once again

Once again, am drinking roses, am drinking sunshine am drinking moonlight: roses with thorns, thorns with roses, roses of colorless light am drinking,and am dreaming.
once again I have become a rose, have become sunshine, moonlight and have become a lake where fishes are flowers with dreams in their wombs.
I have become a poem, have become these words, have become these words roses placed at your feet: roses are lamps placed at your feet, roses are lamps placed at your cemetery. It is only that I wish there won’t be rain tonight, rain of petals less flowers, rain, song and self.

II

What has an old man’s age got to do with his heart? What has an old man’s age got to do with drink, with love?

He says, “ I too am a drink, I too have become beautiful and graceful with the years gone by. Don’t look at me like that when I dance, when my whole being becomes a bird, bird of light, bird of roses. Am a rose with wings, am a rose flying high in the sky and this drink is the sun in whose lap I dance and lose myself. Am an infant, have lately found what I am, have lately found what God is, what life is and more importantly what death is.”

III

Her naked body spreads on the earth like a blue rose, and her hands that remind him of elegant long white serpents, stretch for his body. He says that she said to him on that very day before she died: “You look beautiful tonight, wish you were a drink so that I could take you in one gulp.”

Her breasts are sunflowers. Flowers of sun laugh at him while her pubis a pink rose in a black garden is a cloud, is a rain: over the valley over the ocean and over his being.

VI

Once again am drinking beings, am drinking existences am drinking the blood of memories. Am a Dracula for this moment, and a cannibal for this moment. Am drinking and eating, am drinking and dreaming, my Father the other, am intoxicated with the blood of my ancestors. The sky is but skins of my grandparents, crippled, comprehending and it still smells like the burnt wood at the kitchen in the shack that they lived. Where are they? Where am I? Where are others too?

V

An old man, so lonely writes words that are his only consolation. Autumn of patriarch: I say. He says: “one has to live: for others.” But at night when he wanders in the paths of his self he knows that his life had been a mirage. That he lived spoke and behaved exactly as others wanted him to be. He loved and still loves as others want him to be. Deep in his heart a sentence hangs like death, like the scent of the woman he loved but could not live with. He asks, “ Is this me? Is this I? Words that I have not written words that have not said all these years when they should have been said? What is death? What is death? Will it be like the touch of my mother, the other, will it be like the breast of my lover that I lost or will it be like the gestures of my companion who died leaving me a memory of my name?” He asks, “Is life a memory?”

VI

Once again, am drinking with an old man who dreams that he is a song sung by his beloved. A song sung by memory,
Once again, am drinking and dreaming with a blind man who says that he sees doves flutter in twilight, and sound of the flapping wings in but her words. Her words that have become his song. A song of existence, song of death. He says, “Dear oh dear, why is the world so beautiful when one has no eyes?”

VII

Old men and young women. Ah, once again am drinking and dreaming with old women and young men. Am dreaming friends, birds, roses and thorns. Am drinking and dreaming sunshine and moonlight, and it is just then that he says: “Friends are birds. Friends are migrating birds.” Later I dream of a colorless bird perched on the edge of my dream. It seems to say: am a rose, am sunshine am the reason for your existence. Dare to fly with me? I will take you to the edge of existence. I will take you to the edge of yourself. Have your glimpsed death in every word that you write?”

VIII

“That we are all alone” he says, “ is a condition. We are all guests of eternity, of death. This life is but the flicker of a lamp before it fades out, this world is but a breeze, a rain and a flame that we witness for a moment. Do you have a woman? Like a rose, like a drink, like violence, like the flute song of the sea to see what it means to be?”

“Think of this” he says, “are you a rose? Are you a song? Or a thought that thinks of a rose and a song?”

IX

I say: “there should be a thanks giving moment to all those people who give life to moment, to this moment. I say that these words are nothing but signs of gratitude intoxicated with life and death. I say thanks to those who pour their existence to fill the empty of my being. I raise my cup, my holy grail, to You, to You alone anonymous strangers who bring with them resonance of a song, of a rose of a thorn of a cloud and rain to drench my being slowly but surely.

X

He says: for some time, for sometime please forget about words that you have written. Please stop thinking yourself as your words. Then, only then will you see that you are a rose, a colorless rose and a bird, a cloud and rain.

An old man with the heart of a young woman. He is a young woman with the heart of an old man. And then he says, “ I have to go. One has to leave at the right time. One has to leave like leaving itself.”

XI

“Are you leaving”, I ask, “Are you leaving just like that? “

“Like a rose, a thorn, a cloud, rain and the song of a bird”, he says, “everyone will leave just like that. Live, live. Live like a rose that is lost it its form, like a cloud that is lost in its rain, like a bird that is lost in its flight. Am an empty cup, so are you. Am a moment here and now, so are you. Live, live like the memory of the love that is gone but still alive by being lost. Live, live.”

XII

Once again, am drinking and dreaming, have become a rose drunk by its form, a tree lost in the rain. Am a drink that you hold in your palm, am the madness in your heart, am a fire, memory of a fire in your being. Old man, a stranger, my other, my mother, Holy Father, sinner and the saint, angel and the beast, you are a tear crystallized at the edge of my being. Take these words that I pour into your cup as love, as life as touch that you have longed for and a breath that you gasped for.

XIII

Once again am drinking roses, am drinking sunshine, am drinking moonlight, roses with thorns, thorns with roses, roses of light, light of roses, am drinking and dreaming, like the memory of a dream, like dreaming a memory. Am drinking roses, am drinking thorns, am drinking sunshine in moonlight, moonlight in sunshine am dreaming and drinking, bleeding for a word, a voice and a gaze of Yours_