talons

Talons that hold the world and
prevent it from bursting
into bits into fragments
of dream laden lives
These talons are shining
in the mist begotten light
And slowly, ever so slowly
they stretch, they twist away
to reveal only
a mirror twisted
shadow of a world.

figure/ground

[dedicado a Claudia]

She said
she couldn’t put it
on paper or in english
why she had to leave.
She sent me a tape
filled with her voice

sometimes, I dig out my walkman
and the tattered earphones
and listen to her foreign words
but all I need to hear is
the silence inbetween.

sliver

I was injured in last night's raid.
'These barbarians don't even know how to kill',
the medicine-woman said,
as she pried the crude wooden arrowhead
from my chest,
'Don't worry', she said,
'this too will heal, in time...'

A darkdream filled night later
I knew that I would not
see the next moon
A sliver of wood
had entered my blood
and was even now
flying into my heart.

portal

I stumbled across an ancient temple
halfhidden by forested ravages
the portal beckoned to me
and I entered willingly
what hands wrought this wonder
what minds conceived this grace
I am but a lone traveller
stumbling into a different age

FinchSong

Cursed with a beak too small to crack the nuts
that my mother brings me,
Faced with the certainty that I must be different
from all those around me,
I grew up, somehow, but thinking
All this will change,
Spring is just around the corner,
and i'll finally leave this wretched fledgling life behind,
fly away, find a resplendent mate,
to carve a niche, all our own.

But the song I learnt
first from my mother's beak
was not my own.
And the tune quavered,
as the females twittered,
and flew away
and I, too spent to follow.

Cursed with a song that
no one recognizes me by,
Faced with the smooth shining wall
of a language barrier,
I await my doom here
on this lonely Galapagos isle

[inspired by Jonathan Weiner's Pulitzer Prize winning book- The Beak of the Finch]

An Entry in the Dictionary of Unrequited Love

Tamara. n. [origin obscure] a mood, a feeling of Lightness
1.of walking on rain-kissed cobbled streets
when the four-o-clock sun
promises a rainbow
2.of the sound of a girl's laugh
in a lull in the chatter
of a crowded sidewalk cafe
3.of a momentary briskness in my step
when I think of you