Poems that you love

[milo]

Someone mentioned my azimuth which reminded me of my old friend shambhu

Valediction
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On the way unlearned,
exhaled your skin-dark
autumn smog. But the sun-scent stays
unwashed upon my sleeve,
a whiff of summer sniffed out
like a half burnt giveaway.

A peat-crusted gleam leads
out of the underpass
this way. Woven baskets stacked
with gourds await
a timid finger push
to set them toppling on the tracks.

I touch a well known speck.
Stain of salted plums
on my palm there-- an aftertaste
of parting soured away,
a part of you canned in,
sold out layered with platform dust.

But I am ready,
muscle-tensed to sprint,
squeeze tough-boned through the lanes
to grab the window,
whip a handkerchief
and power the soot-lined pane.

A speech sir. Who, me ?
No, my shrug has a word
for you, unlettered as I am
or clearer incoherence
of a wheeze-drawn whisper
as I wave into the cam.

So much for uncalled
chit-chat; there is time
to sip your dun-rich fingertips
curling from the flask,
watch a lash flicker,
an iris ripple in my cup.

Let me cling at last.
Always wasted you,
unrelenting, drained the loam
beneath your cantilevers,
unsettled your cobbles
with moody steps as I walked home.

Still, acquiesce to write,
trace my beginnings
beyond your gaudy billboard truths,
Charnock's remains hung out
to dry, sodden, solid
above the signal azimuth.

Shambhu