“At the last hour of a wine crazy night in my drumbeat heart the love of God awoke.”

Categories: Poetry & Prose, Writing • Tags: amwriting, author, Creative Writing, CUNY, India, New York, New York City, Poet, Sri Lal, writer

“I am consumed by desire. I intend to do what is right but action gives off smoke like fire. I would be harmless like the monk who will not handle a water gourd,…”

Categories: Poetry & Prose, Writing • Tags: amwriting, author, Creative Writing, CUNY, India, New York, New York City, Poet, Sri Lal, writer

“I took the dust of a mahatma’s feet. She revealed what lives beyond any ordinary desire, beyond what can be measured—the counting of sandalwood beads or syllables,…”

Categories: Poetry & Prose, Writing • Tags: amwriting, author, Creative Writing, CUNY, India, New York, New York City, Poet, Sri Lal, writer

“She said to me, In the Lord’s eyes men and women are equal. Before dawn rose, I knelt at the sacred fire, prayed and smeared ash in wild stripes across my forehead.”

Categories: Poetry & Prose, Writing • Tags: amwriting, author, Creative Writing, CUNY, India, New York, New York City, Poet, Sri Lal, writer

“Ten thousand travelers make pilgrimage scatter ashes of the dead, float small lights in leaf boats—the arati of a loved one’s passing on, ashes to water and light into light.”

Categories: Poetry & Prose, Writing • Tags: amwriting, author, Creative Writing, CUNY, India, New York, New York City, Poet, Sri Lal, writer