Lullaby

Sleep, love
Let the colors that you breathe by day
Now smother you at night,
Drink this elixir
This morsel of mind
For the dark grey of the world
Is never going to fade
And every pillar of your passion
Cradling the sky
Once again, shall be unmade,
And left in ruin
Like a fabled vagabond
Lost along it’s way
With words that clatter
Upon an iron tongue
But has nothing to say
Sleep, love
Before you awake
To the world and her dream
And find the silence holding your heart
Break, and begin to scream.

Sea and Sandstone

Follow me
To the dried up river
Let us dip our feet
Over the baked bank
Into the ovule of emptiness
And seize between our toes
Those shadows of leaves that once
Danced over the ripples
Let us row, together
Across sand and stone
With broken oar;
That desire to drown,
And linger no more, here,
But wade into the sea
Where awaits one horizon
And one thousand estuary

The Shape of Silence

I prefer the silence
The cold silence of solid things
I look at the wall
Standing with crutches
In the corner of my Verandah
White and misshapen
Like kneaded dough
Filled with potential
Of an unformed minaret,
Only if the right tools are laid upon her
But I am aware
That there are no right tools
So all I know is silence.
I prefer the silence
The fading silence of long lost things
I look at the faces
Long and thin
Drawn as if by children
And painted by Picasso
Walk the world with borrowed wisdom
Like characters from comics;
Life written in bad font
Upon recycled paper,
Only if life had been as funny
And forgiving
But I am aware
That there is no humor without horror
So all I know is silence

Peris

You are a silhouette now
Cardboard cutout
Pasted upon a wall
Scissors shaping
Your toes
And elbows
Making of you a butterfly
A Peris: granting boons
And monsoons
Breathing life
Into wax dolls
Dressed in periwinkle gowns
Frail and fragile
Like a fey
Your timeless beauty
Unchanging everyday.

But they show not the callouses
Of those days
When you carried trays
Full of beer mugs
And swept the kitchen floor
Till eleven,
The Kohl running down your cheek
Cheap lipstick recolored in sweat
Whilst you await
In a corner
For all to vacate, retreat,
Before you could search the bin, O Queen
For even a mouthful to eat
And dare dream again
Of tommorow or the day after
And spare a bit of laughter
For now, this how;
Rearranging your hourglass heart
Short of an hour
To save time in the end
And be free in those moments
Evolve, transcend.

But they show not these callouses
Nor the weight of your wings
For you are a silhouette now
Cardboard cutout
Pasted upon wall
A Peris: accursed
Life shaped
In a wax doll.

Oeuvre

I watched her dirty hands
Broken fingernails
Walk across the canvas
Making music

The choir of desolate buildings
Painted with middle-age;
( That grey
Like mould upon the horizon)
Was left unheard
In the empty rooms
While the people;
(Polka dots
As daisies at the door)
Stood silent
Waiting, in the hallways
For the voices to rise
From beyond the bricks.

If only I could paint
And knew what she meant
By that colourless void
I would not have left
To look around
In search of a canvas
With a different sound

Still-life

There is coffee on the table
Cold now, the lips upon the rim
Have been long lost to the streets
Those open arteries
Spilling into the city
There is no one in the room
Only me and the carpet
Flickering lights
Turning white walls brown,
Distorted frames;
Assurance of a happy life, frugal,
Each grain of pleasure
Weighed against the pain
Every smile practiced
Symmetrical, same
I walk barefoot
Across the room
Wet slippers make sound,
And gaze through the window
At the miniscule ground:
The life in transit
Amusement for free
As I am for the one
Now watching me.

Papercuts

She came to me
An unknown
I was quiet in a corner
A broken chandelier
Dimly lit
Upon the floor
But to her I was
A piece of paper
Scrawled upon
With uncertain hand.
She read
And left;
Misunderstood
Afraid.

Rimer

No poet
Is filled with poise
Nor every hour awake he aches;
For lost love
Or far off islands
Half submerged in the sea,
Neither he weighs in world his price
In self- sought melancholy.
He is a restless hand
With a wineglass filled with ink
Drunk in the thoughts he have
Of the thoughts he cannot think.

Hubris

Here we stand;
The golden gods
In a toolbox,
Each with a vision
Of a lesser folly
And a desire to draw diamonds
From ashes
An alchemy not of elixir
But venin from a common vein, of
Old blood waxed in bottles
For the good of tallow men
Because this too is an age of pharaohs
A passage in stories untold
Where the poor die to enshrine the rich
In pyramids of pallid gold
And yet the flesh, it shall turn to dust
And red bones be bleached white,
And these hollow tombs of chronic weight
Will tommorow have no might
For the mortal men, come immortal days
Do fade into the past
Till the first that came along this way
Resemble the very last.

The Remains of a Choice

Walk with me
Here is the world
You forgot to see
Full of love and it’s lessons
Of rough hands
Six inches heel
And blind poets in the dimly lit room
Full of artless art
Like you and me
All odes to an uncertain philosophy
In a collage of open legs
With vulgar words worded vague

I belong to the footpaths
And the palpable pain pouring out
The tinted windows;
Diluted desires and frail voices
Smelling of gas
And cigarette burns
That old musk of life
Left upon the threshold;
A broken door, open,
Gathering mould

I look in the mirror
Six feet high
Above the ground and the dirt
By my boots
And yet my face looks ugly
Soot stained
Without an inch of the fairy skin
I was blessed with
Years ago
One afternoon born of months old desire

Millions have walked past my place
Without a glance
At me
Standing upon the steps
Worn thin like razorblade
Red
Unwashed
Blissfully unfed

For to be alone
Not unwanted
And unwanted
But not alone
Differs in different ways