Category: Poems

I heard myself,
Through passing prose of life,
In random echoes unending,
World’s single rhyme,
Each pause in time.
I heard myself,
Matching morning’s croon,
In silent noon,
Tuning strings of Brooks,
Counting steps that took,
A different turn.

I remember, the warmth of your hand
The feel of your fingers, like embers,
That winter night,
When you held me first,
Like marionette,
Strings leashed to your lashes,
As you undid me, and unearthed;
Piece by piece,
Till the fire awoke,
Behind my eyes, beneath my skin, beyond my dreams.
But you weren’t triumphant,
Nor red, with pride,
But as me, still,
As stone, as breath,
As world, as death.
And how we traveled, flew past,
Against wind, upon seas,
Within ships, without mast.

There be life, hidden beyond every edge,
And nook and crevice,
And love, in all broken things,
Dying with the wind.
There be laughter,
There be joy,
There be paintings,
There be ploy,
Tracing lives, through stone, wood, walls and steel.

The world may fall,
And the mask of man,
Fold into dust,
But we shall remain,
Here forever,
Reciting, the same symphony,
Through the crowning seas,
The tricks of trees,
And ebony stones,
And ivory bones.

I laid myself bare,
And they took notice,
Of all the wounds stitched,
Like embroidery upon my skin;
A flower around my navel,
Persian pattern on my back,
A stag hiding in dry grass,
With a hunter on its track.

Pour forth, ye night,
From my flute, my tulip, my coupe,
Till your calves kiss it’s brim,
And you step over the rim,
Dyed naive, carved naked,
Upon these paths, these cobblestones,
Burning silver bright,
For a copper coin falling,
Away, and out of sight.

This night, they toast to melancholy.
I raise my glass, with many others of the evanescent gathering,
(Faces one and all, surrounded, shrouded,
In a mist of obscure words;
Prophecies, promises, plans for progenies.)
And let it fall, alone,
Elegantly, without spilling,
Onto the floor, the cold dead floor.

The nectar in their veins,
The ichor of their existence, the slow tumbleweed of a dry and dying day,
Is poison to me.

I wake up,
Unmade.
Once again afraid.

The sheets are wet, greying at the edges,
Smelling of soap and lye,
And the old musk of a nearby barn,
And morning drenched with rain.
So many possibilities,
Dividing my desire.

There is not much to do, anymore,
A wasteland stretches upon my fingertips,
Like old oil,
Staining each touch, the mere memory of meeting
Silhouettes standing against the far wall, with dark cloud moaning, tracing upturned lips,
Dressed in ashes, hands upon hips.

I no longer believe anything I see.

Pages turn into paper planes,
Numbers in nonsense,
Geometrical theology;
Thesis upon dot,
Histories of fools who fought,
For a piece of stone, that belonged to a third.

So much has the human mind endured,
And we wonder why the world acts lost.

‘Your hands are too small to smother me,
Love.’

I have woken before,
Awakened alive,
In a glass case curiously cut, into a shape,
I know was not of design.

There were corners,
Where walls didn’t meet,
And doors there, below my feet,
With windows so high,
That one couldn’t greet, any face, peering inside.

Should I venture a hello,
Or perhaps the howl of a ghost?
Was I buried alive or excavated almost?

Here voices fall without vowels,
Hollow shells; Wordlessly verbatim,
Sand dunes moaning with centuries of silence.

Why whisper when none can hear?
Why shout when one can’t answer?

I hope I could ask of you,
From strangers never found,
Who haven’t seen you as I did,
Who neither know your name nor it’s sound.

You are a lullaby,
A charlatan,
The evening star,
That blind sun.

You are everything, that makes this world,
Yet the world holds nothing of your kind,
Here men can part the sea with hand,
But not shift the grain of your mind.

I know of you,
The way you walk,
By shores of blue sunshine,
The way you hold,
Each oyster,
And claim every pearl as ‘Mine’.

Oh how I wish to see you, all nights anew,
When the dreams awake on your face,
And you close those eyes, like a lavaliere,
With a stillness full of grace,
For then I would have,
An eternity,
Of you and me as one,
And not this effigy, of burning time,
That ebbs at every turn.

There are lights on either side,
Unblinking, thinking,
Of the dark road, falling down, down,
Like a waterfall;
This flowerbed of men, women and those with,
Cluttered, raised voices, of tottering innocence.

