I opened the bathroom door And in the dim and damning septic light Of the months old lightbulb My face, blurred and bludgeoned, By night’s nihilistic apparatus Smiled back through the broken mirror Hanging above the dripping, dead sink And I think, that is how it feels To wake up, in the middle of the night Hours after having a fight
I cupped the cold water Felt my fingers sting where the ring Has cut in my flesh Had I punched too hard at the bouquet? Were the petals bruised and bloodied? As if freshly plucked on a dewy morning By a miner’s hand Oh the anger in my throat Blue Eve around my Red Adam’s apple I knew if I let loose the bile of my belly And roar the bull’s breeding call My landlord will knock And the door would open A sliver, then a centimetre Till I am naked in the flooding light Of the gallery Absolutely awake And utterly ashamed To mutter an excuse And retire in solace
I cannot shave without tasting something of the foam It’s bitter This taste on my lips Like a thirst long not satiated Lips, last kissed Perhaps a decade ago In an alley behind an alley Where a beautiful nymph in rotten rags Had found my face handsome than those walls Closing in around us “You look much better than the bricks” She said I smiled, hiding the mortar in my molars As the rain pattered down like tar Peeling away rust from the pipes Drenching us Head to toes Like a wet painting
It has been three hours But my beard still showed Dancing around my face like a Rorschach’s blot I felt my fingers feel my skin Smooth it was Like warm pages of a new novel A novel about this modern day Don Quixote Who spent hours shaving the black spot left on the mirror My blade had blood on it And the sink sprouted red roots I watched as they dissolved And slipped down the drain It was only when the last drop was gone That I did felt the pain
I stood still till the sunlight streamed in From the half open window Like an intruder Creeping along the floor Till the corner of the door Illumined And left me cold Years old So I turned, back to my bed Where nightmares awaited Under the blanket In a dark sequin gown For dark was my friend For dark is the end And beyond that I feel nothing And nothing I comprehend
I wonder if being truly lost Is the same as never being found Would I know I am able to speak If I never did hear any sound There, I have spoken A pencil pushing philosopher Watching the sunset out of the window And sunrise in my bed My years passed like traffic on tarmac But I am still a kid in my head
Before you I was an afterthought A sunflower shy of the sun Walking the slow shades beneath lost footpaths Afraid of every turn So I searched for radio-silence And grew deserts in my yard Thus no one came to claim me I was both bastard and a bard
I open my eyes and your face evaporates, In thin threads of memories From the diaphanous diary Of our love that is losing Its scent by the mile So I smile and you smile And wait for time to take its toll When our flesh turns to foliage And two souls are made whole
I know that my name For you is a blessing and a curse And I am holding still your world And trying to reverse Your agony and your pain And instances insane Like catching your falling tears In the middle of the rain And I have lost some And the rest I am losing Neither by choice nor by choosing The best for us both Promising a broken oath To heal and to mend Nightmares that never end But goes on like this poem With an intent to ascend The fate of a dying flower; Which has no beauty left to lend
Before you I was an afterthought With you I breathe and burn I now have sun on my left shoulder And towards you, my sunflower, I turn
My past now grows impatient Under its tortoise shell Eons passed and I have moved Only a fingernail Closer to you
Much of my music is lost Listening to the wall clock Counting, sixty seconds and a minute Sixty minutes and an hour Twelve hours, twice over, Again and again Through wind, winter and rain This dilemma, delusion and pain Of having met you And loved you for a millennia But having no permanent memory No cup of your captured laughter No mirror of your misty eyes No sunlight captured by your tresses No sweet scent of your sighs All I am left with, are yellow pieces of fractured time And a heart that mostly murmurs For all truths out aloud are lies
The blanket we wear Smells like Sunday morning A waking warmth Of hay and honeysuckle And a quiet happiness Equally sad and empty So we hold each other From falling apart From drifting into different dreamlands Where one of us ends and the other starts
I watch as you breathe in Life, my life For I am haunted By the ghost of your breasts Buried and hidden A catacomb of our heartbeats Growing restless Like a river ever running But never reaching The estuary of my arms
You see I am obsessed With the idea of your existence Insanely infatuated So unequivocally infantile To see your warm womb As the walls of my tomb And the pulse of your veins Like all the seasons I have ever seen
I know, I know I am mad to my bones But my death is being alone Without your hand in my own So, I place myself in your hand like a petal You drop me I am cold I am hard I am metal With nothing more to see And nothing more to be With nothing to call mine And nothing is for free
