Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
After Andrew Varnon & for David
Be my halligan bar, my fireground fused in a leyden jar
My maltese cross crocheted from the rose moss
The mise en scène Madeira from the crashing cable car
What if we are meant to sizzle in that sea of flames weather?
Love, Be my torque through the tether
Be my first 14 steps sewn into a single “forever together”
Be my smile smuggled to a coterie of bell heathers
My tortoise shell cartel of timekeepers
Me with your eyelid of a lacewing winking in
a single bird-feather
Your Saturn murmur
You with your lungs of leather
Be my aura of Agni, my epoch quark
Be my bluejacket bateau bent to a question mark
My anemone invented Argonaut, my requiem shark
My Irish shamrock, my Indian cent,
The Spanish scent of panacea in the cinnamon bark
Be my Aries in equinox
Be my falcon of Ra, the radium ram
My kaolin clay inside the cherrystone clam
Be my chopper wing, my deadstick drag,
My carpal syndrome, my tunnel vision
touring the empty black box
Be my alcohol lamp, my atelier, my aging alabaster
windowing the shy portraits of azure asters
My Pygmalion of papier-mâché
Be my Infant Dionysus
My Olympic heirloom, kissed curls of Samson’s locks
My kitsune kingdom of the last red fox
Be my objet petit, my opiate oath,
My occam’s razor, my obi nexus
My kitchenette whisk, my brunette brisk
in the lap of a lopsided lullaby
Be my karmic yogi, my solar plexus
Be my secure password
My under the doormat key
My grand slam and my grand prix
My grand central terminal heartstop
My esplanade before the Moab valley
Be my first, my second, my third
Be the infinity to my inferred
My hijacked folksong
Along the length of a tongue when slurred
Be my blossom after the bud,
My moringa under the whim of a myna bird
Be my Indus comb, my reign of Rome
Be my dove and my dome
My tobacco shish, my dying wish
My tableau vivant, my totem, my taboo
Be my Algonquin table of two
Be my paladin, my mortal sin before the coup
Be these things. Be my brokered cartel of one
My acrostic anodyne, my antenna of amen
Crucifying the cavalry of the midday sun
My envoi, my volition, my voyage, my convoy
My beast, my beloved, my benedict, my boy
Be my Studio Ghibli at 3 am
Be my shift of gaze in the snail-snug rpm
Be my forty winks in 4 syllables
My unthinkable, my unsinkable
Be my incomplete thesis
My astronomy of silent bliss
My vortices of Jupiter
My backstreet Venus
I am asking you to stay. Once I was a tallow of desert; a footprint sleeping in the sand. Now I am standing in the hum of your stillness, in the thick and the thin, shed of my snakeskin. Accept my bulletproof prayers. This is where I am a letter made of three words – Be my everything. Aren’t you my listening trove, my glistening grove? The mist is a mirror. I am caught between a spasm and oblivion. Listen to the inflection of each civilizing zenith, each crystal myth.
Each writhing ripple. Each rippling writhe.
Be my primal epic. My emperor of poetic.
Be my golden ratio, my nautilus grail
My lightship before the lakestorm
My black pearl diver defying the norm
My speed shuttling through the monorail
Be my cypress surge.
My grace note of spring
shying in its coy urge
Be my winter rain
My luminoso library door
overlooking the porchswing
Take me home.
Be my delivered even if delayed
Be my shivered but stayed
Be my valedictorian’s delicatesse
My wild herb, my purple cress
My citadel studded engagement ring
My diamond adorned wedding dress
Be my reason for a legal change in my last name
My new address, my sly nod to the silk road
My evergreen a la mode,
Be my comeback Caesar,
my coltish knight in the cardgame
Be my long limbed candle of scandal
My victor, my vizir and my vandal
Be my Egyptian ink
my ontological mutiny, my swim or sink
Be my return from the tarmac
My egg yolk dawn
My salmon pink
Evening sleeping inside a pearl swan
Be my 2 stops, 21 hours, 7785 miles
My long distance phone calls bouncing
off Italian tiles
Be my unbreakable echo, my “Dr Siobhan’s better half”
My pride, my patience, my penance
My smiling wrinkles in a rising graph
Be my midnight walk to the Laundromat
My tranquil faith of dishwasher antics
My atlantic grin of a Persian cat
Be my let’s begin from the middle. Be my 7 embassy visits.. Be my Iyari : my heart’s memory. Be my missing from you. Be my hunger humbled by the darkness.
Be that one trick where you say my name and the heat breaks each thermometer into an exodus of mercury.
Be my excavation of silence, each vein’s quietly held blue.
Be my astonishment of everything that begins with my possibility of you.