a royal music

As Saturday traffic   through morn's window sounds
my Friday's travels   amid near-memory settle
I observed Dashanzi   & wandered the hutangs
do I seek to construct a lotus   petal-by-petal?
when surbahar sitar   & dhrupad come here
autumnal evenings   different for Beijing
new ears will heed   tattoos of an olden drum here
a royal music   friends will be glad to bring

fictive colloquey

"I'm not the fruit   vague passers blithely gather"
"mine's not the sough   of some indifferent wind"
I didn't hear this conversation   rather
it welled up in a dreamy night   my friend

"where do you journey   along the empty highway?"
"ten thousand miles afar   though I'll be back"
"many a shoe departs   treading this byway
I've yet to see return   one gone rucksack"

"mine's not the fugitive tale   and I would send thee
fond news upon the breezes   laughing kindly"
"I'll listen for a spell   where you would lend me
your handkerchief   if tears are apt to find me"

workspace [poem]

What if it's you to whom
the circling bird refers?
it's a long flight true but
isn't a sense of the distant
included in the arch of your
pert smile's curl? what if
the steps of the lost bridge
of sighs were changed in their
color values?   hey & what if

the depth of brine ocean were
altered by zooming out or in
in a perceptual workspace?
say graphical design-display
of i love you were softened
into willow-down floating on
a long wind's breeze? what
then my darling? what then?
the beijing morning inquires

ars poetica

The word Poetry arrived   late in the game
weren't poets in the old days known as Makers?
what's in a Rose besides the rose's name?
must answers hover silent as the Quakers?
if I can't say what a rose is   I can scent
the petals' hymn   & feel the thorns' lament

when images with words desire to meld
in olden ways & novel ways & strange
there's magic in the way the thing gets spelled
-- illusion is defined as What May Change
is illusion then the realm where poems bloom
to traipse equivocal garlands thru the gloom?


[as typical for such things -- written responsive to
an online literary network's game in form of posing
the question "what defines poetry?"]

from Bangalore days (photo w/ sarangi)

thanks to Vasudev Murthy for sending me the picture --
a happy memento (now) of Bangalore days. I'm a barely
beginning student of this lovely instrument, sarangi.
Vasu reminds me, I was allegedly playing raag Bhairav.

cheers,
d.i.