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.

Immolate

I hold myself
Where it hurts me more;
I prefer the pain of now
To the pain before... 

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.

Parts of a Promise

Image by Jasmin Chew @unsplash

If my face now makes you weep
Let my voice then put you to sleep
So tomorrow when you awake
Like a flower on someone’s grave
Know there lies underneath
He who asked you once to save

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…