He was forced to eat a star, although all he wanted was bread. All he wanted was to be normal, but he was pre-determined by the Butcher Shop to have his limbs chopped…
Poetry
No Possum
One grows tired of killing snakes, gutting lizards, crushing spiders. My furniture is full of death; there are bones in the walls. They don’t speak nearly enough. The carpet is an ocean where I am lost all the time. Outside the window, blue dust stirs in the wind. Further, the wild screams of children eat up the air…
Prose Without Meaning
A boy claps his hands and two clay pigeons come to life and fly off into nowhere—Nazarene. Nazarene is too full of blood, too full of nothingness—
no way out except the way you came;
and I’m too old to understand…
Sutil Point
The Sound swept deep around the Point,
piles of driftwood
splayed like fingers
to the sky. White boats…
Tiesu Road
From the copse, the path climbed towards the road beside the farm.
Grass brushed his fingers, his steel bucket sloshed with clams
and sea water. All afternoon, he’d dug in the soupy charcoal sand,
while across…
The River Acheron
The River Acheron is one of the rivers of the Underworld in Greek mythology, also known as the River of Woe.
Here I am again—pen to paper, at last.
Ask me not of the darkness in my heart,
nor of the grime that cakes these soles of glass—
a broken porcelain doll with missing parts.
The Ripped Soul
In memory of our greatest regret
Knelt on the ground that encases—
neglected, yet not forgotten—
the bigger chunk of my remnants:
a severed soul of fallen graces.
My City, My City
For Karachi, my beloved
You can hate my city—my city with its murky seawaters
and unsafe, ill-lit streets.
You can leech off the money
and pour it all into the Province of Five Streams.
Koans
My son gave me a book
of koans,
as if parenting a son isn’t
confusing enough,
San Francisco Sestina
Moods shift when the fog
building by the gate to the bay
decides enough, it’s time to begin
the slow seep through hilly streets
at dusk and even the steady hum
of cable under California changes.