Category: prose

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

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…

The Silver In My Song

The broken flowers they fell at my feet
Gold and silver, ebony and peat
And I knew not where this road may lead
Will I find in the end what I need
And I need...
A silence in the shape of the sun
A bit of violence with the face of a nun
And someone who won't turn and run
When I face down the barrel of a gun
But hear now...
I don't have a penny to pay as your price
I spend my nights cold and filled up on rice
And I know my heart is my own greatest vice 
Always afraid that my love won't suffice
You can see...
Out there those houses of princes and kings
Whilst I can only shelter you neath my own wings
And I have no diamonds to tie our rings
Just the hollow of my chest to rest your sufferings
So beware...
Of my sweet words that may seduce and sway
They only ache so to take you away
And keep you happy come what it may
We will be children till our hair turn grey
But I know...
This poem seems just a practice in rhymes
And does not cover the cost of past crimes
But I shall spend every penny and all of my dimes
For our today and the end of our times
So...
Never forgive if you want but don't forget
The magic of those moments we met
And I wonder if it's my heart you now so hate
But wasn't our love written by the hands of the fate?
Thus I say…
The broken flowers they fell at my feet
Gold and silver, ebony and peat
And I knew not where this road may lead
Will I find in the end what I need
And I need…
You

Black Be The Color

The walls aren’t painted
And there are orange pips on the table
Arranged like a ten o’clock shadow
Of an ornament left in a glass case
And I dare not disturb
Her architecture
The tainted texture
That peers out, as symbols, as summations
Meaningless veracities, punctuated by punctuations.

I cough
And the dust coughs with me
For the echo is swallowed
By the floorboards
Beneath our feet
So I dance, I tiptoe
I jump and I let go
To remain suspended
An unlighted chandelier
Burning butanol or some such nonsense
In my pockets

My garden has gone grey
The flowers; asthmatic
Now wheeze in the wind
Wrinkled and waiting
For the next iteration of spring
A seasonal afterlife
That feels no soul smile and say;
I will let you live
If you follow my way

Curious is the world’s design
They who smile never know why
And they who claim that they do
Knows in their heart that it’s a lie
Is happiness something
That can never be found
Like corners of a map
Of a world that goes round

If only I had
Eyes that could see all
Every thread of a thought
From even streams and the stone
I think I know
What I would have known
That this all, this enigma
This play supposed to go on
Is not worded by us
We who think we have won
For each life afterall in the end is the same
Closed eyes, broken breaths
And lost dreams with no name.









Diaspora

I have seen the diaspora,
Seen it’s bulbous head set against Saturn’s sky,
Felt it’s pulse,
Dreaming of chalk and charcoal,
Seen it’s veins, deeper nerves,
Coursing through promises
Like an undulating snake.

Men revise,
Their adolescent mournings, teenage dreams made of,
Pink flesh laid to rest,
Against the grain of this world.
A world long forgotten by the habit of forgetting,
The shell of mirror,
Slow as sinking stone,
For lives lived, living,
With unpolluted prose,
Precise, pragmatic.

I have seen the diaspora,
The laughter of death,
That parallel passage,
Guided by fate.

The fault never lied with dark,
To light must fall the blame,
For showing that of all,
None are truly the same.

Half the pleasure,
Lies in having nothing,
And losing it all.

Here in shaped stillness,
I ache for a shattering.

Until I am no more.

Now I am no more.

They Told Me Not To

They told me not to say
The fault; It was all mine
They told me not to say
I am okay, its all fine
They told me not to say
The world is wrong from where I stand
They told me not to say
You will never understand 
They told me not to say
Gods don’t walk this heathen earth
They told me not to say
It’s your choice to give a birth
They told me not to say
False truths my eyes can see
They told me not to say
I am thus and this is me
They told me not to say
We are slaves of silver linings 
They told me not to say
Fallen stars don’t go out shinning 
They told me not to say
There is no shepherd for this herd
They told me not to say
The sky don’t feel free for some old bird
They told me not to say
Love is a mirage of a migraine mind  
They told me not to say 
They light the lights to leave me blind
They told me not to say
Life can end between two thoughts 
They told me not to say 
Fate ends with a draw of lots