THE HUMAN ANVIL

Category: Poems

Art, emotion, life

  • Summary of Sleep

    Evenings; splashed like red wine on canvas
    Now turn dark
    Eyelash by falling eyelash
    As I meditate upon the traffic sounds
    Upon the streetlights
    And the indistinguishable net of voices
    Falling over me
    Like a little rain, this brittle pain
    Should I see now
    Should I share
    The weight of those fingers
    Which rested upon my iliac crest
    Like a promise of an afterlife?
    Maybe my heart is not a heart afterall
    Maybe it’s a spade;
    A leaf leftover from the fall
    Black and decaying
    Prone to praying
    Lost and afraid
    Saying what’s been said
    Over and over
    Slower and slower
    Till its heartbeat’s no more
    Than a pulse on my wrist
    Which l bartered for love
    And ceased to exist

    We should have been born in oyster shells
    Our lives a lunar cycle
    Circling the moon within our womb
    For this warm darkness I guzzle
    This phantom of my lies
    Lies like a lotus on my lips
    A rootless need sans a seed
    That divides and conquers
    All my desires which anchors
    The ships of my souls
    On your face with four moles
    And I know that the distance
    Has kept us apart
    And the time has been ending
    Right from the start
    And now and then again
    Our words have gone sparse
    Drowned by those voices
    Who called ours a farce
    But the ocean is changing
    There are waves which find home
    In shaping sandcastles
    Where they no longer roam

    I wish I could dance
    And drown in my sorrow
    I wish I could regret
    My mistakes of tomorrow
    I wish I could be
    Someone you see
    Knowing what I am
    And what you want me to be
    So I try to separate
    My dream from the reason
    And hold back my love
    In my arms; this prison
    Inherited over years
    From those before me
    Who searched for freedom
    And found it’s not free

  • Intricacies


    Every poet wants to be painter 
    And every painter a poet 
    It is the faint mist
    Between words and things visible 
    Where great minds 
    Are led astray,
    You can say
    From the paper bouquet of your everyday life
    From the half chewed pencil of your clerical nights;
    That I with my bedroom lights 
    Turned off
    Am turned on
    By the slow shape 
    And soft luminescence of the moon
    But that would be, probably
    A crescent quote;
    Lying halfway between truth and lie
    And even though it may soothe 
    The immediate argument 
    Like bolt of the door
    Thoughts would come knocking
    One midnight at a time
    Till madness makes me forget my heartbeat 
    And remember only the soft taps
    The gentle creaks 
    Of those faint footsteps 
    Approaching 
    Dim lit corridors of my conscience 
    Asking to be heard 
    To be understood 
    But in my fragmented prophecies;
    At the altar of my falsehood 
    I am an orphan
    Asked to adopt my parents
    And I am in a mood to err
    To give over to the permanent suffocation 
    Of savoury sadness 
    That comes from cold hugs
    In a stuffed room
    Filled with trophies and dolls 
    Framed history on the walls
    And the pitter patter of acid rain
    On the window at dinner time 
    For the cusp of my boyhood 
    Was never crossed by me
    It appears I shed
    My skin on the bed
    And awoke
    An old man
    With childish desires 
    Of milk and marmalade 
    At the corner of my lips
    And though it is said
    That I have grown and growing 
    Into a man the world can count upon
    I hardly know the numbers 
    To make it count
    The stillness of my dreams
    Is a motion sickness;
    And I am diving against the gravity 
    Unable to comprehend 
    Home from horizon 
    While the pivot of my existence 
    Is a spinning top
    Balanced upon a raindrop 
    Being painted by a poet
    Who writes for his pain to stop

  • Origami

    It is the morning after
    And I awake as an origami undone
    Only yesterday I had her arm on my chest
    With mine anchored round her waist
    Balancing our seesaw soul
    Making whole
    Those pieces we planted 
    Like bookmarks to find
    The stories we memorised 
    Keeping in mind
    Going almost insane 
    Being blinded by pain
    Once kayaking in chaos
    To feel alive again

