ENVY

Stranger facing the roads, each of which will but lead you further Deeper into the desert till you collapse and it's over.
Blindfolded or not, for even if you could see;
Any choice would lead but into the desert. I know, I know, Your bleached bones will be buried in the sands;
For all eternity. Blown apart by your own mines and mantraps,
No one will even hear your final scream - Gambler who staked your soul And now repeats Faust's despair; Not even agents from Hell will brave Your unresting place; Blown apart by winds, You- called unpredictable, Fooling yourself and failing, for you knew the end. Which was merely This- To be unknown, to leave no footprints, no name.
Remain so uncorporeal, No reincarnation as even a frightened ghost?
You will never know how much I, Forewarned, forearmed, envied you.
Not to be" your choiceless choice, Your arrival unnoticed,
Departure unmarked.
Can you imagine the torture of a mirage at every stopover?
Can you conceive how subatomic one is
When in thought marching through desert sands
The whirlpools appear just for me,
Forcing the sands themselves to retreat?
The sandstorms if it is as you claim are not,
Cannot be as Unexpected
As my personal Tsunami tide which abides with malice its time
And draws just me in; making each mirage cruelly real
My bones will be flung back, collected ; Itemized in glass cases
Eternal proof that I was, am and will be.
And enough will be left of a wraith spirit of mine to watch
The museum field trips which cannibalize my recreated shape
And I did not even play Lear's fool;
Nor toss the dice for an unholy thrill.
I could hate you for your annihilation, from dust to dust.
But I stop at envy; for with your already favoured scales,
My hatred is far too precious a gift for you.

I walk with the ghosts of my yesterdays

I walk with the ghosts of my yesterdays
Yesterdays when my diet was dark blue poison
And yet, and yet, no today can be worth as much
But I do not decry tomorrow, for which I labour today
I am but an apprentice now, but the day will come,
It has to come, for it has always come before
And before my assumed siren charms, my Merlin
Like those of yore, will disclose his deepest secrets
And I before embarking on my mission, will see
The great enchanter bound in ordinary vines,
No Promethean chains are required here.
Then will I brew my poison, far deadlier than
What I as worthless taster was forced to drink- and live.
No Lucrezia Borgia, No Cleopatra and no Mata Hari
Would have known the list of my venomous ingredients
For their need was never as great as mine. Why poison in
Your arts, Helen, when but one look and Menelaus forgot all the past
And Paris remained but a name; nay rather a footnote?
No Savanorola, no Antony and not the victim of Achilles' wrath
Are my targets, indeed, they are less than ordinary men, women,
Children and so on to the smallest Amoeba which started this cursed process
Called existence, life or being;will be the Victims of my revenge
For their dancing drowned in the wine of life, while I waited, wallflower as always
Coming forward only when summoned to carry out my role as official taster
To taste those poisons which have dyed my throat as blue as Shiv's.
Yet I lived and that was but for today, when my friends, the chained and
Tortured spectres of my yesterdays, throw off their chains and change shapes with
Writhing snakes, ready to join me in the dance of destruction for others and my triumph
Yes, today it is my turn to dance, with my spectral companions, a female Kalki
Come to destroy, not just the unjust but indiscriminately- force the poison down!
I command and as one by one all that was alive but me, collapses screaming in agony
Victims of my poison which has no antidote, then will i treat them to the glorious
Spectacle of my dance, their death rattles my anklets, their screams the savage music
I dance in tune to. When nothing, nothing is left, not even the snakes, then will I
Reign alone, ecstatic though with bleeding feet. And when asked by myself, for none else Remain, why punish those who did you no harm - I will screech with maniacal laughter
And reply that it was far too much trouble to count and divide and were there any
Such really anyway, anywhere? Then when the questioning stops, and there is but the
Reverberating silence and me, I shall raise my hands to wipe the sweat of the dance
From my face, and in sheer shock and disbelief will encounter tears- no, not for even one
That perished, I realize, but for me - Lilith, the wandering Jewess,
Revenge complete, but unable to die; as poison, not blood flows in my veins.