Sallow fruit of doubt (guilty, rotting holes,
smashed hope, mute possibility, pause for complacency),
whose lazy seeds spawn
contorted fragments of forget;
tattered, moot sentences,
                                                hesitations,
echoes of fear,
                                                following fear of fear.
Craning, one can hear
their long lost sorrows attached
to our own, thumping heart.

Mind’s hoary soliloquy
flaps frantically,
fitfully free; while
          quintessential doors of perception
(five of them)
          filter cosmic, white heat
          through prisms of colors-
          lapis, ochre, sienna
rainbow’s light,
dark unraveling.

Decoding time into days,
we clutch at pebbles in the stream
dreaming the gurgling flow
into pomegranate’s passion,
guzzling its nectar, pits and all.

Vignettes, billions, (perpetual unfolding)
trembling plays with no set-
Characters (you and me) act
on shifting grains of
windswept dunes in
Sahara’s raw dance.

Yet, selfish insistence,
pearly data of birth
assembles uncannily-
             mapping gravity’s clout.

Dikes of persistence
shape tomorrow’s fortunes
from today’s regrets.
Torrential rivers
of love and pain, joy and betrayal
flow past eroding banks,
             through unequal silences of
             sorrow and shame.

Pandora’s plethora of tarnished ennui
sinks overloaded barges-
               good intentions, weighed down
               with neglect.
Compost condensed beneath timeless
yearning, crushed into syrupy coal,
morphs
to become diamonds.

After all is said, all is done,
After Time spins out
when doubt is spent, words gone-

Somehow, Silent
from amongst this clutter
callow wings unfurl, revealing a Pearl.
Salubrious jewel.
Tabula rasa.