    Now I watch my face shiver 
    In the ether of her eyes
    Now I am fire cold with fever
    Falling on the rise
    She is here
    She is mine
    She has no say to say
    Far near  
    Dear divine 
    So I kneel but not to pray 
    Now I watch her face shiver
    In the ether of my eyes
    Now I am fire with her fever
    She is falling when I rise

    But I dare not confess that I dreamt of her
    In the early hours of last night 
    For that would be blasphemy 
    My being alone
    With only her memory 
    Drenched monochromes 
    Some charcoal art
    Of me painting her toenails pink
    And she murmuring shape of my heart
    Waiting for the words to sink

    For her voice is my hymn in exile
    And here I wander, mile by mile
    A broken kite
    Dead dynamite 
    Waiting for her mirage to draw me closer
    Towards sun kissed horizons
    Across daydreaming dunes
    And purple fields
    Of my pulsing past
    Through this desert vast, desolate and slow
    I search for her
    As the seconds grow
     
    I can see her white hands over black countertop 
    Passing pepper into the pot 
    Waiting for me to finish my worship of her
    Waiting for me to open the refrigerator 
    And take half a dozen eggs to scramble 
    To toss and turn
    The yolk and white 
    In the shade of the dim light 
    Wafting from her seashell skin
    With wafer thin petrichor 
    Of our last night’s rain
    (Did I drown in her hair?
    Did my gasps made her growl?
    Did we swim in stolen silence?
    Did our motions knew our goal?
    To be, to be
    Half mad in ecstasy 
    The sea falling apart
    At the lips of an estuary)

    The dress does to her
    What dust does to a diamond 
    But she knows it not
    Even when I beg; a child in disguise 
    To breathe over her facets
    Between her navel and her thighs 
    But she laughs and she turns
    Like flower between ferns
    She waxes into full moon 
    And I am a candle that ever burns
    To ignite at her sight
    To surrender without a fight 
    To be answer to her questions 
    Which were never answered right

  • It Isn’t Merry To Go Around


    I sleep, knee deep
    For my world weeps unaware
    I awake, in heart break 
    For I see you aren’t there

    Once in a blue moon
    I see the sun shining 
    I am lost in my past’s love
    In a search of silver lining 

    Tangerine toenails 
    I have henna on my feet
    I dance, in trance
    As old shadows come to greet 

    Do I dare, and I dare
    To touch the liner of my eye
    Wax in my flesh seeks
    A flame to make me cry

    And I cry, so I cry
    Was it an ocean that once said
    Remember the silence 
    For words can be unmade

    Blue lips, fingertips 
    I grasp the rosary and pray
    For life, that life 
    Gives no lesson everyday 

    I am cold, and I am told
    All my thoughts are a lie
    And my home is no home
    I must roam, no goodbye 

    I picture my own life 
    And my face is a blur
    Mutilated by soft fingernails
    Covered in the fur

    Should I if could I
    Breathe and then awake
    The armour on the inside 
    Dreaming for daybreak

    If so, I know
    The brook would then flow
    From the roots of my hair
    Where dreams do not grow

  • Dearth of Memories

                         I
      

    Has an ant ever crossed an ocean
    Or a swan reached the sun 
    Has any flower ever saved a thorn
    Or lost love ever won

                        II

    I scratched;
    Upon the whitewashed wall of my sanctum 
    My nails bled
    With the semicolons and commas
    But the pain that rested
    Like autumn in my chest
    Stayed 
    The heartbeats shifting dark roots and yellow leaves
    A raw pulse 
    Decaying 
    With each bartered breath 
    (Perhaps I have written these lines before
    Or perhaps I have felt the same
    Long time back
    When out of the blue 
    The blackness took over
    Like a bubble of bile)

    Sometimes I want to be another man
    Someone whose shallow thoughts 
    Never leaves his hollow lips
    And if I were to dissect myself 
    In a cold blue room 
    And remove these tumours that I can feel
    Lying along my spine like roadblocks
    I may perhaps get better
    But I do not want to be better 
    Not alone and not by myself 
    For I know my hand would betray 
    Even if the scalpel stays loyal