There are dustbins,
Homeless, hungry,
Staring at each passer-by,
Immigrant, some Samaritan, a bad shooter of banana peal,
Open to you, welcome, for a purpose,
With armless hugs, always unattended,
Nevertheless, forever
Welcome.

There are footpaths,
The grandfather of generations,
Keeper of footsteps,
Precursor to paths,
Witness to life, its softness, its wrath,
Men; their plight,
Women; their might,
Masses in revolt,
People lost; hopeless in love, heartless in fight,
Half dead beggars and models on diet, Shadows in smoke, figures in dust, Old faces; all strangers at first,
Everything that passes, everything that stops,
Those gutteral depths,
Those glittering tops.

Not all eyes are seen, not all sights are sought, And not all things remain, for which one has fought,. This life is but a passing, All tides upon the sea, The world witness, as one, Have freedom to feel free.

Sing me a song, buddies,
Make it longer than this night,
There is a man at the end of road
Whom I wish to never fight.

Make me forget about today,
And tommorow if you can,
I will live with yesterday,
As a shallow, old man,
I lived yesterday like today,
And tommorow as yesterday,
How I wish for the tommorow,
I could live as today.

For I am far too tired,
Carrying stones upon my back,
I will be needing them somewhere they said,
For filling all the cracks.
But here is the funniest thing,
That before I took this helpful stone,
I don’t remember having any,
Fissures of my own.

Oh I have been a fool, I have,
To pledge my life to those,
Who taught me how to tiptoe,
By cutting all my toes,
And no I am not invoking,
The vomit of your tears and pity,
Having lived out in a box,
Thinking it as city.

I know I am a failure,
With my absurd elegy words,
And my morning allocution,
Ruffling you drowsy birds,
But in no way in heaven;
Not by which the Archfiend fell,
Can you call my lacuna lunatic,
Or me a brooding tattletale.

I have lived as it has come,
With no night and day in place,
Weren’t any bets upon my head so;
Unobligated to race.
The thought has served me well,
For peace and zen of mind,
Didn’t meet any other,
High Soul of the same kind.

Had no talent so to speak,
Felt no part of any group,
My shirt was tagged ‘Rebel’
Yet never acted in any coup,
Or so I think I did,
Or so I think I do,
But you never know about yourself,
And like me you know it too.

Thus here I sit now,
With a drunk pitcher in my hand,
A sad smile upon my face,
Prompting a ragged band,
All the while aware,
Of those cracks along my spine,
And counting same of those around,
Who too feign that all is fine.

Come closer,
Feel my breath,
Like the bitter winter bile,
Holding onto you,
Trailing mile by mile,
Never coming closer,
For I stay,
Forever futile.

My tangled self lay broken,
Somewhere in the dark,
In past a prodigy,
And now without a mark,
Neither smell which one can find,
Nor sound of any kind,
Only feelings left to dry,
Salted under sky,
Staring at the sun,
Mindless to the burn.

I have lost,
O how have I lost,
For not rhyming at every cost,
For being against the wind,
For scribbling on ivory tower,
For passing without a pause,
By thrones of men in power.

Perhaps my delicate hand,
Had gestured something rude,
To test the biased scales,
By indeed doing good,
But the blind, apostle of Justice,
Had her eyes on me after all,
I with my own kingdoms,
Buried behind my wall.

For she came to me unbidden,
One night with the stars all dying,
Holding their splinters,
As witness to my lying,
Asking me to confess,
My two faced, scarlet tricks,
My fallen casuist ways,
And my skin of metal bricks.

And they of noble heart,
Whom I raised from graveyards lay,
And they of proud profession,
Did not even pray,
When I was dragged, bones bound,
Collared as maddened hound,
For slipping their truths,
In crystal cups of lie,
My brethren saw me leaving,
And not a hand raised for goodbye.

There are times,
Bleak, like glade without flowers,
When I alone, as a wayside stone,
Trickle through the brook,
Crashing, colliding
Joining the solemn, sweet rhythm of it’s music,
So to ease my own nothingness,
My everyday simplicity,
Of existing without inertia;
A slave to the force of motion,
Tasteless;
As salt upon the flesh of ocean.

The sea is never silent at the shore.