Moths
We are really just moths.
Earth and its inhabitants
halt from spinning to lift their gaze
to the moon, like offerings at a shrine,
enchanted by the glow of the empress.
Standing still in the midst of chaos
to pay respect to the power that can't be denied,
we are her children whom in her silver light
we bathe and rinse
off dirt and scrape off skin to just look more like her.
Icarus lived in a time where the sun banned
the worship of her beauty, out of jealousy,
pinned her to the cage of day to blind her lure,
because the man would have set his sight
instead on her,
and would have had the wings to reach
the bubble of fluorescent divine-
if only he was lucky enough to espy.
7 billion pairs of eyes
and so many more from under the ground
had wanted to do the same,
to battle the heavens to travel home-
but if only we had the guts and claws
if only we were moths,
searching alone.
Meet Me At the Stairs
A bus chased itself. Its roar
had intended to break through walls
to reach me. Anonymous chatter like
small rats rattling made itself
a symphony of faraway sounds,
parted a lifetime away from where we sat.
I knew I’d never feel as free,
not from watching the birth of light
after a long misty night
or from leaping off a cliff and hugging the breeze,
as the day we hinged on the flight
of stairs, that climb to my classroom
which I escaped,
that descend to yours from whence you came.
Our story stopped its weaving as long as
bodies stayed intact, rooted in the ground,
and became glistening pebbles in the river.
Water and silk travelled like the infinite music of man,
the bell rung after a few dozen feet finished their laps
after the street ignited a steady humming after a green light had turned red.
The forgotten are not astronauts floating light years away from home,
we were just kids who wanted to sit alone.
Change Will Come?
Even the dream that awoke me to the longest night promised change.
Plummeting into a true black before dawn,
the sky seemed to never promise shine,
it gifted perishing runners and taxi haulers
their momentary stage presence,
an accidental spotlight dressed in black.
Everyone was fleeting beauty,
cloudy shapes shifting swiftly.
Was there anything for my eyes to linger on for so long,
or was I fishing for a taste of the new?
Whichever tinge of darks and fires from rusty trees
or lit apartments like balding spots
drawn into my wide, gaping windows had made them bite.
And soon the burn landed on my shoulders,
the frazzled hills found the embrace of the mattress and sheets-
still I twisted my neck and stretched my eyes to yearn to see
the first break of light.
But change never came,
I almost never fought off the sleep.
Bits of blue only nibbled at the corner of the canvas
when venturous explorers and chariots failed the sleepless window dweller,
and became just people and cars.
The magic of the night took its orange lamps and murky streets
and shrewdly held its breath,
as the atmosphere sank under a sea of sapphire,
before drenching my world in unconsciousness.
And upon my wake,
white resumed to its rightful throne of day,
showering trees and streets and corners of the ground with a shield of milky air.
But the shadows are shallow,
the light is bland,
and the colours don't dance.
It’s day.