    So I sew my torn sweater 
    One stitch at a time
    And I can feel at the back of my neck
    The mist beyond the window
    Hiding a drowsy world
    A quiet world
    From the memories of Edgar Allen Poe
    I don’t know…
    For I am sewing my sweater
    One stitch at a time

    It is easier to break than build
    My grandmother told me
    Long ago, when my shoe size was half of what it is now 
    We were sitting in the veranda 
    Watching sparrows without nests
    Search for shade
    Her wrinkled hands were beautiful 
    They knew only to give
    To me, to the sparrows 
    Her today for our tomorrows 
    I did not understand what she meant 
    Only that she meant what she said 

                        III

    The face of my love
    Is an enigma 
    A diamond made of star dust
    And dew drops 
    I have seen her as none have
    During hours longer than light 
    In dreams deeper than the night 
    And yet if I were to hold
    A paintbrush 
    Her shape would disappear 
    In the shadows of my mind
    Like fragrance does from a flower

    I know her to be beautiful 
    Like rainbow after rain
    Or an ocean undressing at midnight 
    Whispering the tales
    Of sailors and their sails
    And I often try
    In an absentminded earnestness 
    That of a child never chided 
    To try and catch her featherlight hair
    To hold that waterfall 
    The obsidian madness as she sways
    Like a soft swan 
    Without silhouette 

    The nights are hard
    Rebels and roses
    And I write of my love in poems and proses 
    As I reach for the soft molasses 
    Surrounding my heart
    Breaking and bleeding 
    From Cupid’s blue dart

    She taught me to write, you know…
    When all I could do was recite   
    And bruise the pages 
    Perhaps I with all my innocence 
    Was nothing but a man wanted for my own murder 
    But with her I am me;
    Irrepressibly free
    A child dressed in clothes too big for him.
    Perhaps I never grew up after 2007
    Forever eleven
    An Abandoned ectoplasm
    Morphed in shape by satire
    Drowning in the desire
    To be wanted and stay haunted
    By the spectre of love

                        IV

    I am rhyming the verses 
    For I know nothing more
    My poems are to the paper
    What waves are to the shore

  • Lapis Lazuli

    I wish I could be the colour blue
    Not sapphire or cerulean 
    But something old
    And something new
    As if waves of the ocean 
    Are carrying pieces of the sky
    Moonlight and stardust 
    Dipped in indigo dye
    A deeper azure
    A cobalt that will fade
    Part turquoise, part teal
    Your shade, your shade…

  • Last Card of the Castle

    It’s a terrible tragedy you see
    To be away from you
    The farther you are 
    The fainter I get
    The harder you hold
    The longer I wait 
    Tonight the edges of my soul are clear
    And I can see my heartbeats through my chest 
    They come and disappear 
    They pulse and fade
    Alive and dead
    Red over red 

    I can hear the wall clock 
    Can hear the teeter tatter of the seconds
    Turn into the silent hour
    An hour without you
    Then one and half, then two
    I am mesmerised in the act of missing you 
    Part proud, part desperate 
    Juggling memories and dreams
    Promises and themes
    Like Picasso and his paint
    Rhyming his story and history 
    Balancing the devil and the saint

    I close my eyes now and then
    And hold you to my chest
    Close enough to collapse 
    Onto myself 
    First in tears, followed by laughter 
    Then silence much after
    Dents in my denial 
    Rust on my reins 
    I falter like a colt
    And stand still until it pains
    Deep enough for my marrow
    To call out your name
    Madly enough for my mind
    To believe that you indeed came

    The night is falling fast
    And I am writing against the flow
    To reach the side of your shore
    Where you await in your pink bow;
    That tiara of innocence 
    Which broke me
    Slowly apart
    Till I lost all of my aces 
    To the hand of the queen of heart

