THE HUMAN ANVIL

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

  • The Other Side of A Window


    I searched for a word
    To help me answer; Who am I?
    But all I found was the sound
    Of seconds ticking by….

  • 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.









  • Immolate


    I hold myself
    Where it hurts me more;
    I prefer the pain of now
    To the pain before...

  • 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

  • Gratitude

    When the world you built,
    Now loves you less,
    Its time to awake,
    Another place.