes and benevolent cusses at each other. He picked up his bag and walked to the bus, lost in the sleep deprived haze of his thoughts.

On the ride home, he wondered where he'd be in a few years. He wondered if he'd find a place in the cascading chaos of a society ruled by the anarchy of physics, and the fear of inevitable oblivion. He wondered if he would be remembered, if his footsteps would have an echo.

But for now, he thought, his microcosmic life in Lisbon would do. There were dark alleyways to explore and museums to visit and pastries to eat. Somewhere, a waiter put a tablecloth on a dinner table with a flourish, where two lovers would later dine. Somewhere, a boy ran down some abandoned train tracks with his dog, laughing at the summer sun. Somewhere, a girl with auburn hair picked seashells from a glimmering beach as the waves crashed around her fragile legs.

Somewhere, in his heart, a flicker of nostalgia coursed through his blood.

The next song on his iPod came up.

Shuffle.
Skip.
Repeat.

if you could hold me in
like burning dawn
on the tips of fall mornings
i would scratch our names
into my bark

i would lean over children
that looked like you, baby
sew my leaves to their jackets
so they would always smell
like fresh dew on a misty morning

water my roots and trim
the thorn bushes i've collected
a dress swathing hips
that are barer than deserts

and if i sing this song now
would you come to me in honest
or like schoolyard jokes
will you kiss my fingers only in jest
i'm a simple plant i need only
sunshine and damp dirt

bare bones lapping up nutrients
a stolen kiss over dinner
a bath that is not lonely
a hand to be held
on afternoons in the city
two people staring in rapture at each other
in the black subway windows

Someone’s white golf ball
lies, abandoned
between moist grass and
desolate wanderers through
municipal courses
during Evening on
Father’s Day. Holding my pin, my quill
Frantically stitching point de capitons
between myself and the calm, fair way
I walk with conviction
alone, among firing-
flies toward all fathers
tonight, as swathing sprinklers gush, displacing
***** in-utero, past fences protecting
femme fatales whose unknown aspects
hang off tree rows
protruding from shoulders
sand-like limbs, flexed, stringy biceps
connect to its plastic dimples
through sturdy, wooden
fingers burrowed under grass and
swaying, pink clouds within
my eyes. Beyond hole
nines, red markers markers and ladies’
tee boxes
unacknowledged from
the green.

Rippling blades cede to setting-
star’s sacrimony in
vacant son-rooms, the
porches left of center, gurgling
traffically enveloped by laughter,
disinterested.

For this sight I cut my hair
inside my cozy, beige apartment
complex with a blue shower
curtain-wearing green, graphic
tease
printed by gray palm trees
swoops a hunting eagle, into the ebbing
stencil-tide of late day
orchestrated by man, this occurrence is
vagueary and seductive machinery
programmed by man
producing all, we are.

Waving tufts and leaves fall from
oaks wafting time past my nose with
rhythms out ciccadas, harmonies out
couples pulsating the sky,
ease pressure on vestigial nerves under
their atmospheres, droning vibrations, hollowed-
out and upholding
like arms do, Earth’s giant didgeridoo
We hum beside propulsive kangaroo
Tendons—see!
we’re becoming
taut on
empty bones holding-
black
birds with wings thrown desperately
toward others, panic
aloft in velvety
blue oxygen.

Picturing our streets’ concrete
burst asunder by
metesticized pipes watering formulaic
grounds
unearthing rock
and shrub
I passed the mangled corpses of adults
their kind, sighing.

I know it is as lifeless as his faint,
decomposing golf ball my dad
may have allowed me to
see. Our drowning star swoops
into the ocean
as eagles stamped on chests do,
unknown to time,
and loving shadows
untouched by yellow,
translucent lamp-
glare avoids the fallow structures
built with cement
inside the boudoir
of this day.

