4 Poems Amish Trivedi

Desire is an acid soaked wand

I need her smile because it brings burden along:
it reaches for and carries the clearing tune.
Underneath the day’s wild refuge,
we clamor for the nightly façade,
as it is to spell out doom in quicksand bursts.
I used to dream of her short-haired,
strong legged grasp,
for the shining night they wrapped me
up in their clammy embrace.
And to show the light fancy,
I stepped through the burning shadows of midnight walls
with closed eyes that volunteered.

I spot out a honey-dipped frame,
wasting on top waves of deaf foam.
The power to bring Lazarus up
carries the need to put Lazarus down,
and no matter how the translation goes,
his dreams and his rest have yet begun.
Emboldened, I was brought upon a platter
to the table of my father.
Were it cut out from under him in a massacre,
there would be hopeless, sinewy, volatile laughter.

I wept but dinner began without haste
and no longer did the mask of a suburban trash boy
fester in the lit pathways of an august tract.
The only requiem I hear is for the day,
that sank behind the rock and drew in the waters;
who held their breath waiting for the altar to be cleared;
who spilled their divine sweat for the sinner’s face down burials;
who, as he slept in hiding the sun’s charioteer,
cleared the room for the morning and flooded it with light.

I still smell the rose dew on pale skin,
but the reverse doesn’t make me a martyr.
I do not become god the fact-checker of a corrupt chimera.
I go on blending the wasted sleep of the dead
with the weary sleep of the wasteful child.
Lost in the night with his hands tied,
and lighting himself into ephemeral moksha.
Rested, he spent the day
scribbled.



To Stumble Upon A Book Of Someone's Subconscious



These visions hold me in the liminal morning:
what lives quietly at the edge
of our nails,
your universe slides into
an ephemeral wake at any
twitch of the eyes.

I become the wetness
of your neck but
am arid. The dream of
the day leaks into
sleep and any sign of you
I see recoils the threshold.

I beg to see any inch of you,
Even in an old picture:
Your back to the camera in admonition and
And me, praying at your altar.



Elegy for Junk



I never knew you, but
I wish we could have
gotten high together.
We could have twisted our
tongues on everyone like two old
hags, pumped on valium, with
nothing better to do.
We’d laugh and play
word

games, pausing for hours
between thoughts.
We could get stoned and watch
TV or lay out
and count the clouds
we’re in.
I don’t know,
I know

but I dream of
death as a penetration,
dividing intermittently,
allowing us to
puncture the night
with a flash of light
and a puff of
waxy smoke. I hope
the angels allow smoke
breaks.



Every Love Story Begins with Moonlight



She stood out among the florescent
Green, candy-shop kids,
Talking at everyone with a hand.

She stood out among the untied,
Slaughterhouse brats,
Peering selfish in the window.

She stood out beyond the morning,
Wasted in surf-riddled clothes,
Waning in the dark, childishly.

She was burned out,
Dropped through the filter
Of a famished day. She

Gasped, as if tarnished,
But laughed in rhythmic enchantment;
She stood out, anyways.