Bittersweet Orange

When I am with you
The life I know and am used to
Turns sublime
Faces turn radiant
And places release the smells of new soils
From deep inside their bellies
As if someone re-ploughed them
Overnight
People started talking marmalade
- and who doesn't succumb to the flavour of bittersweet orange!

I wake up eager and excited
Not to face what the day holds,
But to see its face,
Dreary, racing, peaceful, sinister,
In every shade and pattern
And I'm taken to realize:
There is nothing that resembles a straight line
Which also breathes life

Sometimes when I let my mind open
Things flutter in, bright and violent
With the speed of a reckless racer
Who has you gripping the edge of your seat
While his car waltzes with the asphalt
Drawing careening circles and tyres screeching
Because that's really how knowledge is:
Violent, it shatters your world

Sometimes when I let my mouth open
Things flow out, sweet and musical
With the disposition of a good dancer
Whose hands and feet find patterns in rhythm
Flowing in and out of it with purpose
So unfalteringly thread my thoughts and words
Not because I am more eloquent or wiser
But for the new meaning I have found
In my existence
Since I threw myself in with you

The lonely times of before were a sham -
I see that now -
The illusions of a mind bent on self-destruction
Fighting against an intrinsic nature
That demands love, company and respect
In ceding the victory of that innateness
And in losing my mind
I found you
And then I found everything
Exactly the way it should be

A Poem on Tissue

I wrote you a poem on tissue
Isn't that the way our love
is too? Like tissue?

White and pure, soft
and delicate?
Soaking our experiences into
its porous fibre
and holding them there to
be cherished?

But let us be wary, darling,
not to overdo it
Lest our tissue soak
up much - too much -
and fall apart
into shreds:
the litter of memories

Day by day, let us
breathe too
and dry our love
that our experiences may hold
more than
just feelings

Let come from it learning:
It's the little spaces that
keep the universe in
One Piece

And our love, transparent
and light, will take us places
on wheels
that turn with
each breath of God -

He knows
how to handle
Tissue

Soft Love

Love, touch me sweetly softly shy 
Love, feel me what my thoughts belie 
Love, show me all unimagined 
Love, fly me on the wings of wind 
Love, hold me till they scream: my veins 
Love, hurt me till they bleed: my pains 
Love, seed the flower over where I lie 
Love, hover nigh as a butterfly