Lily and Reed

My mossy pad touching your mighty waist
melancholizes my petals. You play
the flute as if it were a lissom sword.
I love your Creole voice, twigs of raucous
French marinated and casseroled with
African leaves. A rich spinster reading
the soul of the perfect, poor man makes her
richer. I will give my horizontal
to your vertical. Give me not curved moons
that belongs to primitive people; give
me a rusty sickle that I may reap
you for myself. I cannot wait for you
to call yourself mine. Time, our breath, is but
a flower jealously jailed by its bud.
You are egoless; I want to live and
end on your reedbed, not in this soggy
palace. I want to call you, your voice mine.


Fatherly Forms

When I feel down, like a small bulb dying
among a crowd of condescending moons,
my guilty eyes see only one martyr.

He is a devoted, withering trunk
holding countless boughs, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruits.
Unmoved by his perpetual pain, like
greedy worms we feasted on his glory.
We picked up huge stones to stone him, sometimes.

Each dewy morning, the massive mountain
is losing his soil to the angry waves.
He walks around leaning against the walls
of the house he built but can no more own.
Like a scarecrow he kept us safe and fed

our fields, but since the avalanche of white
hair, he is toothless and frightens no birds.

And, when I spend the afternoon over
the bridge watching the fragile fish carry
their blissful bodies down the river, I
feel his youth in the rhythmic ripples and
know he would lie about his evening grief.


Self-Isolation & Shakespeare

A nameless day, I see myself leaning
on a Malboro backstage, my green tongue
in love with borrowed smoke. I talk of
dreams; I am the musical Mercutio.
Stickmen on fire queue up for my concerts.

A blank night, I find myself in seiza
at a shrine, gargling with sweet, warm water.
An Asian Orsino, I chew music;
I am the scarecrow stuffed with red hay,
whose harmonium goes wild and mild.

A dateless noon I see myself digging
into an oyster; I am Bassanio,
the gambler. I rejoice in the absence
of the sun, trying to lure a mermaid into
the spirited marrow of my drained skeleton.

I have no regret as my beard falls on
the cracked window sill. On the old table,
fresh newspaper. Covid count. Coldest rain.
To be Romeo, or not to be Romeo?
Back to my boulder, I am the snowman
cheating invisible death, in his blindness.

Amit Parmessur, 38, a private tutor, is a two-time Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Web nominee. His poems have appeared in over 165 magazines, namely WINK, The Rye Whiskey Review, Night Garden Journal, Hobo Camp Review, Ann Arbor Review and Ethos Literary Journal.  He lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius, where he spent his adolescence hating poetry.