my faith

how big should be my canvas

to paint a splendid painting

satisfying my soul, or the Source

the Soul that paints my soul

if it is small as my thumb nail

will it be pushed away

and dismissed as narrowly

moralistic, unduly silly

and what if it is wide, wide

as the world beyond my window!

will this be sacked as political

a revolt against the Heaven!

what if i make it my palm size

connecting dots and lines therein!

will such an art be brushed aside

as too mathematical, merely cerebral!

© henry victor

the sacred incarnated

in your smile

i saw my face i was seeking

in your frail naked body

i saw the sacred incarnated

and spontaneously in my mind

i grasped your tiny frame

to make you my only begotten

as you melted, completely, into my heart

loosening my tongue

to sing a song of praise

to God, the only un-flung

and offer my sacrifice

© henry victor     27.10.2003

a profitable pot

my father was not the potter who shaped

my stature though he may have cut the sod

the first dry dirt, while just enough water

was splashed carefully by my mother

then, one and many hands moulded

the wet mud, me lending both my rights

and resistance, an ambiguous assistance

until in me a market detected a profitable pot, a poet

© henry victor     03.11.2003

shit

birth is a bloody shit

when the one who needs to give

birth, cannot proudly announce

that “fact” or the name of the culprit

refusing now to own it

birth is a bloody shit

when your mother has not knitted

your first coat

in her preoccupation to find

a convenient vat to dump her womb’s hurt

birth is a bloody shit

when your damned father hides

his tail for the fear of a child’s snivel

to let someone else walk forward

to hide a new nakedness

birth is a bloody shit

when you hopelessly

for the rest of your existence

struggle to envision your life’s route

when courage had ruled

© henry victor     03.11.2003

aging of the ocean

when i was nine

i have stood by the ocean

many times, to see her smiling

singing to me songs of hope

as i smiled with enormous amusement

observing her shore, fish that played

and coloured crabs that walked

sideways, all so close

 

but as i grew older

i have watched the sea aging

and now lying, an invalid

stinking with layers of rotten oil

as if she had never changed

her underclothes

and bathed not

for too many aeons

© henry victor     22.10.2003

i offer

at your invisible feet i offer this set

of bones of this body, mind and soul

this disjointed person, myself, like a poem

incomplete, un-poetic with rhythm

evaporated like the dew drop

on the tropical wild grassland

refuse not this inconvenient offering

unsystematic in its playing

of that flute, emptiness, the mysterious

hollow in the middle i missed control

with my licking the edge, the solid

casing that shone and my spirit misled

© henry victor

soling the soul

you stood outside my door for so long

before i let you in; now, for you, i long

to keep you in my embrace, to explore

every aspect of your being, head to toe

i want my nerves to feel your heart beat

on my chest, an unrented bed in long wait;

it was actually due to fear of bed-bugs crawling

to suck blood from a heart that is pumping

but last night the very thought of you

created that most beautiful tempo

for both my peaceful deeper sleep

and nightmare free hike for a poetic soul

© henry victor

a remoulding required

my mind needs to be redesigned

possessing all the characteristics

of that back-country duck’s back

that none can ever easily wet

my spirit requires transformation

that neither praise nor curse will stick

after installing my very best

in the sacred or the secular precinct

my life hungers for new ideals

a real, the second nature of a cuckoo

that sings not for human applauding

finding reward only in an act of singing

© henry victor     19.11.2003