by SALONI KAUL

ARGILLACEOUS ARCHITRAVES ( or Clayey Clatter )
 

I stroll swiftly on deft quick-tempered ground,
So totally irascible!
Provoked most easily, irate at my footprints
By this time unerasable.

Perhaps the soil has plans in store sketched of its own
Flash turned to trodden stamped fretful futility!
Why else then all this fussed tumultuous commotion,
This volley vast of volatility?






SALUTE!

 
At a time when the sun looks like thought emanating from nought,
But a wisp of a tendril that curls into one golden lock,
Then a beauteous calm lithe prevails like a listening lake
That is perfectly tuned to receive any ideas relayed.
 
Oh what gold indescribable lies in the patterns strictseamed
Worth its weight as they say like well-reasoned taut premise most wise
Of a logical precept that proves all that instinct accepts
For the light that illuminates all , all without and within,
Is a stationary spark halo-bound that soon wells into shape
That in turn rightly leads to those travel-wide beams that dispel ignorance
In the darkest imponderable depths of the corners all round within reach.






AS ALL RIGHTEOUSLY


I carry all the coded messages in state
Exhibiting the foremost quintessential endurance.
You’d think the salts would rightly swift precipitate ,
Sinking in shining chaste preponderance.
 
Eternal minute degree shades of prefiguration packed
Involved there are in each superior suggestion.
Strong exclamations of one such prophetic mantis tightly tacked
Onto Imagination’s vivid strong board without congestion.
 
For there behold, stand all the indications
Decreed discreet and inexpressible
Of this, that inexhaustible staying power in vindication,
No louder than a decibel.
 
As all righteously it stands, asserts its class,
(Upholding the rights and privileges of man),
Poetry’s lone prerogative,
Heed this cry for unhindered thought and speech
That answers all endings in the interrogative.
 





SPOKEN SELF-INDULGENTLY


The moon’s in its first quarter this neap tide.
The rise and fall is practically minimal.
With increasing assurance, undeterred
I walk on the once wave-rocked beach again,
A smudge on shoe the only snag.

Frugality of vapour here, the air is crisper!
The self-indulgent obdurate fog-horn
Is lulled perforce pragmatically to sleep.

A large Atlantic Puffin sudden draws innocuously near
Somewhat ensnared by this inlander human daring flat,
In rare rigid adherence to the written text.

Soft pedalling its tentative approach,
It maintains its measured distance snugly,
Occasionally flashing its candid 
Ingenuously comical side look.
With an ingratiatingly suave squawk,
It then edges away as one of those
Small  Manx Shearwater suave appears
Determinedly right on the scene.

Subdued sleek shadings of that fleetest wing
And briskly gleaming white sheened underwing
Gone, perhaps to seek the waves it once lithe skimmed
And indulge in that flutter-patter exercise above the ocean,
This eye all softened empathetically 
Then looks for hints of sheer sobriety 
Elsewhere.

Fossils inestimable indurated 
By time , with age, look on with magical hard glint.
Who is to yield next ? The tender of heart
Or the native shrewd? Have I the slightest inkling?

And so, to see one’s way straight through the beach.....
See where the wayward wind lowly lies, 
Which lurking way the breeze next kindly blows,
How the extended unexplored land lies.






CONVERSE ALL ALONG
 

In moments all tender inalienable
Draw me incontrovertibly aside
Away from company   where vulnerable
Joys sorrows out of thought and usage here reside
As inconspicuously we both talk
In indeterminate unassailable seclusion
To easily arrive taut as a tight-rope walk
At these linked inextricably threaded indisputable conclusions.


Allure me on to those highest of planes in fable
Effectually alone unparalleled
And audibly say all the lofty things ineffable,
Decorously already all feasible, hand-shelled
In manner reasonably acceptable
To the total reserved exclusion laudable
Of all else.






SILENCE THE SOLVENT


Exactly what on earth is one to do
About the thoughtlessly persistent steep ringing

Of a desultory bell vibrant reminding
You so of stern sharp winds scouring a desolate heath

That starts as scullery-dull loud discordant clang
Admonitory in tone, c!ashing in its dissonance,

Then lo, reverberates all around the house
Like ponderings at a mighty precipice

Startling you into all-ears grating attention,
A test of prime pineapple-like endurance,

And slowly dissipates in its fervour
As afterthoughts gather momentum

And the brink of the cliff perilous situation abates
As it begins to strenuously take on

The disappointed inconsolable tone
Of the dejected ringer, that exhausted

Visiting hand that is slowly but surely
On that verge of dissuasion giving up

Expecting someone to promptly answer
With precision and champion the precious cause
Any time soon.






SALE ON


Stark in the cold of wild wingspread winter, 
This winter of disconsolate bare cold,
Elements all in their state compact or splintered
Get unleashed card-like all bold unrolled.
This story conspicuously colder in the telling
Subplots all tight, each slice to its allotted exact spot-space consigned.
Each to one’s lot and fate firm as price of selling
In acceptance stoically resigned.

A wealth of sprawling dreams incongruous 
We strenuously soul underline.
Told to the cold continuously aired superfluous,
Our own innate inner forces we undermine.
A story cold in the telling’s told to the winter cold.
A story once cold incisively rewarmed gets sold.






Toronto based poet SALONI KAUL has been published recently in The Horror Zine, Mad Swirl's Poetry Forum (contains ongoing Saloni Kaul poetry page), The Penwood Review, Scarlet Leaf Review, Blueline (State University of New York), OVI Magazine, Mantis (Stanford University), The Whimperbang Journal, The Imaginate (Rutger's University) , Mystical Muse Poetry Magazine , The Charleston Anvil, The Treasure Chest, The Poetry Leaves Anthology and Exhibition , Arteidolia, Quail Bell Magazine, Harbinger Asylum and The Transcendent Zero Press. Upcoming poetry acceptances include those of The Penwood Review, OVI, Conceit Magazine and The Lullwater Review.