Month: March 2022

Testimonies

Image by Jean Wemmerlin @unsplash


They put him in an empty chair
As blank as his eyes
The studied wooden smile
Peeled slivers
Red and dripping
From hands that stayed cold
Upon the switch.


Ghosts of strangers
Pale and long
Scratched at the glass
Like cats for milk
They craved his gaze;
Shuffling hair, straightening neckties
So theirs could be the faces
He last sees.


While gloved fingers thrust
Rubber in his mouth
So death could swallow his scream
And not escape to haunt those
Who broke the stainless nip
Upon some pages
In a file, soon to be laid upon a pile
That stated his particulars
And the supposed crime
He agreed to
Everytime.


He sat like a king upon a throne
The helmet far too small
For his frame
He let it sit
As a visor
Of some knight from a game
How was he to know
This was no story being told
That his hands were being tied
So he could not hold
Any secrets in his hide
Which may spill
Once the deed was done
And justice restored
Just for fun.


The pale hand moved
Lights flickered and wailed
Tiny feet gasped to run
But fluttered and failed
The puppeteer has left
This marionette alone
Never to move again
On its own.


Glass hands closed in faith
Mirror lips moved in prayer
For the balance restored
True and fair
Unaware as ever
These fixers of frames
That many men in this lifetime
Can carry one name

Raiment

Image by Francesca Zama @unsplash

Naked pictures painted on the world map, a global ache this systematic subjugation, arraigned with signatures and rubber stamps and blue and black ink with red smeared hands from…

Ants committing suicide for sugar cubes, mountains sundered for a grain of sand, weighing a ton by common belief of a wishful world running in a race without an end around a toilet flush
I hear music in the smoking firmament, the guttural snort and fart of the engine like Mozart’s Requiem for Modern Times; graveyards filled with scraps, dusty medals pinned upon pigeon chests, chest with springs and cogs inside, all mechanisms of a meager mind,

Breathed upon by gunpowder gods never crucified, but kept alive, unchained unlike Prometheus or castrated unlike Cronus, with 9mm eyes watching over the supposed universe,
Lives televised, a miniscule mime renting life per hour, human carcass threaded, talking puppets mimicking everyday shambles with double exclamation and undying opinions; graffiti upon bathroom walls, the enlightenment of our age; our Bible, our Koran, our Commandments, our Veda,

An ocean of umbilical madness, Medusas of mind, writhing in the depths of drowned time, left helpless at the bottom, garbage cans, lobster traps, Ahab’s ambition, little mermaid’s fin, all part of the abyss, woven tales of Atlantis

Beggars upon sidewalk, watching the neon lights blink at the mannequins dressed and fed better than them, breathing in glass case while the Caesar supine on steps as flat piece of bread looks on: Et tu, Et tu, until a coin clatters in the bowl and Rome falls, democracy dissolved under the acid rain of paint thinner,

Red sky running, blind horse racing against the rider till the tollbooth where hands on hips the old man walks the zebra crossing, unmindful of the airplanes lined at the red light, waiting one and all to fly away, without passengers or Blackbox, to a land where runways end

Phantoms fasting upon a fingernail, the sound of anarchy, electric guitar with strings of lightning, rainbow flooding the floor, and the people waving, a mingled marsh undecipherable, a canvas coated with paint, avant-garde asylum overflowing with stone heads

Rows of velvet cushion upon glass, red carpet laid upon mud, hyenas laughing in the hallway in high heels and mothball tuxedos from pawn shop, faceless fornication behind the screen, lips locked together in war, breathes dying with alcohol,

And outside the Ghost of Christmas Past selling mint in the rain, poets pass him and politicians, all made of papers full of question marks and Venn diagram that depicts everything said and done, the saying it has the bigger circle and the deeds it had none,

The Van Gogh World waking, rivers of gas flowing under matchstick houses waiting for madmen, toothpick buildings dancing for children playing whack-a-mole, Las Vegas without lights like teeth of a key; all cards of the fleeting reality playing pinochle with constant uncertainty,

Dismal days these, age of enlightenment, recoilless Renaissance, people paying people to understand people paying people, round around the circumference of Drachma with Copernicus we fly, we fly, taking one day kryptonian crash course, and pretend to die with cries towards the sky; O father thou art in heaven, look down now and weep, for seven days you worked, and on the eighth it all went to dust, you knew it and yet you left it so, now weeds gather in your garden, and even Lucifer stays away and pray free from this drama; Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama

Seismic Soul

To speak
Without being heard
With words like wind
Asleep in windchimes,
To be far away, breathing in a distant past dyed sepia and smelling of crushed leaves:
The aroma of time dried through the ages,
To taste a fruit away from the tongue
And let it linger in a seedless ecstasy
On each pair of lips
In every burnished breath between the lungs
To weave sunlight
In the skin of dewdrops
And bare a rainbow upon the floor
Brought home to a full circle
To smile at the madness of it all
And mean it in the mirror of mind
Grassroots enveloping
Memories I cannot find
Now leads me to believe
That life with all its thorns and petals
Is more in the act of living
Than waiting for it to settle

The Man Asleep


Life, look out
This man asleep
Is walking a dream
His pulse, afraid of inimical things, dance
At the incoherent din of the cattle bell,
For he knows only the time of tommorow
Prophesied by blind sages
Sages left by the world to marinate in old age
And he carries it; the cattle bell, it’s dead weight, it’s rue weight, like a talisman
Through the thick fog of promises
To the other side, where the light, yet unseen, seems to shine differently
For the sages who have looked on the winter
From far, would know something of the snow
Or so he hoped, with his face coddled within the blinkers
And crowned with a horseshoe

Life, look out
The man asleep
Knows not that he is sleeping
And so as waves he worship the shore
Unaware that he stands with men
Too afraid to blink at the sea
And soon he too would be watching the waters
Shiver with each breath of the seagull
Till his own wings wither and rot away
Leaving him; this epileptic Icarus
A common man among the common men
Left to watch each sunrise
And every sunset
From the shade of a dry sacamore
The hinterland of heart
That burned in winter
Knows both fire and ice is the same;
Perhaps, in the slow dance of the dying fire
He seeks the heat some more
Perhaps, his dreams are dreams of a dream
He dreamt he has dreamt before…

Pillars


I have seen Heroes
Shinning alone on the battlefield
Sword bare in bloodied hands
Hiding tears behind their shield
And the poets who wrote of courage
Knew not from those sunlit tower
That all wars are fought by them
Who has no ounce of power

I have seen Teachers
Cradling books in their velvet hand
Certain of the wisdom beneath the words
That the world fails to withstand
And the pupils who stay blind
And believe in it all
Are kept to learn the truth
Nailed as paintings upon the wall

I have seen Kings
Holding heaven in their earthly palms
Dive deep in the selfish seas
And make fist while breathing alms
And the people who praise the lord
For the health of the dear monarch
Knows not that the hand which feeds
Is the one that lays the nark

I have seen Saints
Swimming in the grey, tepid pool alone
And where hundreds had fallen
The saints could never drown
A miracle that belonged to them
Not by the blessings of the Throne
But because of the fact that the misery
Was not of their own