When a confabulation perches on an awkward crossway
with boyhood chums or a lover whose lane is no longer
a compulsion, I state with all the might I can measure up:
everyone has someone or the other on their map.
Post hoc, I seek eye contact. Most are rapt with the routine:
playing with the ice over their thirst quenchers or reading
messages on their mobiles. A few gaze vacantly at me.
Certain utterances: for the self.
Allowing this poem to use your current location. – mh clay
Goaded by grog,
music and machismo merge
to spring pantomimes
of latent desires.
Several schooners later
someone or the other
croons or curses.
The ambient sound
is a brew of idiolects
bolstering me to ideate.
More gulps
this babel is incoherent –
the mind gets clogged.
I am at peace.
“A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one.” – mh clay
In undulating
to the universe
and its arrangement,
lies the shell
of sapience.
Easygoingness
of the breeze
gladdens my innermost parts.
To soak in this synergy
is to be on the beam.
In fulcrum of fecundity
I bow to its bid.
The shorthand
from this steam
pulsates with my punch.
Make this your first encounter of the day; set the tone for your year. – mh clay
I got myself another skin. It is available
in bazaars of the bloated.
It failed to bolster me.
I wrapped myself in shield of words.
Read the script inscribed on scroll
of my prelapsarian phase.
Upon reflection, I favored thought
not thews, song not shekels.
This has its own fatigue.
Who can guess where you’ll get? Should you revel or regret? – mh clay
In orneriness
of laughter
your snaggleteeth
without a bumbershoot
like most of me.
Happiness:
a kerchief of kites
flying nowhere.
Rain or shine, we’ll take what likes we can; no umbrella. – mh clay
The caramel of your eyes as rich as the custard I never had.
Your skin my quilt for years. Your irides mine, yet faint as
the fantasies I could never count on. The spice of your tresses
strong as my subterfuge. We have no cradlesong. Your breath
singes my body, giving birth to many lies and one truth: no,
is your way of saying yes.
This after-entree enabling of enablers inflicts sweet suffering. – mh clay
Meter of meaninglessness
drafts us to seamless duties.
Like darkness unfolds my
hand to reach its destination:
limiting me to flitter
on the grayscale of feelings.
Without His haft
I am not half of myself.
Again and again, I invoke Him
to direct me to ply the river of design.
Pondering what it means to make as the maker meant. – mh clay
There is peace in pebbles. They rest
until reallocated. For the most part,
normal is a no-no. It is an invention
of the antinome lobby.
Hazing comes readily to teenyboppers.
If you hop six schools in six cities in
as many years there is reason to be
remonstrative.
While the elders click their flutes
and chime: it is about adjusting and
making friends we stow away the
warps in our secret-sloop.
Survival by wresting wonder from those warps. – mh clay
The freebooter in you unleashes
as you skew the conversation
with the miasma of multi-layered
questions.
There is no barter on bruises.
Even snaps on the social media
channels don’t pay back for the
sadness?
Rage disrobes itself on the mirror
of my makeup van. I seek another
script from the director of the film.
He cancels my contract.
Sometimes, if stuck, one best not stay. – mh clay
A flurry of footloose word-armies,
unleashed in makeshift assemblies,
impress at first blush. On jelling
for gravitas, one realizes, empty
words leave us unfurnished.
The familiarity of promise is like
an earworm. Takeoff on truism?
I wish I could urge them to hustle
with a new hook, bunko with a buss.
Lure me with unwonted lies.
If you’re gonna put lipstick on that pig, it needs to be a good kisser. – mh clay
