I get close enough
To recognize the face
The forehead, the nose, the eye, the stubble covered face
The breath hurling from the nostrils ,decipating in dark
He recognizing my stand comes to halt
"digging for time....we have been at it for long"
he labors saying it loud.

And if I stop here at the threshold of the door and succumb to the doubts
Of the passage and all that stays behind and all the unexpected I would
Come to realize.....is this a beginning or an end.....

I tell myself if I should pass the door with no memory of all is left behind
Just the possibilities of the unexpected and unseen would I be better for it
Would not living with fogs of memories and traces of experiences
Bring a clarity in my perception

I feel whole again.... The sutures are getting covered by new skin... fresh and pink... the jagged edges are melding and the the cavities are covered by protean fibers......... The bones have healed though there is a phantom pain that sometimes flows through my bones and paralyzes me , waking me up or bringing me down to my knees..... I could take these little pills for pain to go away and She says if I take them regularly they never come back.....somewhere they get barricaded and left to decimate.....

I have left the room........ I sleep somewhere else and the situation seems so temporary, however I know I would never go back.....In my youth I vehemently avoided branding things as MINE.... it always was the car I use....the house I live in..... never mine.... I barely had claimed me , .........and then it was the yellowed skin......the poison and Coma...... and yet all the reasoning, all the logic,,,,, were not enough.... I put up a good defense and argued my case...........She would not hear of it......

And this burden of years , the crown of normalcy...... This accumulation of alphabets and numbers....the necessity of sunrises and sunsets, all of this, the reluctant son.... the cruel father , paternal yet blind to the sensibility of strangers and anything beyond the green Book of salvation.... oh he could not see ... and if he saw he would not recognize..................

Yes it pains me to be carrying so many faces, so many destinies.....the blind maze, the odor of growing fungus, the green smell of growth... and the blue colds of limits,... this circus... ... batches of eggs, the fertile genitals that survive cohabitation of ordinary and mundane..... this generation following the last in a blind maze....... There is not any individuality in living or death.....

Yet another sunrise and the life that awakens...............folowing the crowd at arms length......... the fire burns............

We could focus on entrance and exit... yes, however entrance could be only birth and Exit points at death. So the symbols change, how about life....in correlation to birth and Death...... we could call it the stay.... I mean staying within the parameters of Birth and death... inside the equation...within .....am I clear? !

You better get used to my morbid subject...... my father is dying and I need to get my head around it and the only way I can do that is by spelling the whole subject to myself here..... So you could go away... however I need to stay here and I need to know how to reason an understanding.for myself.

Well he has been distant.... no, he has been put.... Since the day my son was born...yes exactly on that day....I left him
not physically ....inside my head he was past and my son was the future and my duty was to go on... I cut most of the arteries, the ones that had survived our relationship....... through out the years... the anger and the frustration, the walls that we built together as we lost the sight of each other...... the man that he was... the son that I wanted to be....the hand that stretched and held for a while and then slipped away.

I was four or five when in the crowd of the Bazaar I lost him.........he found me picked me up and held me while I cried..and I remember the exact moment after the birth of my son when he lost me..... I did cry ..I could not explain why here I was moving on......he was staying.... I had his grandson's hand in mine and we walked away.....The rest was shorter stays...... quiet hellos and missed goodbyes...... across the telephone wire, the awkward silences.... I guess we were both new to this..........................................

There is finality to death. and life though persistent, is so very fragile.......Yes we will go through all the routines..... as properly as possible...... and we get to share our sorrow as private as it is......we are the social animal.... we smile we cry and grieve ...we accept and we object and yet we go on

He is scared .....his head bent , bones ache... he jerks his head to the side and finds a way to look up.....his pupils lifeless, no motion, looking at you......through an empty window... no recognition.....his head falls back.

Season of loss...... the horsemen are coming dressed in blacks of Apocalypse yielding their swords........I let the drape down.... light is cruel and there should be a moment for us to withdraw......... I here the elevator stops and the bell rings
he is crawling on the floor .......finding his way to the open door. and the vinyl corridor that goes forever in successions of florescent lights.....he is willing toward the elevator and I am thinking would he manage to push the button....

I took a picture of his ventilator, his feeding tube........ as the liquid dark beige moved up within ......I took a picture of all
the tubes and lights.....shiny red numbers going on and off......he was attached and breathing, his eyes closed . mouth gaped open face bones tortured deformed,,,,,, splayed on the bed motionless... I walk toward him, once next to him I rubbed my fingers against his bearded chin............

I think the machines took some of him, warm as he was ........ he has been debriefed and declassified....... ..........and I still wonder would he know which button to push once he crawled in the elevator.......

I come with my fangs cutting through the flesh boned fingers sharp as blades,
my eyes hollowed in their sockets , sunken fiery red, mischief on my mind, horror
in my head, I come to take with my critters smalll and large my crows black and
loud, vultures - prophets of pestilence, hyinas crazed by the scent of rotting flesh, my
possies, my peers, souls lost between purgatory and hell

...........................................

Nothing like afternoon tea
to clear ones head , soothing.
I found my papers, yet no
appetite to write...........

The water boiled
while the flower found the shade
the moment passed, yet I
held the pen, digging further

I found the house back
When I returned, the house was clean
And yet empty after she left
She said she will come again,

I remember the day I found my alphabets, and how they found me , I giggled
My mother smiled, and nothing has been the same.........

Walking in the rain I dream of bamboo shoots thinking how quiet is beyond the clouds
Walking alone in the rain, I dream of you , thinking we could share the rain
As life slips away and I stay

I remember the day you left , alphabets were useless, it never rained
Mother sat by the window, I was left at the table staring at the empty bowl

she smiles inviting me to her spread, she smiles and I want so much to touch her, she
smiles and the day is spent behind a curtain that separates the window glass wallowing
in anticipations . She is a virgin child yet the scent of wine on her breath wanton and
sweet, yet there is fear in her eyes behind the pretenses of desire and appetite , there
is fear quiet in its jest yet spreading under her skin..................

the silence find me and holds me, deep and corrupting it hold its own within the proximity of madness and scape, I belong to pages though my son denies me as he should, dreaming of my vessel, my steed, and he knows not how to sleep , how to find his way, how to embark , how to find the footsteps left in rain. He knows not, how I stand behind him while he searches ahead

I walk blind, darkness vast and forgiving, endless as I extend my hands. I feel the presence of the ones walking ahead and the ones right behind, there is a simplicity in this, sweet and clear as long as I stay within the space I occupy I could march slowly ............... folding thoughts one after another leaving them in solutions so I can set them apart, so they can be resolved and fall by the side, I march

I will go further and find the stream and drink .........

I will meet her and maybe not, she is perfection at this distance, maybe for a dance, I will meet her when she accepts the validity of the son and the moon and the attraction of life beyond the daily needs and circumstances
Though times are when she stands closer than she might and I feel the warmth of her breath on my skin, times are that I stop in my track and turn away and it takes so much of me to deny how badly I covet her............

I have been here before the faces are so close to a warm memory of so many days , a close past, a future unturned, ...........I feel I have been here forever..and I am so vulnerable at this turn, this now