If I Could Fly

If I could fly,
If, like a sparrow,
I could roam the sky,
Where shall I go?

To the house of old:
Snowed down, still,
A goddess on the windowsill,
And a parent oak without
To perch on with brothers,
Forever.

If I could fly,
If, as an arrow,
I could whisper “die”,
Who shall I kill?

The tyrant of this age:
The devil of delusion,
Of wastelands of confusion,
The scorpion of waters false,
And his barren, stinted heart-
My mark.

If I could fly,
If I could borrow
The tempest’s sigh
What shall I sing?

The lyric of a lyre:
Every string ablaze,
And a thunder tune that says,
"Time, o dreaming sparrow,
Go fly and be an arrow
And ignite the dawn to come!"

An Infinity of Lies

Every right is left behind;
All solos flipped in front.
Round and round I turn;
“Oh, forsooth!” I grunt.

Is this a joke, or a dream?
Do the demons play me
For a fool?

What else, possibly,
For was it not this morning
That, broken, beat,
I had asked them to retreat?

Yes, oh yes, and then I’d slept
With hope that by nightfall
The sun would have swept
Every coin of ill around.

Yes, I’d hoped
That the brilliant, blinding arc
Would have cut, from east
To west, each ripened wrong
From branches old and weary
And healed them, from rise
To rest, to forgotten glory...

And I ask why
They take me for a fool.

For how could it,
Even the mighty sun,
Just how could it
Turn this earth that spins
Forever on titled wings,
Forever balanced
On the side of the ugly,
To good, and to beauty,
To relief from the rotten,
All at my bidding,
All in a day?

Lesson learnt:
It was a folly.
The world slapped me hard
And woke me for an answer.
Yes.

But even so,
Even if I am right,
What strangeness is this?
Where in the world am I?
This topsy-turvy tapestry
Of rights becoming lefts
And solos flipping all around,
What is it?

I think I know.

To my right there is me,
To my left, me once more;
In front and behind I stare
At me as before.

Ah, I get it!
Just as I discern millions
In company, all alike,
All the same, all me,
I get it.

It is, after all,
What I had wished for;
My world has woken me
To itself, inverted.

The demons became no angels.
Instead they stare me down
In millions, now exposed.

The root to my wicked willow,
The source of my lament,
It is this room of mirrors—
An infinity of lies.

The Sidewalk Dweller

Asleep against a wall,
His life a grateful stall,
The beggar dreams of love.

His cheeks like dirt-vales cry
Of thirst for streams
And a lullaby,
But blessed instead
With sweat-beads running dry,
They sigh and dream of love.

Painful memories of a life
That death has long denied
Flame-like lick
And finger his mind,
But slumber-killed subside
Beneath his dreams of love.

A passion seems to grip the man,
As if he wouldn't let go:
His fists below stick-thin hands
Are curled as eagle-claws
To hold it looks like precious prey,
His elusive dreams of love.

Then of a sudden he is hit
By a gust of stifling dust,
And waking, watches,
With wetness in his eyes,
The road beside him split
With heat and horror screams.

Waken, shaken, his dreams
From him thus taken,
He makes a plea to a passerby
For a morsel, with paper palms,
Which refused, he staggers up
And calls above to the burning sky

For a cloud, and a drop of rain,
To love him some, and cleanse his pain.