My poems featured in Cholla Needles, Issue 24, 2018

  Published in: Cholla Needles (Joshua Tree, California, USA), Issue 24, November 2018, pp. 17-23





R.K. Singh

Sweet Savors

Strayed far from the nest
I’m fed up living with dust
for years fleeting shade

bereft
of melody
of spirit I sink to
the hades of utter loss
I can’t

reckon hidden mysteries
I have lost the sea
for a mere cupful

void of patience and
peace now as I touch the breasts
of the field I crave

for a pure breath
native to
my being I search
sweet savors

of love




Burial


I want to burn the fallen leaves
but fear the flame will hurt the trees

I can’t stand the stench rains bring
the backyard is too big to clean

I can’t rescue my habitat
nor trim the trees for better light

this all reflects the shambles made
for disco of convenience

why regret burial by
taunting helplessness now?




Now


My time is now
the day of salvation
where is Father?
playing patty cake?
I sit a potted plant
and wait at the doorstep
tumbling sun and shade


Chain
 
I do not write the sun, storm or sea
but re-create myself and others
in verses turn time or pluck some stars
to find my ways through masked trenches
witness to my sinking into mud
that curves the memories into bias
disgrace dust, sky, wind, all relations
window of emotions I must chain
to breathe a pure breath without passion
and discover essence of beauty
spring a move toward self harmony
perfection and peace, prelude to nude
enlightenment to carve life in full



Song of Songs
 
I’m true in my element
begotten of earth
hungry to mate with sky:

seek me in song of songs
in kisses that he and she
rehearse on way to bed

the voluptuous squeezes
fulfillment of godly
and bodily promises


Rainbow
 
They color their hair
paint the face to look younger
and speak aged lies
to match rainbow life but stare
into the sky to find
which color follows which
before melding into one
they wonder what to do
with beige and indigo shades
that stick their vision



God, Sex And The World
 
It’s part of prayer
to have the lingam kissed
or kiss it to feel

the creator’s pulse
for a moment
that the body too

that houses the spirit
we seek in His name
for relief and salvation

through the cycle
of day and night
meeting and departing

learning and unlearning
each moment synthesizing
god, sex and the world



Closed Eyes
 
The faces appearing
and receding in
dark of closed eyes

don’t answer why
they aren’t winged souls
fading in the sun

I emptied before it set
in the gowns of girls
stopped from dancing bare foot:

they shake autumn in the rain
mist blurs the image
water spills in shady pool



Hope Of Divinity
 
The falsity of the sky is more real than the earth’s
lies can’t sustain hope of divinity

we have complicated with poesying
private hells to mitigate flow of time

that couldn’t carve heaven: we harbor histories
of broken promises and fallen gods

lament men and women buried in light
now soulless, bodiless, traceless we look

upward and whittle continents from clouds
hanging generations that may never be


There’s No Paradise
 
The fog in mirror
slips by damp towel
cold sets in slippery hands

rain flows on windows
black water crawls down
like diseased reptiles

why scrub the smelly
underbellies
there’s no paradise



Life’s Strange Relation
 
The mind is put off
before the act blood lets down:
it’s end before beginning

how can touch be erotic
with cold copula’s
in drunken gibberish?

they all chant their own
equations through grooves of night
trick weeds of ideas

life’s strange relation:
words belong to all
and deeds to a few


--R.K.Singh