  • Searching For Your Name

    So, I just want to wait and watch;
    You are driving me slowly mad
    Like the purple in your hair clips
    My soul is right kind of sad
    Ink on my puffed up lips
    I kissed your poetry tonight 
    Blood on my fingertips 
    From the verses I had to fight
    Now people they come and claim
    That they know you as well as me
    They may have tasted one drop sometime 
    But don’t know the depths of this sea
    And I have fallen and I am falling 
    Hand me the hem of your chiffon dress
    And I have called and I am calling
    To surrender my pieces of chess
    For it’s you who hold me now
    Gravity is not part of the game
    Let go and you shall see just how
    I get lost in the search of your name
    So, I just want to wait and watch;
    You are driving me slowly mad
    Like the purple in your hair clips
    My soul is right kind of sad

  • The Myth of Silence


    I wrote on paper
    And was called a poet
    I wrote on walls
    And was asked to wait
    On a chair nailed to the floor
    In a cold, cold white room
    Where the only sound was of my breath;
    No different from a writer’s womb 
    So I sat in the pleated emptiness 
    With a glass of water left to precipitate 
    Watching the walls seduce me to sadness
    When the pendulum peeled an eight 
    And in came this ladybug green
    Glasses carved on the tip of her nose
    She had grey pad and a bald blue pen
    And a red ring in the shape of rose
    ‘Ahem, ahem’ She said ‘Ahem, ahem’
    And I coughed and cleared my throat
    She looked at me for a second
    Then this is what she wrote:
    ‘The subject is kind of rude
    He has no manners so to speak
    He sits like a beggar on his throne
    A man of power sold in sale to the weak’
    It made no sense, nonsense, I tell you 
    For she was no poet for god’s own sake
    She was too tidy to have chaos inside
    And that is how I knew she was fake
    ‘The subject now seems annoyed 
    He is watching me with furrowed brows 
    As if I have stolen something of his
    And now pretending that everyone knows’
    Ah the audacity of this usurper 
    Who claims my kingdom as her own
    I have pieces of paper in my pocket 
    And a dozen verses to loan
    ‘The subject is trying to smile 
    And I am feeling all sick and ill 
    There is wrong with his mind
    He says naught but I can feel’
    She knows nothing of my madness 
    Of how it hurts to sit and smile
    For only writing on the wall
    I pretend to die once in a while
    ‘The subject has tears in his eyes
    Maybe my saying something will change
    But what should I say at this point
    That will not make him seek revenge’
    The fool, the fool is writing 
    And what a caricature does she draw
    Looking from behind a pair of glasses 
    She writes what she thinks she saw
    ‘The subject does not comply 
    To any form of my treatment 
    So must be treated in harsher terms 
    Or in an asylum must be sent’
    Oh I did snatch her pen and pad
    And wrote down my own choice 
    Before you judge what others have said
    First make sure if they even have a voice…

  • The History of Hope

    He was born broken; one of a kind,
    A scarecrow one can find
    Here and there with splintered limbs 
    Taught to always be half blind 
    He was afraid even being undead
    As if everything he never said
    Can be heard through the silence 
    Warring inside his uneven head

    His name he remembered still
    Amen; meaning to fulfil
    But there were ashes in his waistcoat 
    Of people he hurt but forgot to heal
    So he ran and walked and also crawled 
    Eyes wide for one who had solved
    How a caterpillar in the end
    In a butterfly gets evolved 

    Days he spent in the random heat
    With shivering hands and on hobbling feet
    And at night he sought strangers known
    Who could tell where few roads meet
    And on bed made of carpet and cold
    He laid his flesh when it could no more hold
    The dreams of being young again
    When the promises were getting old

    And in the morning, midst the fallen dew 
    He thought of his life when it all was new
    Now what he has was being taken away
    When he already had so few
    But as the sun climbs its ladder high
    He marches once more to relive the lie
    Believing same as Icarius
    Wearing feathers would make him fly

    And even today you can catch his glimpse
    The old man, who begs and limps, 
    Through the mirror of mortal minds
    He is the maker of all the hymns 
    One who tosses the coin for sun and rain
    The progeny of unrequited pain
    Hear his heartbeat as your own 
    And in your vein his name: Amen.