Black Be The Color

The walls aren’t painted
And there are orange pips on the table
Arranged like a ten o’clock shadow
Of an ornament left in a glass case
And I dare not disturb
Her architecture
The tainted texture
That peers out, as symbols, as summations
Meaningless veracities, punctuated by punctuations.

I cough
And the dust coughs with me
For the echo is swallowed
By the floorboards
Beneath our feet
So I dance, I tiptoe
I jump and I let go
To remain suspended
An unlighted chandelier
Burning butanol or some such nonsense
In my pockets

My garden has gone grey
The flowers; asthmatic
Now wheeze in the wind
Wrinkled and waiting
For the next iteration of spring
A seasonal afterlife
That feels no soul smile and say;
I will let you live
If you follow my way

Curious is the world’s design
They who smile never know why
And they who claim that they do
Knows in their heart that it’s a lie
Is happiness something
That can never be found
Like corners of a map
Of a world that goes round

If only I had
Eyes that could see all
Every thread of a thought
From even streams and the stone
I think I know
What I would have known
That this all, this enigma
This play supposed to go on
Is not worded by us
We who think we have won
For each life afterall in the end is the same
Closed eyes, broken breaths
And lost dreams with no name.









Curtain Call

Image by Ahmed Nishant @unsplash

I am,
The face you never see,
On posters and billboards,
Half starved, naked,
Beyond beautiful, to be
Served on a silver platter,
For you to touch, twist and take,
Morsel after morsel.

I am,
The laughter you never hear,
Stirring lives,
Rubbed together in plastic embrace,
Made alive in the objectionable agony
In the chimera of chemicals
Praised at pawn shops
By asthmatic Archdiocese
To fall, to drip,
Lip by lip
Throat by sore throat
Through hollow chests
And wasted waists
Of fools painting tears
Upon torn faces.

I am,
The play you never see,
On streets below your tinted windows,
Staged for the world to witness,
For free, though
None stays to admire,
Too paltry, they say, too plain,
Too painful, coarse and vain,
This drama,
That reminds us of our own lives.

I am,
The speeches you never give,
From proud pedestals, and altars,
Like a speck of spit,
Luring the sea of men,
With words; carved and honed,
Too bright for us,
Of clouded eyes,
To warm these hearths of our own.

I am,
The truth you never know,
From beyond your walls,
And the sanctum of your own asylum
Where you pray
To the earthworms armed with earthquakes
To the dead; dead from too much death
To leper’s liberty
To chronic charity
Never to arise
From the ashes
Or seen through the uncertain curtains
Of your marble eyelashes.

I am,
Everything that makes
Nothing possible.

Diaspora

I have seen the diaspora,
Seen it’s bulbous head set against Saturn’s sky,
Felt it’s pulse,
Dreaming of chalk and charcoal,
Seen it’s veins, deeper nerves,
Coursing through promises
Like an undulating snake.

Men revise,
Their adolescent mournings, teenage dreams made of,
Pink flesh laid to rest,
Against the grain of this world.
A world long forgotten by the habit of forgetting,
The shell of mirror,
Slow as sinking stone,
For lives lived, living,
With unpolluted prose,
Precise, pragmatic.

I have seen the diaspora,
The laughter of death,
That parallel passage,
Guided by fate.

The fault never lied with dark,
To light must fall the blame,
For showing that of all,
None are truly the same.

Half the pleasure,
Lies in having nothing,
And losing it all.

Here in shaped stillness,
I ache for a shattering.

Until I am no more.

Now I am no more.

Shards of Symphony

There has been a song in my head,
Long since we met,
And it had no lyrics of love,
Just a music underway,
I hum it when sad,
When happy I whistled it twice,
Only to find it everywhere, other day,
With people like me; without a choice

Ivory atoned in milk,
Alabaster laid in salt,
Your clothes, moonlight threaded,
Upon skin without a fault.

(I ramble of your beauty,
When nothing is to be thought about)

Remember the vase I gifted you once,
Wrinkled porcelain,
Thunder in glass,
And you kept it hidden, under your warm clothes,
Deep in the closet,
Lest no mourner of life, of eternal charm,
Plucks a fountain of flower,
To abide, this graceful tomb;
We adore and abide and anoint,
With feelings, like watered paint, like warm breathe,
Or something more forgettable.

I found pieces of it the other day,
Shards of symphony,
Scattered voices,
Gleaming, under the stairway,
Spiting neon light;
Forked tongue, poison.

You had after all,
Plucked one, a deep dark red,
It’s fragrance; my fear of all things left unsaid.

There is a reason roses have thorns,
Everything comes at a price,
Love is not a line in stone,
Sometimes its roll of a dice.

Now you tail windmills,
And I can see your feet, nestled in grass,
And your hand in your hair,
Untying my knots,
So the new wind, the new time,
Can hold you aloft
And make you feel at home
As if that can suffice your bohemian soul
That jukebox of rhythms
You shuffle to make whole.

Love to you was just a word to behold
Words to you were feelings to be sold
Feelings to you only a reason to be kind
Reasons to you were reasons to nevermind.

I shall remember, yes,
When waiting for the flowers to bloom
For a ship to set sail
From the corner of my room
That you, love,
Never cared after all
This was no poem or play
You were writing on the wall
But my life, this meagre, stuff made of snow
A candle you alighted
But forgot to blow
And now the wishes they linger
Like rats in the rain
For leftover love
Not poisoned with pain…
































They Told Me Not To

They told me not to say
The fault; It was all mine
They told me not to say
I am okay, its all fine
They told me not to say
The world is wrong from where I stand
They told me not to say
You will never understand 
They told me not to say
Gods don’t walk this heathen earth
They told me not to say
It’s your choice to give a birth
They told me not to say
False truths my eyes can see
They told me not to say
I am thus and this is me
They told me not to say
We are slaves of silver linings 
They told me not to say
Fallen stars don’t go out shinning 
They told me not to say
There is no shepherd for this herd
They told me not to say
The sky don’t feel free for some old bird
They told me not to say
Love is a mirage of a migraine mind  
They told me not to say 
They light the lights to leave me blind
They told me not to say
Life can end between two thoughts 
They told me not to say 
Fate ends with a draw of lots