Tag: being

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…

Some Lotus Are All Roses

I have spent half my life
Looking how I was wanted to be seen
Powdered to the tip of my nose
Accurately thin
With anklets on my feet
That laughed alone in night
And a locket round my neck
Buried out of sight
I had flowers on my frocks
When I was a lotus bud soft pink
And roses in my hair locks
When I was allowed to think
As if my beauty was just a face
Without a wish or voice
As if being born the way I was
Had something to do with choice
If only I could have told them then
The thoughts I had in my mind
Of my mantelpiece existence
Of being beautiful but kept blind
Alone as my own mirror
Echoing solitude
Days spent dressed for the world to wonder
And nights being ashamed to be nude

Sleepwalker

All I can think about is dust and dusk
And drowning in a shattered sea
Made of glass
Like a photograph of a falling man
Who is never truly falling
But eternally trapped
With a suspended scream
In an endless dream
Like a dreamless wraith;
Weightless and wordless
As an orphan in death

But sometimes the night is too strong for me to sleep
And the dreams I have are too dark for me to keep
So I become a cobweb on the far wall
Or a three pin plug lost in a socket
Some crumpled paper on the floor
Or a faded face in an old heart shaped locket
A catharsis of cause
Building prisons to be free
An empty ship sailing
An emptier sea

Where there is fog in the air
And yet I stare
Like a blind man blinking
Without thinking at the sky
Wondering in my own vacuum
About the mute purpose of ‘Why’
With voices at the edge of my vision
And footsteps at the back of my mind
I am dreaming of being asleep
And afraid of losing what I cannot find

Thus, in this black and white world
In this sharp and smooth world
In this loud and quiet world
In this bitter and sweet world
In this dull and fragrant world
I shall remain awake
Till a different tomorrow

Incandescent

I was born out of the blue
Like a star without a face
And shall one day be falling too
As dust without a trace
In hope that when I am gone
Those very few whom I knew
Kept something of the light
With which their wish came true…

Nescience

I wait at the newspaper stand
Reading, the morning is grey
Ash tinted
Like an old man’s asthma

Buds of people are sprouting
From windows and eggshell alleyways
Dressed in yesterday’s dreams
And tommorow’s promises
Faces creased, bespectacled
With white hairs a halo
From the century long sunlight
Age ever ached to swallow

A ballad pours from the the barbershop
The old stereo is crooning about
Footsteps falling on azure fields
And carts on country roads
I can smell the aftershave
At once bitter and sweet
The razor once again vacant
Without the borrowed heartbeat

There is a fallacy here
Between the words and vision
I read and see
The stories seem vibrant but life colour-free
Perhaps it is the weight of being
That makes it so
For all of us do wither
But only some of us grow

The children have gathered on the footpath
A bell in some temple tolls
The priests are praying for bliss
And in laughter a football rolls
I watch, I watch
The world divided in unison
Each hour be day or night
Being a part of every season

So I pay my fair share
It’s time for me to leave
And be one amongst the masses
Who in eternity believe
Of everyday man and their everyday deeds
In the cycle of fruit from the flower and flower from the seeds
If only one would question; Does the roots if ever know?
Of the world that blooms outside from their breaths buried below

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 Lost Sense of Bewilderment

Jayson Hinrichsen @ unsplash

I wonder if life would have been the same
If I had but a different name
As common as the monsoon rain
Somewhere between John and Jane

I wonder who would have called me close
Gifted whiskey or a blood red rose
Shared laughter with a list of woes
And left me where the west wind blows

I wonder if I would have been happy more
Being a seashell on a shallow shore
Drunk with madness like never before
Following the echo of my silent roar

I wonder if I would have lived long
Sang a chorus in some choir song
Before in life it all went wrong
For now I am but not where I belong…

Taste of Sunlight

Image by Riccardo Mion on unsplash


My bed is in the corner
Of an empty room
The irony is self imposed
But not without reason
I have heard that darkness
Gathers more in the deep
And perhaps it shall help me sleep
Faster than dying by lying wide awake
Counting seconds, falling and rising
With time’s unreceding tide.

The curtain hanging by my bedside
Often flutters in the night
And it’s breath though purposeless
Fills me with envy
By it’s act of pure motion
Sans a shred of emotion
How can I be more than me
When everything I seek I deny to see?

Dreams; they die, my own are no exception
Even when I have them
Caged behind a glass case
Cuddled in red velvet
Caressed by Mozart’s Sonatas
The flowers shall wilt, roots die and fruits decay
Nature by nature of unrequitance
Shall swallow none but one’s own
For birds do not nest on trees unsown
And those that I watch from the moonlit window
They shimmer and shine
Like gold and wine
Broken; yes and crooked and white
But they know unlike me the taste of sunlight.