Rites of Passage

by Prakash Kona

Deserts swimming in
the night of veils,
The only wall is of
heaven touching sands,
On the other side of blue
is paradise where the eye
Is free of betrayals
coming as dreams;
My home is moonlight
and heart a mirror
That speaks truths of histories
under a bed of thorns,
Soldiers crossed paths
never returning,
The wars too long,
you get used to the face
Of the enemy no more
or less than a name,
So familiar by now
ready to be forgotten;
The face behind veils seeping
with the lamp
Fading out — a tremor
rocks the ear
With prognostications
of a delicate perfume
From a hand that held
a bowl of rice;
The incalculable trait
in my makeup,
The nomad refuses to settle
in plains,
Rejects the impedimenta of being,
Embraces abstractness of birth,
Of leaving places,
the memory free
Of nostalgia for dawns;
For peace I long as much as
eyes that see how
Lost I can be without reason;
Language is traumatizing,
Things neither appear nor disappear
because the word has been said,
An arrow through the breast is purification
for the king to be a king;
The king is a cup that
falls
on the ground
leaving no trace
Of splinters behind,
He simulates travails of a mother
as in practice of couvade,
Normalcy is not for the king,
His body is the useless strain
That makes one long for beauty and love;
Self-styled but not self-preserving,
dust born of dust is my nature;
I’m a cloak-and-dagger heroine
a weeping unicorn is my love;
The curious, brooding faces of the homeless
Sucks the marrow of Imagination’s bone;
It is not death that stands at the doors
Of philosophy but labors
of those who pine
For wisdom that pain makes possible
In the chiaroscuro of an instant.