Ladies Drink

She breaks our moments of flirtation to huff
like a wolf discontent with its found food.
In reality, she was a stranger who served
her body, half-soul on my table where I
was quaffing down beer like a widowed.

We'd exchanged a few light touches, no more.
And even so, I kept myself respectful - or like
to believe myself respectful - of the hallowed
name of feminism. Awkwardness breaks
its bucket of ice & I am suddenly left

to brood on my glass and her stray one.
I do not say I'd poured her drinks from my
own jug, but kept the cab fare home. Such
are the rules of proferred companionship:
the clink of glass like ice, the covert tips

for sweetened sips, or the numbed heart after.

sighs, lingering

under the starlight, i pale
in insignificance, black of void
swirling hoarse opinions into wind- 
blown jests. the playground weeps
its lonely state, like children grown &
forgotten the tugs of solitude. over
this window, days convinced the nights
to dab the color of age over the skin
of earth. under no starlight, i seek
rebirth: arms, outstretched; whisper, evaporating,
enticing moon its cold stage, before
the lightening
shades of morning.

Lingering Sighs

Under the starlight, I pale
in insignificance, black of void
swirling hoarse opinions into wind-
blown jests. The playground weeps
its lonely state, like children grown &
forgotten the tugs of solitude. Over
this window, days convinced the nights
to dab the color of age over the skin
of earth. Under no starlight, I seek
rebirth: some child's evaporated whisper
calling moon into being, before the lightening
shades of morning.

Freedom Haiku

The lost sparrow hops
between pillars of legs, seeks
fresh lands, like caged hearts.

Of Soup and Soap

How much energy does it take to keep
awake? The waitress serves me a baguette,
her apron caked with crumbs and eyelids
smiling with mascara and drowsiness.
Perhaps she is dopey. It is unlikely but possible.

The long bread tastes of buttered sweetness;
the chef's battered his soul into the spread.
The waitress is the messenger delivering
soul, buttered, its taste leavened by the
hunger of waiting.

I thank her, I try to thank her
with upraised eyes, eyes creased
with wrinkles of gratitude fashioned
out of a protest against drowsiness.

Alas, she goes back into her auto-
maton mode, fetching cults
of patrons their cutlery and cuisine,
speaking with hands scarred possibly
by soup and soap.

Moon

The night yawns like a bored teenager.
She delves into her bag of stars, throws them
where no one can see. Obscured by her
mascara of clouds the moon
is late in arriving. I do not wait anymore -

I'll sink deeper into my seat at the bus stop
and wait for moon, that girl of dreams
stifled by the monotony of arising.

#copout

The Sparrow

The Sparrow

hops, pecks at crumbs & bits

of rice under the kopitiam tables,

scurries through pillars of legs, a

fugitive of the free world. How did it

enter where there was no window, this

enclosed space
of food and human essence?

If a leg moves, it is a branch, breaking

off and falling. There are

no earthquakes.

The sparrow

flies at the whiff of sound, a striking

arm raised against its pea-field of vision-

you do not strike a sparrow. It flits quick

as houseflies, is not a mynah whose cackle

calls its raiding brethren to the table.

This sparrow escapes, is gone like wind, a

thought; that little darkened ray of light displaced

by shadow, a caesura of freedom my body, chained

to its firm stance of earth, cannot comprehend

of placement.