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