Friday, September 18, 2009

The Burning Poem of Intention: Your Plays

(my first Sikhi poem...draft. Hope I don't say anything offensive.)


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The Burning Poem of Intention: Your Plays

 

My mind has been mortgaged to illusions:

I have put chandeliers into a borrowed house of straw.

A hearth in a house of ice.

 

Blown with flies and dust. I decorate myself with string, with blood, with death itself.

 

In this dark there is a rainbow reflected. You

Like a diamond gleam in everything, even the sparkle

Of the ice as it melts, the honeyed straw. 

 

They will fall away.

 

But you… are the sweetest of scents. You permeate

every thing every space every living breath every inter-space

with grace.

 

Originating everywhere, never fading, constant, clean. Perfect.

 

Though it sweeps under leaves and over roofs, into lungs and cells, out noses.

Though it folds itself between the pages of books, and mixes with the mortar of bricks.

Though it makes up the blinding lights of stars themselves, we will not smell it.

 

We ignore this beauty.

 

We can see nothing, unless we breathe deep the depths of you.

 

 

Your plays have, in this way, bewitched me.

 

 

I will set this house on fire and step out of its door with love for you.

My bare soul feet clean of the melting “I”.

 

It will fall away.

 

The companion that grew with me, inside and without me,

You, are tear and smile. Foolishly,

I had thought you were far away.

 

This partner, this friend that consumes me with a holy fire

My soul burned towards the stars.

And who makes it cool with no other desire.

 

You who could drop a match into my very being, snuff and strangle.

You who enter into the deepest recesses of my body without a sound.

You who put me in motion with the grace of your natural moves.

 

Your plays have, in this way, bewitched me.

 

I see you sometimes:

 

You in the cell of a leaf,

in the atom swinging,

in the cold breeze of a derelict room,

in a warm heartbeat,

in a rug on the floor,

a sudden storm,

the sky at night,

the everything.

 

We cannot describe the gifts.

How then the giver? And

How the giver who is:             giver,                         gift             &            hand held out.

 

Every clotted sigh,

every line of every letter on this page,

my fingers, my thoughts: this is all you.

 

Your plays have, in this way, bewitched me.

 

Lover who makes me, sister who breaks me: I am lost.

 

I know that I shall be called into the dark, kicking over a lamp.

 

I will set this house on fire and step out of its door with love for you.

My bare soul feet clean of the weary, melting “I”.

 

Cinders and ash will fly up, blue and final

 

With nothing

 

The fire will light my road to you.