There I stood, assembled, In the centre of a blank room: Unadorned and without any orifice, Time for me was a corpse in an ocean, Swollen, floating, rotten, unrecognisable But the salt still stung, As if death had forgotten about the pain of passing.
The silence of the world rested like mist upon my mind, A common sobriquet, I know, but still one of its kind, Oh and the dark took it, and made me one of its own, But I know not textures of such thoughts, This enslavement comes from whispers; Those slow daggers, Aimed at my slower spine.
But I do dream beyond this shackled dream; This walled precipice, I carry out my sentence, In a sense that makes me, my own judge and jury, And weave myths, For those who dip their finger in the wind, To fold the fabric of the world, One corner at a time.
Am I God? The omnipotent earthling of heaven and hell? The omnipresent search of science and eastern religion? The omniscient questioner of Egypt and Israel? No. Perhaps, yes. Perhaps, we all are a perhaps, A song on the shore made from echoes of lost oars, Each of us existing for the existence of other, We each another’s child, We each another’s mother.
Seems I have turned the men themselves into myth, So, another life sentence for me; I never learn, And it is a gift.
The tip of the grass was yellow The root of the grass was green They waved at me like water in winter And I waved back just glad at being seen The words rolled back Dyeing my tongue Like a dry river
Rocks and pebbles Fishbones and silt Traced my thorax Grinding my guilt So I could swallow and wallow The echo of oars Belonging to those ancient mariners before me Who sought loneliness And found it One step before horizon
II
In my dream I pool out from the fissure of earth After a midlife rebirth Gleaming, polished, welted and wet Watching the woman holding my fate Nestled like a flower Asleep in my rubicon arms Dreaming of fragrance At once tender and torn; Oh to be born beautiful And in all beauties, a unicorn, In my mythical ache I keep this universe at stake For it’s brutal to awake When I am so brittle to break.
It is night But the dark shines A soft black Such perceptible blindness Such untouchable familiarity Should I succumb to the magic touch? Drawn like a dying man to the nectar of her neck Should I summarise eons of my afterthoughts in an afternoon with her? And let her reciprocate the same On a kohl claimed evening So my ashtray mind Can drift And ignite My field of dreams A purple blue; That colour of a newfound forgetfulness Unnoticed to the irises of her eyes.
I dim and she shimmers As we dance in the glass case She; of velvet toes And I; of rubber gloves With her hand in my hand Like time through sand Passing, and staying This melting portrait Of our memories And I am aware, suddenly, At the soft sweetness of everything That percolates into the inchoate perfection Wavering and waiting to crystallise in our kiss; I lean in And the world holds still Till another breath finds me And it feels what I feel
If music could be made, Then all rhythms would need a roof.
I am just a quiet kid walking on a silent sidewalk, Measuring the distance between two tiles, Counting yellow leaves amongst green, Ticketing my thoughts beside the traffic light, And being a lamppost to remain unseen.
My eraser is razor sharp And my pencilled Picassos Burn without vapours, Leaving white carbon, Like an unprinted newspaper.
This is the heading of the day: “Do you not do not believe what you say.” (Was that a question. And…was that a question too? Yes, two. Perhaps. Who am I to question…)
They brought me from zero And they taught me infinity, So I could extrapolate The contraption called concession, That middle ground Where, no one is around, To plant a seed, Or to paint a shade.
So, my mind, like every mind has come To a common conclusion: That each drawing needs The name of an artist, For then, the art can be torn apart. You cannot hang an anonymous, can you?
It’s the way of the world, boy, It’s the task of time. If you divide your days Between work and play, You can have coffee at eight, And your wine at nine.
I am writing like a maniac, Mesmerised by my own vanity.
Didn’t once, amongst scientists posing as philosophers, In a shivering old shanty By the backdoor of my dream, I said that needle is the greatest weapon ever invented; For it sews together torn men And sends them back to be torn apart again, Stitch by violent stitch, Till it cannot know which is which: Cain or Abel, Bible or Aesop’s Fable, Eliot or Gertrude Stein, The Monster or Frankenstein.
Often, when my mind stills, I can smell my nostrils And taste my tongue, Draw mirrors with my eyes, And make my face go young.
It is a miracle that in silence One can hear more of all: The cocoon breathing for caterpillar, And incense stick in the prayer hall.
I have toothache since yesterday, So pardon if I seem to mumble, Bottling sulphur in my philosophy And murder whilst being humble.
I am a student of disguise; To believe me is to mimic surprise.
Measure me in marigolds For in a throw-away thesaurus, outside a church, I grappled with the dappled god of meaning, And lost.
What is light and dark? Where is heaven and hell? If not in the act of becoming one, At the last peal of the bell.
(Pardon my parody, but the juxtaposition is justified)
Am I pregnant with pain? Crawling on the polyester carpet of my burnt-down building, Wondering if the watchman can watch my agony, Or the torch is just an ornament, Like for a cripple is the cane. Should I wither or give birth? Is there not enough on this earth: Pain, I mean; the people they can pray, Dancing upon the anthill, A divine massacre so to say, Thus I ask for an answer and the Answer, it asks: Is that your true face, Or the mask of your masks?
Should I memorise now, The punctuations on my face? Or claw down to a carcass, The primordial preface? Whence time could be tasted, As old flint struck new bone, When men bowed and prayed, To the shape of the stone.
So, Summon me, Suleiman; Who darkened the Siberian plain, Red snow on his arrow-tip From the blood of a thousand slain.
Summon me too, Great Elixir, He of immortal name, Who tore down towers of sandstone, As part of a checkered game.
Summon me, Lady Myleth, She who crowned her husband as Queen, And watched as the kingdom danced On the watered edge of a dagger unseen.
Summon me too, the People Pleaser, For whom did the senate end, But died as an enemy In the circle of enslaved friends.
Thus, my answer to the Answer, Is a question in disguise For isn’t truth an orphan Born out of lies? I ask: Do I dwell on the delusion, That maybe everything is as it should be, That change is a charlatan Only a reflection of what could be, As the nature of all things, Is to echo and not sing, Why tie the knot and be anchored, When you can hold onto the string?