A carpet of grass deft underfoot,
like a huge grey blanket swathing the landscape,
cold and bleak, enticing a quickened pace,
Whistling wind wraps around me like a skeletons arms,
teasing and beguiling me onwards toward a destination unknown,
on its breath ride the whispers of forgotten lost souls.
The moon peers down through a silken scarf of blackened clouds,
Its knowing face smiling sinuously, as if luring ships to the rocks on a tempestuous sea,
from its mouth fall beams of light that illuminate the hills and troughs ahead, like a procession of flickering lanterns on a majestic parade,
Blackened gnarled trees seem to bow in respect as the coldness of the night permeates my core,
their dark shapes appearing on the horizon, like tomb stones in some ancient graveyard.
So among this swathing scene unfolding and with coat collar raised, I merge with the shapes and disappear into the folds of night.

So many feelings comes surging
Breaking all the inhibitions
Every word cocooning those moments
Each of them a luminous sparkle of the soul
Flowing through the veins
Reminding you of the special moments
Waiting to be chronicled as a memoir
Taking up the pen
Connecting your soul with the paper
Every drop of ink carrying your inner world
Drawing a vivid sketch of your feelings
Wholeheartedly soaked in the ambiance
The white paper now colored with memories
Once staring at the blankness
You can see the words dancing to your tune
Pen moves like a magic wand
As you breathe life on the paper
With those precious feelings
Swathing it with your inner luminosity

It’s a simple, mundane day, yet busy with an absolute slew of schoolwork
I take up a table in the library, high up on the 4th floor, overlooking
The shapes below with different work in the same time and place
There’s a large model airplane, an early model,
Suspended by cables that attach themselves to the far walls,
Yielding the illusion of mid-flight

It appears I wasn’t the only one with the idea to seclude myself this high;
Around me are the detached murmurs of still more students, bent
On the conclusion of their labors, some more eager than I, some less so
And closer to me, on a juxtaposed table, is another student, about my age
Shuffling through what looks like math
But I don’t pride myself much on intrusion, so I let him be

For hours we all toiled, us in the 4th floor and us down below
The music of light concentration, fluttering pages, a utensil,
Swathing through those immobile wings and dwindling on the propeller
The time is rapidly becoming the enemy in all our bingo books
And of the books stacked in the cluster of cases, some of which will no doubt remind one
Of the timeless saying that ‘time waits for no one’

The student of the table next to me is still at work, and I’m still at work
And people file in and out of the door which leads downstairs,
Faces going in with indignance and a foreknowledge of what they’re to do
Faces leaving triumphant, secured in another day’s duty crossed off
I steal a look at the student close to me
I see him pass a tired hand over his eyes
(I agree with his plight)

By now we’ve been swarmed with a million like us
Jumping from table to table to seat to seat, in groups or in respectable solitude
A veritable mosaic of people, a timelapse in ironic real-time, elapsed second onto second
The darkness crowds the unlucky surfaces of the windows, tries to push in
And like lichen stuck to sea rocks amid a terrible tidal storm we remain
Jaded and mentally broken down, but finally we see each other

He looks at me dully, I return it with a shrug and the slightest smirk
And I think we both understand it
Though no words needed to pass through the air, nor signals of the eyebrows,
The hand, the heavy persistent  sigh
We’ve seen the lapse, just us and the jetstream of the world unending
And he looks away, and I look away at the suspended plane, still as it ever was

A full moon
Swathing white light
The illuminating ethereal fire
Rests upon and rest beneath
Amidst a midnight forest
Where silence calms the restless trees
The unearthly glow has a story to tell
For those whose manifestation is brought in question
Accept the light that is a reflection of the day
Drink its wisdom and immerse in its wonder
For tomorrow is another day
And as the heart grows dim, the moon’s phase wanes

She stumbled onto a stack of mossy grey rocks and looked into a perfectly eye-shaped crevice in the rock formation which gave view to an absurdly apt vision of the swathing valley below, furnished with incredible glimmering foliage under a masked crimson sky that echoed thoroughly her desire to live.

She had grown obsessed with her own teeth, waking every other morning to an incessant thumping pain that rang from molar to medulla. The first thought that entered her weary mind on interim morning bleariness was one of suicide and regret. She'd stumble lackadaisically from her wrinkled bedsheets onto the hardwood splintering floor of her bedsit solipsism through a minute passage and into the molding cracked-tile bathroom, pulling the light cord and inspecting at great length the chasms appearing on four of her bottom teeth, mentally noting the size and shape until the next sultry morning pawed her crimson pillow case ravaged face awake with another dull toothache.

