Our lies, they would rather not
Be seen by the prying eyes
These lies they burn red and hot
Yet hide in the night’s dark guise
They hide in the plots we make
They nest like the coiling snake
They fest in the illest will
They pounce with the venging thrill
Your lies I cannot abide
Now seen by all, wide and far
No more can they twist and hide
I know you for what you are.
On The Sin of Pride
I keep a watchful eye now
For age-old sin of Pride
(We hardly use that word now
That word - Sin! - we deride
It’s very nature, quaint now
Yet one more Truth denied
And Virtue, set aside now
Lo, Freedom’s deified!)
Yes, Pride is all around now
Its seeds spread far and wide
It grows in every heart now
It blooms, and needs not hide
Pride grows with zest and verve now
Mulched with our deadened eyes
Black mirrors in our hands now
Pride’s gardens multiplied
Alas, this is the way now
Our lives suffused with Pride
The original Sin now
Prized, what was once decried
One wonders for how long now
We’ll let desires decide
Will we break free of Pride now
Or endlessly abide?
On Beseeching
Every kiss of wave to beach
A silent prayer to beseech:
Glory be to God!
Glory be to God!
Glory be to God!
On This Beach
Amidst the bleating of the cicadas
And the purring of the waves
I felt the sudden urge
To make ablution
And pray to Him on the sands of this beach.
On The Arc of Time
In praise of Time, this thrumming beat
This silent rhythm of Life’s heat
Within the pauses of these lines
Time ladles out our lives divine
I celebrate the arc of Time
The metronome of God Sublime
With ev’ry second measured neat
We live in midst of Time’s swift fleet
As we survey the darkened glass
Of future hap’nings yet to pass
Time feels like treacly liquid’s flow
The pace of life feels leaden, slow
And yet in future when Time’s drum
Has faded past, How far we’ve come!
We would exclaim in disbelief
Time’s flown away like Fate’s sly thief
In such arch ways Time plays its ploys
As we endure our woes and joys
Though trapped we be in Time’s taut cage
Against light’s dying, burn and rage!
On Language
Our Language is our fam’ly tree
The ties that build affinity
With words traversing waves of thought
The gap between us fades to naught
Out of the kiln, the words that build
Tribes, cities, armies, courts and guilds
Cementing ties of human hearts
Foundation for the sciences, arts
Thus Language forms the grounding strong
For human life, its wax and throng
To depths of seas and heights of space
Its thrumming drives the human race
Alas its boon hides darker tones
For language also marks the zones
Between a commonwealth of us
Against the others we distrust
Without a common lingual sphere
Communities cannot cohere
From babel curse of estranged tongues
Flows mistrust and committed wrongs
So you may think ‘tis insensate
For nations to compel, dictate
One Language to unite them all
Must we be caged in one tongue's thrall?
Such is the fate of nations blessed
With populace diverse, now pressed
Into each other's common fate
Be it with joy or teeth agrate
This babel curse need not be rued
Variety is a gift imbued
Unto those nations such as ours
Rejoicing in our hundred flowers
A common language bridges, brings
The people all together, wings
Of peace take flight in concert when
Our hearts unite in common ken
And that one speech need not efface
The shared melange of varied race
That makes up nations on this earth
Where each one owns their human worth
So let us celebrate, rejoice
Humanity in one shared voice
With pride our anthem loudly sung
In warp and weft of one shared tongue.
On Waking Up
Some fine morning You will wake up Like from a dream And realise that All the trappings of your life That nice condo The fast cars The fancy things Never really mattered And what you thought was important That big job That bold business card The numbers you had to hit They were mere details Necessary perhaps, at some point But never truly sufficient And what really mattered was How you were loved How you loved in return The blessings you had And how you showed gratitude for those blessings I pray we wake up soon I pray for me, and for you.
On Baharis
I barely knew you
And I knew almost nothing of
When and how you were born
Or who your parents were
Or how you got here
Or how you found yourself being
A young bride in a strange land
Surrounded on all sides
By people who did not love you
And did not care that you were barely loved
I barely knew your life
But I know that in the young years
Of my own life
You loved me with the fierce tenderness
Of a lioness, claws and all
Maybe they never loved you
But you had love abundant
Your love, transcendant
For me, for us
On Finding Peace (It’s Not Your Fault)
It's not your fault That he left you It's not your fault And there is nothing wrong with you He just did not know How to be What he needed to be For you And for himself It's not your fault It never was.
On This Teahouse (Amiability)
I have come so far
And it is only forty years later
That I can now feel
The inexorable
inviolable
inescapable pull of gravity
Anchoring me here
In amiable exile
I have everything I need
Here
Except for the buried treasure
Of finally seeing myself
And loving myself
With fullest acceptance.