i found my way through the darkness
by the light of my funeral pyre
i had claws i had thorns all over
my body when i picked a flower
i crucified it—
ash-midas bhasmasur-boy
i was a cloud of flesh the world passed through
until the blue tiger swirled its tail through
offered its hunt on the tree-stump & tapped it
with its paws until we started preying together
every afternoon
until we started reading aloud
our private poems until it showed me
its retractable claws & told me not everything
is out there to hurt you
somethings just touch & go
i watched its head in my lap
with its body dimensioning away—
nipples lazuli & balls of sapphire
when my curled toes impressed into its cobalt
flanks its stripes the color of an obsidian gap
of a moonless night fell over my feet
like first leaves of fall fell fallingly
holding me in a cage of playful shadows
but then the forest burned down
burned in melting crematoriums
burned on footpaths burned on
until i augured my fate in the coal-remainders
of the island of false fire
i saw the real forest now
in a crucified dimension at an ashing distance
fecund with blue tigers orgying moonlessly
i called my claws back put on my thorns
saw the flesh mere flesh of the once blue tiger
lose all its blue bloating in a river i was
breathing under
i watched the now blue river
spring from my lap & curve aweigh away
& now i find my way by the darkness
through the light of my funeral pyre
~ ajay
20/5/2021