It was a January morning, the date was irrelevant, she woke to the sound of fighting in the neighbours' house, slamming doors and vase smashing antics on a dreary dewy morn when the sun was hiding and cars in the back alleys still bellowed smoke. Her routine went uninterrupted, moments of silence in the next rooms whilst she examined the damage of another night's superfluous drug use and alcoholic torment, she eyed the razor on shower shelf and reasoned to end her life, finally.  That ingrained image of childhood abuse lay dormant until these types of mornings and she reached toward the glimmering raz-
Knock Knock
He was at the door and she was flustered, pulling wrinkled jeans around her hourglass waist and rushing to greet the stranger. He told her to-

She was perhaps seven years old, maybe younger, and the hazy day drew closed through rain battered and silty windows in the tenement building by the murky river, the one that slunk through midnight streets like so many lonely and wrinkled old men, searching for drugs or ****** or love or money. The beige armchair with worn out padding around the armrests was creaking under the weight of her mother, the tilting wilted wine glass that stood delicately between yellowing fingertips was almost empty now and she watched as it grew ever more horizontal before leaping up to save the carpet from another stain and her behind from another beating. Her mother awoke with start and threw accusations at her, thieving little swine. The beating was instantaneous and even in aged memories was enough to resuscitate her consciousness, in enough time to see him come and go.

It was a January morning, the date was irrelevant, and she made a cup of tea as she looked out at the schoolyard distant but ahead. Waves of screaming and rambunctious playfulness swelled and entered her kitchen window (the one with a larger than acceptable crack running the length of the pane) as she washed half a sink of dishes before drifting aimlessly to the black but yellowing nicotine stained stereo, leaving water trails on the buttons as she pressed play on the CD deck and Old Blue Eyes began to sing.

She was five years old and saw her father dripping with sweat on some halcyon summer day. He lay roads by the night's chill and slept on long afternoons. By the radiant late morning rays he would fix shelves and rewire the apartment, drinking gasoline smelling liquids that bloated his inerudite head and he would take regular breaks in the bathroom, door ajar as he fixed, belt tight, breathing heavy, eye-contact with her and she cried every time. He played Sinatra and sang along, her mother would wake and he beat her again. Over and over again. Sinatra still sang, he never stopped, he never cared. Beating. Hearts were beating. She was five years old and she feigned unconscious by her mother's side until his final fix and to bed he stumbled.

The date was irrelevant, this January morning when she gave up caring and the sink of dishes went unfinished and the bedside lamp flickered and buzzed.

The sun rays invade the hall
Swathing the floor with warmth
Artifacts of yesteryear look grand
The stained glasses add to the aura
Reminiscing the magnificence
Resounding voices of commands
So many at the beck and call
Slightest whisper was authority
Twilight descended on the dynasty
Sun rays reminding the past
All faces but remains in portraits
Years ago, the tales that transpired
Writ all over the walls and artifacts
Glorious past lit up by morning rays

Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.

Do not think of kisses,
or hands touching skin.
Do not think of meeting with relief.

Forget the blankness of
this room in the dark.
Forget the empty,
scooped out sadness,
no longer pungent.

Only when you forget your desire
can God see it
in its truth.

Cover it in a cloud of forgetting
and turn your thoughts to the simple joy
of unencumbered being.

There you are a little god,
enough to answer your own prayer.

Here you are a demon,
swathing yourself in torment.

Hide your despair from God.
Bury it deep in your heart.

i was awake, in the dark,
floating over leaves, as the rain
began. or, at least i wished i
were. instead, i was fumbling under
orange light, dark
patches slowly adorning the
asphalt passing below. i was
free, but only within the
confines of a cage i'd crafted
for myself, as long ago as
organic advent, and as soon as
perpetual. stuck in a reverie,
further down the coastline, i
discovered i could no longer
feel. awake and distanced, i felt
the claws within
                             my ribcage
instead simply pass through,
and couldn't decide if
i'd been cheated, or stumbled
onto the trail of fretless
existence. thus arose my worry,
and, all fears confirmed, is set
out to find something that dug
in. hurt or elate or panic or
wonder hid, behind the curtains
of cold swathing me, though.

       the sky is just a sky.

