Juniper crackles, and piñon smoke scents the room;

bins of coriander, cumin, red chile powder, fenugreek—

at a keyhole entrance, we gaze into the garden of the Taj;

bomb warnings pasted on glass doors and on walls;

You will be surprised to find
I am writing rather than dropping by
just before dusk as I often do.
But I don’t have the courage to 
face you as you read this.
I hesitated to write as I don’t
want to expose our long 
friendship to danger.

On the night we met, my father gave me Icarus
and a latte. I was made of questions and wore
my mother’s face, ten years older than she’d 
been when he saw her last, the day he’d told her
he was going to marry someone else. The legend
goes that on the day he held my newborn body,
I cried until he handed me back to my mom, as if 
somehow I already knew.

Red is palash, red is alta —
   it is nuptial, it is birth. 

Red is Kali, red is Durga —
   it is Sappho, it is Andal. 

That sometimes a frame can be more valuable than a picture
Always fascinated me as a young student. How can it be
That what is after all only the wax that contains the pure honey
Or a shell that holds in perfect engineering all protein vigour
Of an egg; that such things can be more valuable than the food?

Teach me tonight
the history of love.

I am weary.
I am lonesome. 

The spider had to rethink happiness once it reached the moon.

The moon could not be reached for comment, bored
with its own phantasmagoria, our need for pareidolia
when there’s so much we clearly refuse to face.

Marking words to delete, like
people who do not belong, precious
darlings, a writing teacher called 
them. The clever lines you smile 
about and pronounce defiantly at 
poetry readings, repeating them 
with gusto and fight, hiding 
a well-knowing smile, as you say,
 I CRACK in the DARK. I SHINE
In the SNOW.

The rites of passage from childhood to adulthood are a momentous and exhilarating stage in every person’s life. The summers of 1981 and 1982 were, for me, a period of adventure and exuberance, a thrilling helter-skelter of travel, parties and girls – and even a good war too. Nobody had heard of the Falklands, but for a budding fighter pilot it was a jolly good show, and the excitement was invigorating.