Has an ant ever crossed an ocean Or a swan reached the sun Has any flower ever saved a thorn Or lost love ever won
II
I scratched; Upon the whitewashed wall of my sanctum My nails bled With the semicolons and commas But the pain that rested Like autumn in my chest Stayed The heartbeats shifting dark roots and yellow leaves A raw pulse Decaying With each bartered breath (Perhaps I have written these lines before Or perhaps I have felt the same Long time back When out of the blue The blackness took over Like a bubble of bile)
Sometimes I want to be another man Someone whose shallow thoughts Never leaves his hollow lips And if I were to dissect myself In a cold blue room And remove these tumours that I can feel Lying along my spine like roadblocks I may perhaps get better But I do not want to be better Not alone and not by myself For I know my hand would betray Even if the scalpel stays loyal
So I sew my torn sweater One stitch at a time And I can feel at the back of my neck The mist beyond the window Hiding a drowsy world A quiet world From the memories of Edgar Allen Poe I don’t know… For I am sewing my sweater One stitch at a time
It is easier to break than build My grandmother told me Long ago, when my shoe size was half of what it is now We were sitting in the veranda Watching sparrows without nests Search for shade Her wrinkled hands were beautiful They knew only to give To me, to the sparrows Her today for our tomorrows I did not understand what she meant Only that she meant what she said
III
The face of my love Is an enigma A diamond made of star dust And dew drops I have seen her as none have During hours longer than light In dreams deeper than the night And yet if I were to hold A paintbrush Her shape would disappear In the shadows of my mind Like fragrance does from a flower
I know her to be beautiful Like rainbow after rain Or an ocean undressing at midnight Whispering the tales Of sailors and their sails And I often try In an absentminded earnestness That of a child never chided To try and catch her featherlight hair To hold that waterfall The obsidian madness as she sways Like a soft swan Without silhouette
The nights are hard Rebels and roses And I write of my love in poems and proses As I reach for the soft molasses Surrounding my heart Breaking and bleeding From Cupid’s blue dart
She taught me to write, you know… When all I could do was recite And bruise the pages Perhaps I with all my innocence Was nothing but a man wanted for my own murder But with her I am me; Irrepressibly free A child dressed in clothes too big for him. Perhaps I never grew up after 2007 Forever eleven An Abandoned ectoplasm Morphed in shape by satire Drowning in the desire To be wanted and stay haunted By the spectre of love
IV
I am rhyming the verses For I know nothing more My poems are to the paper What waves are to the shore
I wish I could be the colour blue Not sapphire or cerulean But something old And something new As if waves of the ocean Are carrying pieces of the sky Moonlight and stardust Dipped in indigo dye A deeper azure A cobalt that will fade Part turquoise, part teal Your shade, your shade…
It’s a terrible tragedy you see To be away from you The farther you are The fainter I get The harder you hold The longer I wait Tonight the edges of my soul are clear And I can see my heartbeats through my chest They come and disappear They pulse and fade Alive and dead Red over red
I can hear the wall clock Can hear the teeter tatter of the seconds Turn into the silent hour An hour without you Then one and half, then two I am mesmerised in the act of missing you Part proud, part desperate Juggling memories and dreams Promises and themes Like Picasso and his paint Rhyming his story and history Balancing the devil and the saint
I close my eyes now and then And hold you to my chest Close enough to collapse Onto myself First in tears, followed by laughter Then silence much after Dents in my denial Rust on my reins I falter like a colt And stand still until it pains Deep enough for my marrow To call out your name Madly enough for my mind To believe that you indeed came
The night is falling fast And I am writing against the flow To reach the side of your shore Where you await in your pink bow; That tiara of innocence Which broke me Slowly apart Till I lost all of my aces To the hand of the queen of heart
Thoughts of you A wounded prism Bleeding rainbow blood From skin the colour of acrylic Water upon water Wet upon wet (Random noise; My pseudo poetry, Commas and semicolons limping across the verses In a desolate frequency Like an empty road echoing; The silhouettes of silent wheels The smell of burnt rubber And the touch of gasoline) I long to stare at your face that stands stark against the sky A newborn moon; unblemished Rolling upon tethered horizons Like a dime in the dark
O how I ache to be in your arms now To be your ice and your fire Your utter despair and open desire I wish I could hold you Like ink in my paper palm Like an unformed word Like a fleeting thought I wish I could know how you see me Am I an anchor that keeps you calm Or wings that sets you free? I know I heal as an afterthought And you are careful in remembrance And although we have met few times These moments that pass This liquid life Is reshaped by our every touch For the fire that burns us feels the same Today, tomorrow, after an eternity again
I remember being Your dream When you were wide awake A flower trapped within sunshine And I know I am not destiny’s choice For my voice That dark tobacco of my baritone Is neither honey nor nectar And my eyes that reach out Through the veiled carcass of some velveteen night Belongs to shadow and to spectre But love Through the shards of slow time That ebbed our feet away for many days Now we walk With our two hearts disguised as one
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…
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…
I saw my children standing in the rain Their faces lined with age and late reason Watched the abandoned bicycles And broken seesaws Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old Seemed painted In the moist color of quiet The abandoned delight Having dissolved In the lament of the rain They turn; the motion a sad song An unfinished lullaby To look at me with eyes Half awake but never asleep As if I with my window earned wisdom Would know Why all things grow Only to die If life in the very virtue of living Is a lie But they know the answer As well as me It is better to forget than to believe what we see In the everyday aftermath Of the daily demise Of choices left to chances And promises made before goodbyes For in the end all paths Shall return where they began Even the oceans with all their eternity Are but remains of the rain…
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
THE HUMAN ANVIL 