Tuerto ( One Eyed)

There I was
gnashing down some chana saag,
slurping on a mango lassi
in a peaceful Bombay dream
replete with sweet pickled chiles
and tamarind chutney.

Along comes a mob in full melee,
there sorry saris drenched in blood.
They quite upset my equilibrium
poking each others eyes out relentlessly.

Bringing up the rear
is none other than Ghandi himself,
drunk as a miscreant monkey
got into the liquor cabinet.

I yell out, "Mahatmaji!"

He weaves over,
his whole body a wave
of debauched giggling,
ashes his cigar in my chutney,
lets out a Falstaffian belch
and slurs,

" I knew it ! I knew I knew it!"

A lengthy pause in which he shifts
on his ricketybrownwobbly legs,

then-

" I just didn't think it would be so funny!"

EKG: Digoxin

Ignorant of flora species
the foxglove planted
along the walkway to my flat
(near the cheesy false pond and fountain)
was picked for a woman possessed
of a rare, most well preserved spirit.

Afterward,
along with the floral identification
accomplished via botanist handbook,
came the curious realization
that her athlete's heartbeat
(so slow, so sure, so strong)
worked as if governed
by the pharmaceutic harvested
from those selfsame petals,
while I would have had it
quick contract, skip a stroke...
or at least have her stomach stirred
by the subtly curling currents
left by metaphoric monarch wings.

Most homemakerly was I hanging prints,
musing on Van Gogh's famously digitoxic vision
clearly evidenced in suns, starred night skies,
lanterns, moons, candles -
light radiating about the source,
concentric circles whorling round
a pebble's plop in a still mill-pond.

The print was Cafe Terrace at Night
and I wondered if we'd ever make it there,
to sit and whet oursleves by candlelight.

for EKG

Sleep Sloop: A Lullabye

Six miles inland
from where the lunatic
Pacific surf uncoils itself
onto the San Clemente shore
the prenoon heat danced
above the assaulted asphalt
in light bending, radiant wavelets.

The lovers lay lank-limbed,
moored in a land-locked,
sweat-meshed sensual stupor
of an interwoven sleep.

The desert's lung exhaled
it's sage-laden breath
through the open window
shuffling the shutters
which rattled rythmic
'gainst the wrought headboard
subtly stirring the slumbering scene
to a gauzy wakefulness
wherein they groggily agreed-
it was very like the sound
of the wind in the rigging...
the bed, therefore then
a modest sloop, lolling
lovingly on the subtle swells
of dreamy, primordial seas.