LUCK FOGIC

The lines on my palms
Are never as nearly good,
In the game of fortuitous alms
She doled me less than she could.

The road was always rocky
But for me the climb too was steep,
She never let it get any easy
Till I stopped to rest and weep.

High tides seek out men to drown
As soon as I take to the sea,
She calms the violent waters down
When the sailor is not me.

Between hypothesis and happening
Lies the abyss of Luck
That one place, that one thing,
Where many like me got stuck.

The halt becomes the destination
When She wills it that way,
Success is but an illusion
That she forges for the best of her prey.

I know men are not born equal
That some are meant to be,
It hurts to not be one of them
To be condemned to mediocrity.

Lady Luck does not serve
She is served, I know
It was not that I lacked the nerve,
But was simply unsure how.

I shall not lay down however,
My arms; the fight will remain
Till the time I own Her forever
My failures shall not go in vain.

A FAREWELL

So many that there aren’t any
Rights, wrongs, absolutes.

Valediction, paid not given
Face, lost in the legions
Name, sponged from memory
Bond, sprouted on thin ice
Ripple, in the dead sea of feeling
Grief, half-born from indifference
Pain, the residue of conscience
Fate, an open palm untossed.

Greetings, goodbyes, gags,
So many that there aren’t any.

SHE

From a corner of the stairs
She sashayed across
My eye caught her unawares
Gush was read as gross.

I lingered on her
Stretching the moment
She hastened faster
And pressure searched a vent.

The perfumes held back
My nostrils smelt the trail
My sight scanned the track
I sought out the female.

When I reached her after a while
She turned around
Her face lit up a smile
And love had me found.

It did not last long
The road turned rocky beyond
And I wasn’t yet strong
To fasten up the bond.

From there I walked back
The sign-posts still stay
I had had my crack
At sorrow’s foreplay.

A THIN WHITE STRAND

A thin white strand.
A silver tide in a sea of black
A canescent proof of wizening scalp
A singular alley to past epochs
A herald of scripted pages of futurity
A dent on the psyche of existence.

A thin white strand.
A forbidden plume for willing hands
A talking point for garrulous mouths
First signs of the final lap
An Aesop of tales of a life lived
Time summarized in a single straw.

The terror of End itself personified
A thin white strand.

THE ECLIPSE

Night descends in the midst of day,
The roof of the world wears a grotesque gray,
The moon obliterates the blazing God –
The sun is under siege from a lesser bod.

This duel, the finest of them all,
The ape and the aped staring eyeball to eyeball,
The one to blink is the one to die
The flutter of an eyelid holds the fate of the sky.

Seconds smoke out light from the scene
The blighted sun loses its sheen,
Darkness feasts on the fringes of sunshine
Alas, the lights go out on this world of mine.

Then suddenly, light rips out
Day has the dark in a rout;
Shadows shy away – the eclipse is no more
The sun reappears, more resplendent than ever before.

SHARDS

Shards of glass, my life
Broken without a why,
Splinters glued towards a null
Climbing earth and crumbling sky.

Each fractal blade, sharpened
Every moment, bleeding pains
Slipping out, oozing in, through the crevices,
Void running in the veins.

My mind, numbed by thought
Multiples amounting to nought,
Want of a deed and direction
Stillness, sold and bought.

Each instant alive, a debt on desire
Shards of glass, my life.