THE HUMAN ANVIL

Category: man, love, poem, poetry

  • Marmalade

    Pieces of sunlight on my shirt
    Golden flakes caught unawares in snow
    I wear the world
    As a witness upon my eyebrow

    Pendulum thoughts, mine,
    Rising to always fall, falling to ever rise
    A deaf dance; this one legged tango
    Should I mourn
    The forgotten remembrance
    Of irony bound in common things
    Like water buried in a coconut or born in one who knows what it means to be a child
    Without being none
    I, myself, was born skinless
    In a seed of wild fern
    Wordless they named me; those voices in my head,
    Till I spoke and my friends began to fade
    One after another
    Like orange in marmalade

    The wind upon the canvas do not dry the paint
    Nor a fire miles away
    Help me find my feet
    Of all the pain in the world; it’s the loss that alone tastes sweet
    With syrup on my bruise
    And sugar on my wound
    I limp away
    From weeping windows and waking walls
    For I heard my cupboard say the other day
    Wear less and be more
    Was that a dream, a dream
    Like Dali high on sour cream?
    I wish only to know
    Can my hand reach out to my heart and squeeze
    The last drops of Carpe Diem to please
    My soul; that cotton candy wrapped in light and luck
    Made In Bed after a night of soft….

    Dear Diary
    I am exhausted
    Ginsberg and Sexton, Whitman and Poe
    Conrad, Tolstoy, Orwell and Thoreau
    I read about them all
    Copperfield and Twist
    And Einstein’s Relativity and Marie Antoinette’s false feast
    Should I sleep now
    Will the night ask me no more
    Questions and answers
    Legends and lores

    There is a spider on the bed
    (Yes, it’s a thought in my head)
    Should I scream or be quiet
    (There is nothing to be said)
    So twinkle twinkle little star
    There are bottles in the hotel bar
    And many miles to drink before I sleep
    Till the laughter stops and it soothes to weep…

  • Testimonies

    Image by Jean Wemmerlin @unsplash


    They put him in an empty chair
    As blank as his eyes
    The studied wooden smile
    Peeled slivers
    Red and dripping
    From hands that stayed cold
    Upon the switch.


    Ghosts of strangers
    Pale and long
    Scratched at the glass
    Like cats for milk
    They craved his gaze;
    Shuffling hair, straightening neckties
    So theirs could be the faces
    He last sees.


    While gloved fingers thrust
    Rubber in his mouth
    So death could swallow his scream
    And not escape to haunt those
    Who broke the stainless nip
    Upon some pages
    In a file, soon to be laid upon a pile
    That stated his particulars
    And the supposed crime
    He agreed to
    Everytime.


    He sat like a king upon a throne
    The helmet far too small
    For his frame
    He let it sit
    As a visor
    Of some knight from a game
    How was he to know
    This was no story being told
    That his hands were being tied
    So he could not hold
    Any secrets in his hide
    Which may spill
    Once the deed was done
    And justice restored
    Just for fun.


    The pale hand moved
    Lights flickered and wailed
    Tiny feet gasped to run
    But fluttered and failed
    The puppeteer has left
    This marionette alone
    Never to move again
    On its own.


    Glass hands closed in faith
    Mirror lips moved in prayer
    For the balance restored
    True and fair
    Unaware as ever
    These fixers of frames
    That many men in this lifetime
    Can carry one name

  • Death, Dear Friend

    Image by Dave Hoefler @ Unsplash

    Death, do not cry
    I know; you are no one’s friend
    But that does not make you; a foe
    Like all who have been and are being swept away
    Like a clove leaf upon a current
    You too are destined by design
    To sow and grow; sorrow
    That abandoned thistle tree
    Which all passes and pretends not to see

    Death, do not cry
    When your choices go wrong
    There are so many voices asking
    To add another verse to their swan song
    But you know as do I
    That music is sweet only for so long
    And it starts with no cymbals and shall end with no gong

    Death, do not cry
    People do care about you a lot
    You may not always be the fountainhead
    But you are almost always an afterthought
    And we may not think of you as we breathe
    Or when we play the games of Holy Land
    But we do rehearse our union every night
    Though not all of us understand

    Death, do not cry
    We shall meet for once and forever
    But before that I must ask an honest, humble favor:
    Of all the places for us to meet
    And greet, if you could visit me when I am fast asleep
    Then there shall be nothing for me to weep
    As I skip; the curtain call of my every emotion
    And be like a nameless raindrop falling into an aimless ocean

  • Ambit


    Outside my window
    A caterpillar crawls
    And I watch as it gains
    Inch by inch
    An eternity
    On me

  • The Two Way Truth


    There is no scorpion under the rock
    Unless the rock is lifted

  • Kohl

    There is shadow under her eyes
    Eclipses she called them
    From the tears left behind
    Of the pain that came far too late
    To flow and feel with the pulse of time

    I look at her bare back
    With the bedsheet pattern
    Still alive on her skin
    The crests of her shoulders
    Peeking like crescent moons
    From under the sea of argent hair

    So I turn away
    To another day
    A still life, blur, Monet.
    Years ago to this Tinseltown:
    People leaping out of their skins
    Skeletons dancing in glass cases
    The enamel skulls selling
    A hollow reed laugh
    And a touch at the base of your spine
    As a keepsake

    She was standing
    Under the irreparable light
    Doused in city flames
    And dressed in the dark left behind by dirty minds,
    Counting cars that passed
    Without halting for her

    My feet were silent
    My thoughts far too loud
    As I hovered round her shadow
    Like a leftover cloud
    With neither thunder nor rain
    In the threads of my vein
    But the promise of a shade
    And the warmth of a bed

    It’s been years since that night
    And every night since then
    Whence I swallowed her sorrow
    And she pardoned my pain
    And together we have slept
    Counting each other’s scar
    Some dealt amongst us
    Others unremembered for far
    And yet I can hear her
    Counting cars passing by
    And there are eclipses under her eyes
    From all the kohl she forgot to dry…

  • Goddess

    And I buried the sky
    Deep in my womb
    And there were stars in my eyes
    The moon south of my waist
    And the sun spilled forth white
    From the cusp of my chest
    So my children could glow
    So my children could dream
    And not be sheeps led on sermon
    Taught to bleat and not to scream
    At the world for not being fair
    And keep a woman unaware
    Of her hips and her hair
    Drawn only if in pair
    And shown smiling everywhere
    To please and to care
    And never do truly dare
    Be a child of the flower
    Wild under bower
    With roots of our own
    Chosen by us to be sown
    In our graveyards and glade
    For a fragrance that would never fade
    From the words once unsaid
    Now shared unafraid
    In all homes and every hearth
    Before being born and after birth
    A song, O this song
    To be remembered for long
    We were there, we are here
    No longer in fear:
    Of the Bible and it’s fable
    Seven sins under the table
    Forced to pay for it all
    Every Adam and his fall,
    Without why, when and how
    We are one and we are now
    Equal in this fight
    Of Us and Our Way
    Once Witches of the Night
    Now the Goddess of the Day

  • A Little Like Living

    What if the world is a secret
    Whispered around
    In search of a treasure
    Never meant to be found?

  • The Eclectic

    I swim in the sand
    And in rivers of flying doves I lie
    Gazing at my private sky;
    Left to roam in chrysalis
    Upon the wounded edges of my eyelids
    A morphed metaphor for measure,
    Who found the infinity
    To be naught
    The palpable universe
    Alas planted within a thought

  • Suzerain

    This silence
    As great as the age of an ocean
    Now brim my teacup
    And I; a droplet of delusion
    Aimless upon the surface of ceaseless eternity,
    Dare ask for a refill