You shouldn't go to the grocery at or after midnight. It's not a reasonable hour to be outside, you can get shot.Besides the aisles have terrors waiting for you under the clean florouscent lights:

See the plants and flowers; they are angry for being made to sit all day in there with people pawing and smelling them, they want to escape and sit on a window sill, where sun sets redly over a city and where they can watch planes zig zag in the sky and be pampered by a woman who coos at them "My babies". So you have to understand they are really really mad and will take you hostage.

Given that you escape these somehow, you have to negotiate with cereals, a whole row of cereals. Another ice age will arrive beforeyou can decide what to pick. Museli which you have eaten raw but it may not taste good any longer, without the smell of her, you know who! Oatmeal is fine, someone else gave you the habit, you have forgotten her and yet remeber too, because now you like oatmeal.However now you have changed your tastes, from tuxedo oatmeal to bum oatmeal. And to eat this you will need berries and to get berries you have to go back to the valley of plants, where those bandits are waiting for you with drawn knives. So you have to skip cereals and your shopping cart is empty.

By now you are so striken with fear that you would start racing down the store: you would avoid coffee, frozen okra, baby food, meat,candy, yourself, soap, birthday cards, deathday cards etc etc And since you are starving, which why you had gone to the store, you would start hallucinating. You would stare at the roof and think someone is pressing her soft lips onto yours as she rides the full cart you had been pushing. This will make you disoriented and you will wander around aimlessly chasing mirages in the white light desert.

Then finally after enough time has passed and people who might have given you a lift to the store filed a missing person report (don't think you would be found and rescued by cops, it's this happy contended pig they would be searching for, not you) you might arrive at the end of the store only to drown in bottles as you might very well load up the cart with six packs, twele packs, a couple of cases of liquers and wine that comes in blue bottles: think this will be sweet and easy to drink? You should know better, the aftermath is always bitter and it will be hard to drink.

Say now you think you are this cool cat who has nine lives with seven more left in hand and you did manage to somehow get some stuff: a box of donuts, a bag of apples, your barely recognizable self,a loaf of bread etc to the cashier who will greet you with "How are you doing sir?" You will then want to sit down right there in the aisle and cry. But instead you would have to make a smile and thus die once more. Then as you would be pushing your cart out pinching yourself for having come out alive, a car will pull up out of which will jump out a guy and a girl, you can almost smell their love making freshness and feel your own hunger.People in love are so inconsiderate about folks like you, so they will perhaps to spite you, kiss six times and before you know you are a dead cat lying on your back, saluting the star spangeled banner fluttering in the breeze.

So keep out of grocery stores at midnight or get ambushed.

How couldn't have one loved you so! Love is a happening that is beyond will or that is beyond asking, taking or giving. The gulmohars love the fierceness of the summer heat; their love is so deep, that from their sap burst forth blooms of the deepest red. Its as if they have consumed the fiery heat of the sun and are birthing those flowers as offerings of love. This happens when we love, we start to give, for we can't but give without asking, without the words being said. And that makes us pliable, makes us soft and yes makes us vulnerable.

Strange it's only the ones whom we love that can hurt us the most. It's because of this nakedness. And we gather totems of love, we gather prayer flags that make sonorous noises in the mountain wind. And most of all we gather the smooth round stones of memory, from the most trivial to the most profound. These can be of the sound of footfalls of love as you walk around together; the soft murmurs a strange language. Love is the conversations that go on in your head, after the conversations with the one whom you love are done. They seem to say, oh we may have run out of words, but even the silences transfigure into words, those drops of water condensing on fresh green grass. It's an exaggeration, in its intensity and in its reality, the one you love becomes your god, the sacred mysterious deity in a dark sanctum who is coming to life within the space of your arms.

And lounging will come too, for it's the spaces between here and there that are long. Light year is a good unit to measure the scale of these distances. And then when the spaces reduce, when big jets take off, the earth falls behind and you are sitting there wrapped in cotton wool, a gift that will soon be unraveled at the moment you see the eyes that are anxious to see you.

And then there will be tales told, the ecstasies of Majnooh, the words of rapture coming from Romeo's mouth, " A rose by any other name would be as beautiful". Again and again. It's the human spirit that yearns to hear these words. And these words, metamorphose into the dances of Rumi. Hear what he says:

"Oh Beloved, take me. Liberate my soul. Fill me with your love and release me from the two worlds. If I set my heart on anything but you let fire burn me from inside."

Lovers know this unique musk of passion. And like a great bird it travels across one's skies, flying in great V's, suddenly but also not very often. And with it comes the sureness of sprit, the rapture of bliss and a steady peace. Without it all that remains is utter ruin, a tasteless humdrum life, the endless expansion of moments that were too swift and short into something huge bothersome, an anaconda choking the seasons of time. Perhaps trees know something very intimate, something of this substance we seek, we over reach to hear. So do the stars. I once heard a folk tale which said that the stars are all the tears of a great lover, which were thrown up into the sky and froze there as molten gold. And since they are so intimate, have you ever noticed whenever you walk amongst them, the trees, the stars, under a moon, a dusk sky streaked with red you would hear the silent hush, of Love coming to you from all around.

So listen again.

I wake to watch the days wake passing, the mourning trees by the window slits, late sunlight pouring.

I move my ear to listen and imagine, "The name of Ram is the truth" But they don't invoke those funerary chants here.

Maybe this sub lit day should be called Alice, a believer being lowered in a cask Of mahogany, the only permanence it will know.

The fleeting seconds, triple distilled, are invoked within me, it happened even last Night. Souls who die unfulfilled become ghosts.

They say. So I ask now, how does one exorcise them? What are the dark voodoo Secrets I must know? Whisper as you whispered.

The words and the world into me, "I love you", with our tongues entwined. I don't salivate for that anymore, you asked me to

Get out. So as I packed my books and my insecurities, you had already turned your back, the bones of your spine, fine lines of Golden Gate shivering in the Pacific.

Funerals cost twenty five thousand dollars here, so I read. And since I had forgotten to buy insurance, I stand naked. No I am not shameless, I wear clothes and hide it.

Trains are pulling out of the station, sudden faces watch me as lights flash on my face, and last daylight is stealing in on cat paws and around the corner,

A funeral awaits me every evening.

2001:12:14 15:30 Atlanta I wrote this when I awoke at 3.00 pm in the afternoon and saw that theday was ending without my asking.