                                     nothing
builds up, just spreads at my
feet. grass is just a series of
fibre and proteins. a long wait is
just a clock's hands.

down some road, the days
while away in the same or
different places. i am
predominantly the same,
indifferent.

what began
words
what started?
a song
before and after
its still going
you just stopped listening
you just stopped caring
wrinkled in your skin
curled in your toes
yet, nicely stacked in rows
you're walking by them
gently swathing branches
but you won't take your chances
no, never take a chance
because the song is too quiet
you have to listen to hear it
but when you do
it never leaves you
because you realize it's been there all along.
yeah, it's up to you to hear the song

On the balcony I stand
and let my eyes sway
to the sandy waves,
swathing in the moonlight.

The ancient empire that was buried under
the suave sand had been witnessed by
the moon of mountain from a distant land.

The endless tract of greenlessness
under the sparkling platinum moon
is brushing with the hands of air
and making the magnificent dunes.

Mind widens as you witness its wideness
unlike the sea it presents you with quietness.
If you are seeking happiness
this rough terrain will show you,
life isn't after all that hard for you.

hard as a feather
capture the weather
polarities are kindred souls
i long to hold you close to my *****
and assume the unassuming
is all you have need for

our hands are hourglasses
broken on the seashore
sand has spilled out like rice
justified by time
another victim of the sublime
i miss her kindred spirit
although happiness and density
weighed heavy upon my soul
i chose to wait for comfort and shallow tide to control
the outcome of this poem
is like an ancient story
where the gods are getting hungry so they eat their own
brownness

forgotten
in fields of rotten tyrants
and brooms
sweep the countryside
like fire
burning through streets
tearing down the feasts of dionysus, bacchus, and eurypides
orpheus’ daughters
sold all of their water
to the maitre d’s and hostesses
so your own emotions could rent rooms in their vacant hallways

i saw all your warnings
and yet i chose to run right through them and into your arms
accept this token of my heart
a piece of fabric torn from sober wisdom
and spun with threads of copper
it becomes a blanket
and wraps your fragile nakedness
as the corn and leaves used to do

forgetful one
please heed this
your memory is naked
respect the unexpected
your lies are being collected and written on papyrus
sirens are awakened by your cries in the wasted light of the moon
perhaps we still must make amends
say amen
and sweat
your swathing blanket
your **** angels
swear by their creator
saying: do yourself a favor and let me enter you

(i only dream of imps)
sweaty, high-handed, they reek of brandy
although i know what they desire i bury my fists in stiff pockets
all the simple things i believe to be made up of are really technicolor and abstruse
(i only dream of this)
every night they spit viruses down my throat
bite jibes in my deepest cushiony parts
chew gold rings like stale cheerios
swathing me
in sticky mud-like paint
thin and sour
(i only dream of hell)
grafted unholiness in pits of ink
tumultuous
sore heat seething from flowery bits
greedy imp hands handling soft pillow bodies
acid breath inflating pink fleshy lungs like round dollar store balloons
(i rarely dream of clouds)
when i do they are rotting clumps of loose soil
left untended by my perverse imps
holding petals to their fever pitted cores
redressing me in noxious defamation
(i'll dream again soon)

Useless Words
Of Another Time
Tempered Mystery
Of the Eternal Flame
Her Life Within Does Dwell
This Moment Heaven
No Place Called Hell
A Planets Power Lies Within
It's Swathing Sword
It Does Now Take
No Rules Of Worlds
By Sun Are Held
True Strength Within
Is Grown Life's Bell

The mist spreads over the valley
Swathing all in white
My friend and I sit under a tree
Admiring the evening light

The mist comes closer and closer
And we both start to fear
That the mist will act as a disposer
And that we will all just disappear

And just as it is about to hit
It all just dissipates
It is like we are in a protective mitt
And it could only intimidate