The wolf like past circles as it returns Pushing me against the wall to measure And weigh, the flesh to cannibalize, To mark the wattage of my disappearing Glow against the raked skin.

It’s night and the darkness is measured By how far the nighthawk’s call reaches. You however stand beyond this so that I may not reach you. Yet every night My desire arises and like Judas attempts To betray me. We loudly haggle over the price.

So that I may feel just as I felt When even the awareness of your presence Was absent, like a storm that the weatherman couldn't have seen on his screen. Perhaps then things Would be easier to explain; this pain that you Gave me laughing, like so much menstrual blood.

You used other bodies to escape from yourself. There is no escape for me, from this body Of memory. So I surf along the curve of the waves, Paddling furiously, knowing very well how they Would crash over and submerge me.

I am naked. This is water And his body is wedging into yours, Into my memory; a shot splinter, Cold bone, pale white tile. I choke. The body flickers and goes out. Rain would find me on the floor.

What could my mother be to yours? What kin is my father to yours anyway? And how did you and I meet ever? But in love our hearts are as red earth and pouring rain: mingled beyond parting.

~A 2000 years old Tamil poem

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . . "