I look at the wrong things and cry But tears are taboo, aren’t they? Like used razors or sandpaper towel Or the last page of a living novel And yet I do, not because I cannot avert my eyes From the still beauty Subdued by time But that I would witness In those aching final ages Filled with long and random sunlight My disappearance Into wet satin And gossamer ash Of original nothingness
If fire could speak of pain And water too of how it feels to suffocate Beneath the weight Of drowning men They would But flesh cannot heal the sky Nor blood fill a river dry For all thoughtful fantasies are unwritten tragedies Beginning at birth And only deepening when you die
So I weep for the ocean of sadness Clenched inside my throat I pray for the lambs sheltered In the veins of my battered boat And I yearn to leave the answers With my back against the dying day To rest amidst the sleeping shepherds For I have nothing more to say…
I can hear the roots tear Across the breast of resting soil Like blind fingers, stretching the Depths of darkness, Those long forgotten by time For the hours; they fly only above the ground The black womb is all silence And frozen thoughts: Except those murmurs of memories Left by faded footsteps And shadows parched under the sun Of people who could not turn, away. I hear them too, their thoughts, In the leaves yawning with the wind And fruits falling with the same It’s bittersweet syrup; tears and sweat of toil gone unremembered A destiny dismembered Like roots they yearn no reason Nor do they desire The crystal sunlight reserved for carving men All that is needed for the flower to bloom And the fruit to bubble without bursting Is this truth soaked with pain That they stand alive and upright On the shoulders of hanging men
I have danced Many a dances Without a song in my mind And I saw many a chances Yet pretended to be blind There were reasons For these decisions But those reasons were not mine I was a stone, sought for statues But born on an incline And so I fell down the narrow Walls, without a ledge Trapped between tombstones Out of time, for an age And now I await in the dungeons With my heart on the ground In search of an echo That can be heard without a sound
We both are tenants Trapped within the rubik cube love Shaped by our shoulders Resting against each other And there is no escape; For our landlocked lips Shifting like dry grass Under the music of sorrel wind Other than lying on different shores Waiting for the same tide To ferry us away Towards a sunset and a sunrise Splitting our world; two indifferent ways.
You count the stars between your fingers And I vanish, like a thin piece of ice A spectre, yet unfound, in the jigsaw world Left alone to wander the newspaper streets Those daily retreats of hourly love Bought with midnight mascara and silk stockings Rubbed raw between the eyes and thighs Of mad men and maddening women Looking for a cheap trip to the paradise
I hear the tea cup tinkle And know you have taken a sip Of the warm clove water Left upon the doorstep By the lonely wood worshipper Whistling for words And I am content that you did your prayer Much like my daily dead affair To show how much for each we care By being willfully unaware
Thus there is food upon the table And smile upon our faces And though the roof is leaking And the floor is unswept And there are holes in our clothes And scarce money in our pockets left We know we shall scrounge through Past the ups and downs and ifs and buts Of everyday euthanization By lying wide awake Half dead with escapist desire In some strangers arms And murmuring through their skin The leftover vows We kept for ourselves By scribbling away the love Not meant for each other
To each word vibrating with voice I say you have no choice But to be uttered And then be left in the void To dissolve Into the common silence Of myriad things miming Life’s unwritten serenity
I see yet know nothing I know but can see nothing Perhaps because I close my eyes during the day And in night I keep them open Or perhaps the day dawns when I close my eyes And night falls when I do open Thus, I am riven, cleaved clean And both parts of me are lost to the void Where they each calls for one another And each fails to answer the other So that the half words spilling through the corner of cold blue lips Become eddies; Wind painting on water And the colourless quiet Is divided equally to all drowning men
This darkness of thought Tunnels connecting the passage of time Yawn endlessly For who would turn and fall asleep When all answers of today are again questioned tomorrow
We come and go, we come and go With what desire of knowing We may never know
Splashes of white and black Stars streaked with paint brushes On the decaying horizon Universe diluted and powdered into pills To be taken twice with warm water Before the self-hypnosis servings: ‘Ode to me, ode to me The orphan child of galaxy’ A child who sees, who see: Spiders crying upon the wall And ants dying without a funeral With the human belief of being surreal Something more than Picasso’s parody of each man watered down into the same shape As mercury, slithering inside our throats, We paint the dreamland agony on our own A martyr decapitated by needle Love loaded with gunpowder kiss Lucky draw for cursory chemotherapy Armchair dissection; with thoughts clinging to the end of the scalpel Manufactured magnanimity with expired life lessons Vending machines for vison; a dime’s dream for a day Granite gods, chiselled, chewing on sand and white vapor of wisdom And we the people, popcorn patrons, watching this apocalypse through donated eyes In a fostered future where, famished children pose before the camera For takeaway Pulitzer And the humanitarian prize.
Walls with wombs Gestating hatred Watch us, the metallic vultures, as we hover With our telescope tuned for hypocrisy Our heavy hearts, aching with empathy, from behind the Kevlar vests
If only the bombs being dropped were bread There would be no war left to win
Two mirrors Broken Thousand miles apart Watch each other and weep
There is a shell of silence about us And all those who can see cannot show And all those who cannot see would not know How the world is a fish tank Submerged in an ocean And our giant leaps Reaching for stars Are paralyzed thoughts Trapped in an endless motion
So, take me to the quiet room With windows overlooking green fields And empty blackboard, Where blank books of history Are taught by children; I shall be a student of lifelong happenstance Waiting for the recess bell to ring And sunlight to flood out Into the playground And make Ghosts out of living men
The texture of wind Is not felt by the fingers Nor the weight of the shadow By the ground The time is not seen On the skin of the sky Nor is the source heard Within the sound
THE HUMAN ANVIL 