Exodus
maybe everything is an exodus from darkness
to darkness. fingers goaded by a third eye grow
accustomed to the shape of the wooden handle,
wrought iron railing, dust, rust and finally, light -
disloyal dot, mischievous stranger skipping dreams,
trailing desire between fingers. We remember, always,
the start, and grope with the impossible barefaced trust
of children discovering the form of purpose.
love is the moistness of skin whispering
with the undercover orchestra of memory,
not feeling; soft palm cradling the contours
of comfort, but not quite, like an ill-fitting dress.
even words stand at the door of experience,
out of place in the ostentation of flourish.
when it turns into testimony, after all, it is lost.
Darkness allows space for discovery, to find the edges
of your own voice. one could find the embrace of a life
by carving out the moonrise from the infinite excess of night,
rationing light like a physician bloodletting survival into the world.
The Traveller
the boatman delivers the promise
that floats between lovers' lips
the message that frees the prisoner
and stalls the onslaught in the dead of night.
everything is lost in translation.
in the Exodus, even god’s message
needed the artillery of plagues
to convince the tyrant.
all that the messenger can call his own is the transit.
what is left behind was home, what is ahead
is a dream - that is why it is obscure.
and so the wanderer learns
the meaning of a friend, not what was
before, not what is to come,
but what is in between- under his chapped soles.
do you know what it is to surrender
to the expanse? to choose the companionship
of the road? to claim the half-bitten moon as a mother,
and lie beside the corpse of the wind under a torn headscarf?
do you know that a baby’s unborn cry
stifled with the sound of our indifference
is a wee bit difficult to abbreviate
into the inked outlines
of a government register?
maybe transit is our default state of being
maybe we are truly ourselves,
we are truly counted, only in death.
when we are finally still.
no wait,
not for them,
not even then.
About the poet: