Binary

Last breath,
watching a sunrise disintegrate—
the light dissolves, leaving behind only the shadows of what was once whole. Footsteps echo, half in the light, half in the dark, a journey suspended between two realms, no longer whole. The world bleeds—hemorrhage of time and meaning, the only colors left, blue and green, swirling in a serpent’s eye. There is no clarity, only endless motion, like a growing tumor—unseen, yet present. The conversations we never have, the things unsaid, stretch and bend, their silence louder than anything else in this fleeting space between breaths.

Albeiro stands still
half in the light, half in the dark—
the universe cleaved.

reduction
of bubbling compote
submerged ego

right and left
brains in dialogue
radio waves

Halves

just dawn
indigo blooming
on your skin

spinning
their own grave
silkworms

white lotus
in a vessel of water
folded palms

rearranging puzzles
the halves of everything
ardhanarishvara

guru purnima
rising in ecstasy
with the tide

frozen morning
the fry pan sizzles
into our silence

aura and aria
breath climbs, falls
other lingers soft

emptied pasture
half-built scarecrows
stuffed with silence

Singing

How her heart pounds against that body
Of her child, and theirs too, in rubble songs—
Voices heaving into cradled children, their
Eyes bleeding with the milk of all mothers.

Anthems now wordless, rhythms silenced,
A village in every country could be a village
In any country, no difference, God miracles
The heat of a smallish body leans weightless
Into the bosom of a grandmother, light still.

Howls quiet, tears dry, homes empty, streets
Heavy with wounds after wounds. By now,
Sleep has become a ghazal that repeats itself—
Every ghazal reverberates into the afterworld.

Across thresholds of lands, and rivers, troops
Stamp their boots, following paths of wet
Earth where the dead have been laid to rest.
Night watches its sleep being raped endlessly.

The song is a ribbon, bringing starlings down.
This winter, I will rummage through the past,
Listen to the hollows of barren oaks, the chatter
Of owls whose eyes watch the ants crawling.

When exactly does a song become a mourn
How do shapes in the sky become ghosts
When do things become invisible, a smoke
Spiral rising above every house into horizons.

Every war is a long mourning,
thousand songs are sung backward.