umashankar manthravadi

accidents are very necessary
especially when
one is not given a true fate
I think of them as my own
...

a craze of lines
invisible except
under pressure
a hand fugitive
...

a procession of women
wrapped against the backs of their men
on the backs of motorcycles
...

I am waiting

for the next discontinuity
in your smile
...

a blind man waking the scorpion with
a bent twig. black pendulous upstanding
sting found in the dark. a sharp still bright pain
lighting the spinning hole. brave man. blind man
...

after the dying fall
of the crossing sounds
of the bells timbres
there is more death
...

hiding, crow fashion
and remembering only
the act of hiding
...

a withdrawn thickened slug
trod upon by too many feet
to ever want to extend its
horns and resume the search
...

among the many who believed
their luck would change
was a boy who did not understand
that others too
...

bright, yellow bodied
can sting even while dying
hard to kill
but you have to kill
...

In dreams of rain or by lightning’s light I
lying on sea sand watch the cantankerous
flood bite into sand piled in a dozen
drifting years. Mud drips down leaves. Lying on
...

setting out on this wordlong journey i
have not much hope, siren silence calls me.
i'm driven by the moving meniscus
of soap on a stick, or minor breezes
...

a single secret core. if I dream now
of many possible futures it is
because I cannot clearly see a way
...

you can see where the door was
- imperfectly erased
you had drawn it yourself
the door and the house
...

that was what we heard then. something did happen
during the night. and it changed our lives.
we had slept on not wanting to listen
to uncertain noises, distant tumult
...

washed only that evening
newly hung glass lamp shades
freely swinging
dimly incandescent
...

thirty years ago, I sat at the door
and waited
as I do now
...

the other night I lifted my face and
tried to make a fist. raised myself on my
hands and arched over the gorge. but it was
(once again) a momentary effort.
...

the stork sees
reflections of its eye
in the water
broken by the waves
...

now how do you
(renege, renegotiate)
a childhood contract
not things are ideas
...