You will find a void like me in the supposed-to-be, my voice should be

Somewhere else, saying something else, staying silent but I am here where

Upside-down tortoises reflect light. Ocean palace glistens in its own shadow,

Behind a half-night on a firefly leaf with a faraway wind.

Water is floating before becoming ash on firmamental fires, only the shape

Being a twilight struggling in a severed snake-tail. A wall-less stillness

Of water green; wet so wet that reflections shiver in cold. Four shouldered

Waves carry charpoy tides, desires cleaving through all on that broken branch

With that silent energy. No nakedness is starker than a veil, water has shaped

A grave for bodies that are slippery.

Even I have walked through the giant doors of the palace, but the glitter is a

Façade, the light of speed keeps a finger on sealips. The stars on the other side

Twinkle benthic breaths, fortress of hope waits to be under a crescent moon

And birds of the breeze, black feather shed, fly to the moon to fall but I have the

Moon, safe from molestation, in my veil of half a night: nothing starker.

Now that even the ocean lies, the island of wild horse empties into my four walls

Of earth, to be a home the house becomes an ocean, that is where the water floats

With gliding palace in broken paper baskets. My poor land house has its floor

Dangling on branches, naughty boys from the supposed-to-be are back with their

Bamboo pitchforks, the cigarette butt chimneys now have you-have-put-on-slightly

Lions roaring because the light orbs embedded on their skin are too bright to bear,

And they fight the tortoises above; it is always light versus light, the lack of an

Obvious dark, therein lies all the problem, layer on layer, nothing on layer on

Nothing as the teenage onion peels off; the eighteenth layer sings this revelation

Mechanically.

~Ajay
25/2/19