Bonded /

Travel enough, and destinations
dissolve into mere movie sets.
Another 50 seconds of another chase
through a bazaar, a bog,
a bamboo forest. Then the tackle!
And the clue: a page, a briefcase.
One more pin, your paper globe
gets closer to a hedgehog.

@verse by MR

The Ultimate Antidote /

Marry someone you talk to
for hours, and hours
— until it is dawn —
over weeks, over months
upon months, upon months,
upon months.
You'll stay married for years
— upon decades —
till death do us
spare (lest our chatter
stirs up Lethe's waters
and fucks up its shores).

@verse by MR

An account of my father /

I have no demons,
save for those
with horns of plush.
Nobody hit me,
and my father
walked out gently:
took me months,
to notice that
his gradual withdrawal
was complete.
We stayed in touch
over much email,
up until my girlfriends
took away all bandwidth
(at about 15). He got me
residence in Canada,
I moved, we saw
each other sometimes,
he became a
grandfather (another
duty to abandon
10 years in). I left
the country, lost
my residence to greener
pastures (walking out
on him?). The pastures
turned to sands,
if greener than before.
More years passed —
then he disappeared,
six months ago.
Today his Telegram
account got wiped.
A silent well of email
is all that's left for
my unanswered stones.

@verse by MR

The thing about clouds /
 
I used to write a lot
about my clouds –
one language and
two continents ago.
Their snowy march
across my spring
was proud, like
arching backs
on certain beds, and so
seemed future paths which,
back then, flowed ahead.
My cloud processions
led the way a while
and yet, no cloud’s reliable –
they fled to leave behind
a new life:
new apartment, empty skies,
save for a haze of sand
on the horizon, and the rising
heat of January’s end.
A “cloud”? In this Dubai,
it’s but the tenth time
that I squeeze the word
into a poem – Boeings
paint my skies with
semblances of these,
not saturnine enough
to prove the mantra
still holds true:
whatever you might think,
whatever you might do,
the clouds above you move.

@verse by MR

A journey from pain to health in 8 poems, with thanks to everyone involved — and a warning to anyone working behind a screen.

https://telegra.ph/There-and-Neck-Again-in-8-Poems-03-04

@verse by MR

Ocean Local (sound on 🔈)

It was never about an actual train. I wrote this on a beach, watching the surf line (so yes, no typos here), and thinking of the subway at best – not the mighty Shinkansen. Yet, here it is now: a bridge between a bullet-train at Kyoto station and an Antiguan sunset, both shot last year.

@verse by MR

@verse by MR

Machine Teaching /

The helpless AI-God
flips through a trillion answers
to a prayer: would these bits
of recipes, a sutra and a thesis —
shaken, stirred — provide relief?
A sense of unity? A reason
to be good? He jerry-rigs
Commandments with the
abandon of a blind
photographer, six-fingered
moral compass spinning on.


@verse by MR

This too /

And every war will end,
if only when no people
have remained for dying.
Every refuge will become
a home – if just because
you’ve finished drying
bedsheets, freshly washed,
the seven-hundredth time.
And every pang of pain
will stay a memory, but fade
as you stop crying
until it's bleached out
like those ads in long-
abandoned stores.

@verse by MR

Crush /

A little bird
knocked on my window
with the full force
of its gentle body.
But I wasn't home.


@verse by MR

Astro-Physicism /

If you pray
to a black hole,
the answers
can never
escape ⦿


@verse by MR

An exercise in worthlessness /

A pound of teabags,
lightly used. In general:
last year's projections;
futures on goat milk;
certificates of authenticity
for snoring patterns,
chess moves, nasal hair styles;
Or, back to specifics: sack
of apple cores; a Caribbean
quarter (maybe not: its
flip side's got a ship...);
'Cease and Desist' from
made-up lawyers. Pitted
almonds, sautéed ice-cream,
sanded dates. The breath
of langoustines still moving
on the counter. Kidneys
(you can get one Bitcoin
for the price of five!).
List poems over thirty lines.
Mimes in the dark.
Mark Zuckerberg (except,
for his shareholders).
Ground microchips.
Some strange dude's hateful
comments. What you think
you could have said that time
instead of what you said.
Gourmet dog chow.
Your whole damn life —
unless you go to bed.
(Right. Now.)


@verse by MR

Holy cooked /
contemplating a too modern crucifix

The charred remains of Jesus,
blending with his cross,
fit for a world past nuclear
demise: I search his face for
seared-shut eyes to ward off
the imagined smell of kofta
(or kebab, depending on
the customs of your land) –
and pray, when He arises
from the blaze to leave
the tomb, his gaze be softer
than this stab, the hide of this
cocoon.

@verse by MR

Catjutants /
For my mother

Remember this:
wherever you might be,
no matter what your task,
no matter what your deadline –
at least one cat
has been assigned
to you and me
to dream somewhere
on our behalf,
as if it's bedtime.

@verse by MR

Now post this /

Try to remember for a day:
a war is on. Try to remember
every day it's there: it's there.
Try to hold on to that while
war thrives anywhere.
You will have lived a life
of wars: untouched, un-
spared. You will have sac-
rificed so much, they —
left unscared?


@verse by MR

Woe, awesomeness /

A ballerina trains
for decades to keep
her head up and
her straight defiant
back and — smile! —
when burning at the
stake for the affront
her mastery inflicts
on wretched hearts.

@verse by MR

Misfiring platitudes /

How many people
reading “you’re the
product if it’s free”
went “O-M-G! Why,
I’m a product from a
major corporation!
Move aside!”

@verse by MR

MBA /

Every poet in
Business class
Dreams of First.

@verse

"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." (Seneca)

I’d fill my sail at once
with prayers and
sweet winds, were I
to know which way
my prow should face,
to hasten me
toward the shores
on which it grew
and first extended
gentle branches to
the moon – before
the shipwright’s hand
had hewn it into this,
the homeless figurehead;
the shores I do so miss.


@verse by MR

Cycling alone
Past Andrew Wyeth fields –
No lid on the world!

#haiku by MR

My granddad’s birthday,
but he won’t get older.
Starting last year,
every summer,
it’s just me.