
This moment
It is endless
There is nothing more to be
It is the past you predicted
And future you didn’t see…

What heaven and earth shall answer me
What fire and brimstone shall answer me
What thunder and tempest shall answer me
When all I ask in a whisper
Is the source of their silence

Naked pictures painted on the world map, a global ache this systematic subjugation, arraigned with signatures and rubber stamps and blue and black ink with red smeared hands from…
Ants committing suicide for sugar cubes, mountains sundered for a grain of sand, weighing a ton by common belief of a wishful world running in a race without an end around a toilet flush
I hear music in the smoking firmament, the guttural snort and fart of the engine like Mozart’s Requiem for Modern Times; graveyards filled with scraps, dusty medals pinned upon pigeon chests, chest with springs and cogs inside, all mechanisms of a meager mind,
Breathed upon by gunpowder gods never crucified, but kept alive, unchained unlike Prometheus or castrated unlike Cronus, with 9mm eyes watching over the supposed universe,
Lives televised, a miniscule mime renting life per hour, human carcass threaded, talking puppets mimicking everyday shambles with double exclamation and undying opinions; graffiti upon bathroom walls, the enlightenment of our age; our Bible, our Koran, our Commandments, our Veda,
An ocean of umbilical madness, Medusas of mind, writhing in the depths of drowned time, left helpless at the bottom, garbage cans, lobster traps, Ahab’s ambition, little mermaid’s fin, all part of the abyss, woven tales of Atlantis
Beggars upon sidewalk, watching the neon lights blink at the mannequins dressed and fed better than them, breathing in glass case while the Caesar supine on steps as flat piece of bread looks on: Et tu, Et tu, until a coin clatters in the bowl and Rome falls, democracy dissolved under the acid rain of paint thinner,
Red sky running, blind horse racing against the rider till the tollbooth where hands on hips the old man walks the zebra crossing, unmindful of the airplanes lined at the red light, waiting one and all to fly away, without passengers or Blackbox, to a land where runways end
Phantoms fasting upon a fingernail, the sound of anarchy, electric guitar with strings of lightning, rainbow flooding the floor, and the people waving, a mingled marsh undecipherable, a canvas coated with paint, avant-garde asylum overflowing with stone heads
Rows of velvet cushion upon glass, red carpet laid upon mud, hyenas laughing in the hallway in high heels and mothball tuxedos from pawn shop, faceless fornication behind the screen, lips locked together in war, breathes dying with alcohol,
And outside the Ghost of Christmas Past selling mint in the rain, poets pass him and politicians, all made of papers full of question marks and Venn diagram that depicts everything said and done, the saying it has the bigger circle and the deeds it had none,
The Van Gogh World waking, rivers of gas flowing under matchstick houses waiting for madmen, toothpick buildings dancing for children playing whack-a-mole, Las Vegas without lights like teeth of a key; all cards of the fleeting reality playing pinochle with constant uncertainty,
Dismal days these, age of enlightenment, recoilless Renaissance, people paying people to understand people paying people, round around the circumference of Drachma with Copernicus we fly, we fly, taking one day kryptonian crash course, and pretend to die with cries towards the sky; O father thou art in heaven, look down now and weep, for seven days you worked, and on the eighth it all went to dust, you knew it and yet you left it so, now weeds gather in your garden, and even Lucifer stays away and pray free from this drama; Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama

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

Some day I want to be
The man in the book
Who knew what he wanted
And loved what he took
With no one to question
And no answer to give
With no thoughts on living
And only to live
Some day I want to be
The man in the book

I can smell the brown sugar
Melting in my tea pot
And I am rooted
Between two oak trees
Made immovable
By the stone lips oaring my depths
Reaching for the sky silhouetted against me
But the ache of it does not feel like tooth decay
Nor the pleasure makes me shiver and rain
Glass beads and spirit of grain
Into the hands of praying men
I can feel my skin
Breathing under your fingernails
Like snail on a hot tar road
While your voice in my ear
Whisper garbage
Something about me, my hair,
My face and the rest
Of me but not about
As if your eyes are nothing but mirror
Or old shoes spit polished this morning
And my heart wanders like flies on foodstuffs
Unable to digest
The truth of you touching me
In and beyond
Anymore
Steel on the tip of my tongue
Marble on the base of my back
I am pierced and pinned to the pedestal
A naked butterfly
At once transparent and tarnished
Bruised, battered and bludgeoned into being;
Beautiful sans beauty
So I stare like a light bulb numb in its holder:
The roof is blank
A grey slate
False sky
Absent mind
White chessboard
And the omniscient blind

Dear,
I know it is too late to write
It’s midnight here too, the sun is lying dead at the bottom of the ocean
With the dry lipstick caps
You left.
I rinsed their marks off the sink you know,
The bold maroon, the autumn orange and the pink of summer blossoms
I hope you are wearing something else now
A colour I could never know; otherwise all the bite marks you left
Like a river of pain
From the nape of my neck to the small of my back
Dividing me; amongst myself
Would be futile.
See! No you cannot, but I am, seeing
The stars, do you know they are long gone
And the light that we are looking at
Is no more true than those promises we made
In bed, everyday
Looking at each other
Melting under the red haze of love
Or else I would not be alone
Straddled between both lampshades
Stretched midst two lights
And the same, same darkness
Shifting me out of sight
And yet, oh yet I miss
You with your half asleep smile
Carefully constructed
To be dreamlike
I miss the time when we were us
Shared shadows in the day
And in night our silhouettes
I miss your half baked cake
And bitter burnt coffee
With me humming the song
You love at three; in the morning
Watching just watching
Nothing at all
But the same thing
Always the same
There was a time when I used to write for you
When I should have written about,
But I was naive; eggshell white,
A crystal goblet balanced upon the edge of a two-legged table
Drunk with my own wine
And I know the fault was mine
As ever the fault was mine
Flowers wilted and the fault was mine
Winter came and the fault was mine
Nothing remained
Everything changed
It began again
And the fault was mine
And so I am no more
Than a corpse carrying out a chore
Dreaming of a world before
It broke upon my door
Oh yes well before
I even built the door…

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…