Category: Poetry

Maiden

Camouflaged in the night
Like outline of shredded trees
I walked beyond the cliff with caterpillar footsteps
Where Four Horses of Wind
Stood grazing in the grove
While the maiden with reins
Having fallen in love
With my absence, now looking up
Laughed; the sound like hooves running in her throat,
So I sat there in the center of the dying daffodils,
On the eve; as rootless and trodden as any
And listened to what the world has to say
But sadly there were far too many;
People talking about themselves, like children running circles around pillars asking: Why do silent halls echo? And closed eyes cannot see?
As if I am a mirror to be mastered by their practiced soliloquy:
No more, no more, my hollow mind; no more,
For I weep for the thistle town burning by the shore
Black windows watching the white horizon
Coming closer for an embrace
When the sun is cold in the night
While the sea shapes the souls of sand
The maiden sits beside me
And whisper
That the stars are dust from her hand
O I see now, I see
Myself on a mountain lying
Alone upon the apogee
To fall asleep with the sky
As a pillow beneath my neck
And the ocean extending her arms
For me to quietly take
Before I go, before I am gone
With the maiden of the night
Before I know that the colours of rainbow
Are seven sins of white…

Rowing Till The Riverbed

Let me fall now, no
Let me fade away instead
I am tired of being ever alone
Of being always afraid

I was a fool to grapple with the dark, you know,
A fool to light my heart on fire
A fool to eat the wounded ashes
To taste the honey of that sweet desire

I was blind with my eyes open
Blind to the water rising around my waist
Blind to see that I with my words
Was no different than the rest

So here I am now, here,
A face amongst other faces:
All fools condemned henceforth
To die; by hanging on her tresses

I should have known it, I should have
For it was no secret after all
That there was magic in her voice
And that it was a siren’s call

It was this damned dream, you see,
To be together in the end
So surreal that I forgot
It was all make-believe, a pretend

I am going now, I am gone
There are other lovers in the line
They ask me if she is a goddess
And I answer: Yes, if the Devil’s Divine…

Pigments of Pain

I listen to the clatter
Rolling coins
Gasping through cracks
Of fractured philosophy
In this modern world writ with
Make believe merchandise
Life lived through litmus paper
Chemical imbalance
Anarchy in equation
Feather dust in vacuum weighing same as the sun
Candles upon cake, wax trees,
Forest of flames, ages incinerate:
Gullible times, marzipan issues souring into
Phrases describing sunlight through trees unlike sunlight through trees
Anything but the obvious, the immutable
Sieved eyes and beetle brain
Taking over photosynthesis
Bottled chimera, disco dreams
Autumn in lungs
Coughing art; blood on canvas, dotted design
Cerise constellation simplified by
Binary prophets
Dripping tap, blocked sink, dim streetlight, ivy on the roof, dust on the doormat, average grades, loose socks, society on chemo, Syrian seizures, Africa and Ebola, avalanche on Everest,
Anthill, beehive, New York, Mumbai
Sunrise at six, Sunset at seven
Coconuts, candles and carpets for heaven
Rubber tires on tarmac
Plastic skin
LED hearts
Tears on screen
Protein pronouns, varicose verbs
Multinational menagerie of Lego world
Digitally distilled with castrated cause
Packeted products: for all flaws
Barcoded breaths
Beginners beware
This land of the dead is alive on prayer.

Anatomy of an Answer

The sound of your senses
Breaks over me
And I drink your waterfall words
With it’s torrent of charcoal images
To the last drop
So others may never know
How you, of cinnamon soul, sell poisoned dreams
Manicured with epidermal perfection
The rag doll fantasy
Of jazz love
To strangers in quiet bars;
Those people unaware of the everyday almanac
The self-help lies written on bruised pages
By every Adonis who felt
Being closer to you
Would suffice

But I watch as you walk on water
Just so to show you can
And laugh
At all those speechless spectators
Now followers of your riptide wisdom
Pledged to play their heartstrings
So you may dance upon their demise
Dressed in funeral face
And be beautiful
Like a child on Christmas
Suffocating
With joy

The wind it whistles
Swallows and sells
Your perfume; twigs of spring broken underfoot
Ashes in the air; this midnight snow,
And still figures, lifeless statues, staring in envy at
The echo of our footsteps
We walk, in discord, my toe timed to your heel
Crude judgement
Capricious
To mock the pedestal born
So frozen in time that a grey hair
Succumbs only once in a millennia

You see, I see
The lights red and yellow
Bleeding fireflies
Resting upon rooftops
In mechanical merriment
Happy at the thought of being happy
And you now know you cannot see more than you know
And thus you cry
At the anomaly of your eye
And I do not have a handkerchief
To spare
For I care no more of your other face
Or the one within
That exists only to dream
The desires
So I leave you at the crossroads
Knowing sooner or later
An Adonis shall pass
Dressed in angel dust
God forbidden

Her Other Half

We talk like strangers
Unwilling to laugh
Unable to cry
Like two shells remembering
The sound of a sea
Buried deep
Somewhere
In fissures of our bone…
Yours too my love?
Or of mine alone?

I was wrong to dream, wasn’t I?
Wrong to feel
Wrong to hope
A fool who thought her happiness starts
At the end of his joke
O Pagliacci, Pagliacci
Thou story of my life
Why didn’t you laugh and say:
It’s the heart which pierced the knife

Bye now, it’s late
And I have old wounds to tear
Like promises to make love
Or I wish you were here
The night is still young
Do not waste it on me
You had my life once
But you never stopped to see

The Silence Along My Spine


It is a dream I do not remember 
But remember all the same
Like those faces I desire 
Without knowing their name
As if in the grand scheme of things
Wherein a million stories unfold 
I am just a chapter 
Of a young man who grew old

These oceans which are open
These skies which are blind
These forests which aren’t silent 
These mountains sans a mind
Are mine to behold and break
To bind and to find
For the similes to be kept never similar 
And metaphors ever one of a kind

You can call my claims childish 
Or let my words make you weep
When you see the vacuum in my voice
Hover upon my lower lip
Where the broken wind balances 
Those desires and despair 
And life in its likeliest form 
Is heartbeat at the end of a hair

If only I could myself see and show 
What I have lost in my pursuit to know 
The allegories of living 
Without wanting to grow
Alas, I have my own 
Reason to bear the blame:
For to the man who shall leave no footprints 
The dust is all the same