The Temple at the Corner

Before stepping over the threshold of the temple,
I take off my half-baked sartreian ideas
along with my slippers and leave them
at the corner where the old flower-seller sits.

My bare feet make no sound on the naked stone.
(The questions of skeptics and
the pockmarks of history
have worn it equally smooth.)
I indulge in a game of quick hopscotch
across the thin line of belief.
The air smells different on either side.

The goddess seems unfazed by my usual offerings;
I suppose even goddesses must get bored.
I make do with the warm smile
on the flower seller’s crinkled face.
She asks me if I want flowers in my hair;
she knows I always shake my head in reply.

A little boy delightedly tugs at the bell rope.
The sonorous clanging reverberates in my head
and touches a childhood memory.
It has the comforting ring of the familiar -
the sound of those things that never change.

Fix

The television is on.
Juices pump in your brain
as you play god,
blinking lives out of existence.
The perfect fix at the end of a hard day.

Blink.
Human tragedy stretched out on the widescreen -
the chattering fire of cameras and questions.
Loss battles the chance of being heard.
Blink.
The love of your life has gone out
for a commercial break but will be right back.
Don’t go anywhere.
Blink.
History is being made
as numbers jig across the screen
independent of the lives they belong to.
Blink.
Love and lust exchange meanings in the perfect unreality.
Guns and sex melt into each other so fluidly
that you are bored. You’ve seen it all before.
Blink.
The talented Mr.Chuck Norris
just snapped a guy’s neck
with his legs. So cool.
Blink.
howdoyoufeel?whatdoyouthink?whatareyougoingtodo?
he feels nothing but the weight of guilt
and the phantom corpse still cradled in his arms.
Blink.
Some stranger caught a UFO on camera.
He will no longer be laughed at. You will forget
the happiest moment of his life the next time you
blink.
Poverty. Disease. War. Disaster.
The world is going to end unless YOU change it.
Make a tax deductible donation TODAY to -
blink.
The eyes had been starved empty.
The light had faded out slowly
again and again and ag-
Blink.

Wish You Were Here [edited]

The world ebbs and flows
as time trickles
like sand between my toes.
Moments crushed underfoot.
Forgotten.

Wish you were here
to share this now
breathe the wind
and feel the noise
hide this moment
in your smile
let it shine
in your eyes -

Hush.

Let the wind whip away
the unsaid words.
Breathe. Live. Be.
Becoming can wait,
and so can tomorrow.
The fisherfolk are heading out to sea;
today, they cast their nets
for happiness.

Angst (Revised)

The sand is beneath me,
on which a thousand generations
have left their filth. The air smells
of frying oil, fish and salt.
I hear the raucous laughter of children,
framed against the hazy, shifting shadows
of the old light house.
The lovers’ buzz in the half dark,
is pierced by the hawkers’ shrill cry.
Scavengers feast on the left-overs
of yesterday’s contentment.
I am surrounded by those
whom they say I love.
I smile politely, nod when required.
Crabs carry my mind away to the surf -
away from the weather, politics
and varicose veins.
I flounder amongst the waves,
briefly surfacing with the question -
sinking as the faceless moon mocks,
“what more do you want?”