these fingers are blistered
and calloused
reaching with sign language
that can't be heard
for what can never be touched
when what wants to be soft
must defend itself
in the battles of miscommunication

I have so little left to say
these hands of mine
making shadow puppets
in the dark
when darkness tells its story too
and shadows show
there must be light

if I could love you
then there must have always been
a part of me that held
those things too
but in the juxtaposition
you see what isn't there
instead of what there is

the shadows tell a story too
they tell there must be light
if you could look beyond
what is cast against
the armour of your wall

my medicine has never been
the bringing of the dark
but the stories one can make
of the resilience of the light

stories only understood
in the context of the glow
haloed in the outline
seeping from the blackened shapes
stories understood not only
by the unafraid
but the ones who do not hide

I am not the dark
but darkness always comes
and all the spirit can ever do
is trust in its own light
and the stories it can tell

darkness tells a story too
of tomorrows shadowed
by what we never face
or monuments painted
to stands against our fear
to leave yesterday behind
and risk the future
of kissed again by light

The Stain on the Livingroom Lamp

when I was a kid
there was always Indian blood
on the shade of our lamp
something about a nail and a board
and the redneck neighbours
from the apartment below
who let me watch soaps
when I was sick

I never forgave my mother
for trading my dreams
of an elegant foreign father
for friends who never were
but I made my own intimacy
with the stain
of the Punjabi man
I would never meet
but knew like a Rorschach
for seven years

because the Indian father I never had
left me a message
in the code of his blood
and so I always knew
I'd rather be the evidence
of a beating for the difference
of who I was
than the lost chance of love
for acceptance that never comes 

Notes on a dream scrawled on a sleepless night

your sacred revolver
I found it in my hands

you who are not
a violent man

you who honour the ancestors
with your mother's name

the trickster who placed it there
with the medicine that knows
a gun is only holy
when it can be
and yet is never used

and I wanted to
but I didn't have to
so I never gave it back to you

because all the power
and the answers are in me
and you were joyous just to watch
how I could discover this
for myself

and because you were
I did

with your sacred revolver
in my hands
kinda like a sacred trust

you trusting to trust me
because I did not give it up
nor use it to replace the power
of what I already was

me trusting you
because you didn't ask

I want to know why
but I'm too tired to ask
for answers that never come
when the stories I tell myself
never seem to shut up

I am scared when bitterness
does not emerge
that this is no great state of evolution
but only the growing comfort
I've found with disappointment

I want to turn back the clock
but I don't belong to time
and somewhere in the ghost realms
something else has slipped
over through the other side

and I am learning now

that dreams can only 

live their lives
in the shadows of the light
when I have closed my eyes

find me the ancient spell
that makes a husband of a man
who can love a crone

the one who holds
the alchemy to understand
now is not the time
for florals and polka-dots
but for nipples that have suckled
the future generations
and bellies that conceal
their wombs stretched out by love
naked and dancing
beneath the moon

find me the one who knows
there is dangerous and vulgar magic

between the lips
and between the hips
of a woman far past
the visual of her long dead
fuckability

because my vanities and sanities
and apologies
are all drowned
in oceans of where I couldn't belong
but had to learn to swim

and now I've found my solid ground
these roots run deep deep down
though still the girl can weep
the memory of saltwater
for hours or for days

but the woman can also laugh
her magic too
just as manic as the wind
and wide awake for days
just to be in love
with what it is to be alive

find me the man
with nothing left
to teach the girl
and I will be his crone
and student
and inspiration
and in the dark
his maiden who forgets
that younger women are mostly made
of the modest and the shy

it should not take a woman
so many years to be full grown
and so many sacrifices
of the suppleness and glow
to stand before a mirror
and see her beauty
between the sagging lines

but I will cast a spell
to find the looking glass
that sees the secrets that I see
and I will name him Eight
then tell him back the secret
he maybe does not know
that the power in a prophet
is to understand the truth
of what it is to love
and not to claim or conquer
the flesh of woman
nor the earth