THE HUMAN ANVIL

Category: prose

  • Intentions

    Will my silence be enough
    To let you know I am no more
    Will you shake your head and smile
    And be as you were before
    Will it be my laughter that you remember
    Decades later on a summer noon
    Will you ask why I never came back
    Or lament why I returned so soon
    Will my face be what you seek
    When thinking of things past
    Will you forget the first day we met
    Was the day that we met last
    Will these hands that once were mine
    Remain forever alone in memory
    Will you extend yours just to share
    Their shadow so I could be We
    Will my words ever be able to describe
    This ache that now I feel
    Will you break my heart each time
    You want your own to heal…

  • Maiden

    Camouflaged in the night
    Like outline of shredded trees
    I walked beyond the cliff with caterpillar footsteps
    Where Four Horses of Wind
    Stood grazing in the grove
    While the maiden with reins
    Having fallen in love
    With my absence, now looking up
    Laughed; the sound like hooves running in her throat,
    So I sat there in the center of the dying daffodils,
    On the eve; as rootless and trodden as any
    And listened to what the world has to say
    But sadly there were far too many;
    People talking about themselves, like children running circles around pillars asking: Why do silent halls echo? And closed eyes cannot see?
    As if I am a mirror to be mastered by their practiced soliloquy:
    No more, no more, my hollow mind; no more,
    For I weep for the thistle town burning by the shore
    Black windows watching the white horizon
    Coming closer for an embrace
    When the sun is cold in the night
    While the sea shapes the souls of sand
    The maiden sits beside me
    And whisper
    That the stars are dust from her hand
    O I see now, I see
    Myself on a mountain lying
    Alone upon the apogee
    To fall asleep with the sky
    As a pillow beneath my neck
    And the ocean extending her arms
    For me to quietly take
    Before I go, before I am gone
    With the maiden of the night
    Before I know that the colours of rainbow
    Are seven sins of white…

  • Stake


    Come here
    Little birds
    On my old broken branch
    For its your weight that shall hold me
    More than my roots

  • Pigments of Pain

    I listen to the clatter
    Rolling coins
    Gasping through cracks
    Of fractured philosophy
    In this modern world writ with
    Make believe merchandise
    Life lived through litmus paper
    Chemical imbalance
    Anarchy in equation
    Feather dust in vacuum weighing same as the sun
    Candles upon cake, wax trees,
    Forest of flames, ages incinerate:
    Gullible times, marzipan issues souring into
    Phrases describing sunlight through trees unlike sunlight through trees
    Anything but the obvious, the immutable
    Sieved eyes and beetle brain
    Taking over photosynthesis
    Bottled chimera, disco dreams
    Autumn in lungs
    Coughing art; blood on canvas, dotted design
    Cerise constellation simplified by
    Binary prophets
    Dripping tap, blocked sink, dim streetlight, ivy on the roof, dust on the doormat, average grades, loose socks, society on chemo, Syrian seizures, Africa and Ebola, avalanche on Everest,
    Anthill, beehive, New York, Mumbai
    Sunrise at six, Sunset at seven
    Coconuts, candles and carpets for heaven
    Rubber tires on tarmac
    Plastic skin
    LED hearts
    Tears on screen
    Protein pronouns, varicose verbs
    Multinational menagerie of Lego world
    Digitally distilled with castrated cause
    Packeted products: for all flaws
    Barcoded breaths
    Beginners beware
    This land of the dead is alive on prayer.

  • Flowers Don’t Sing


    I know you don’t have to listen
    To all that I have to say
    And to be true I am just talking
    To myself everyday
    It’s sad, I know:
    To see myself smile
    And even the reflection
    To return it
    Only once in a while…

  • Synthetic Symphonies


    I closed my eyes and waited
    For my heart to retain its beat
    And all I heard were it’s broken pieces
    Saying: This. Is. It.

  • Anatomy of an Answer

    The sound of your senses
    Breaks over me
    And I drink your waterfall words
    With it’s torrent of charcoal images
    To the last drop
    So others may never know
    How you, of cinnamon soul, sell poisoned dreams
    Manicured with epidermal perfection
    The rag doll fantasy
    Of jazz love
    To strangers in quiet bars;
    Those people unaware of the everyday almanac
    The self-help lies written on bruised pages
    By every Adonis who felt
    Being closer to you
    Would suffice

    But I watch as you walk on water
    Just so to show you can
    And laugh
    At all those speechless spectators
    Now followers of your riptide wisdom
    Pledged to play their heartstrings
    So you may dance upon their demise
    Dressed in funeral face
    And be beautiful
    Like a child on Christmas
    Suffocating
    With joy

    The wind it whistles
    Swallows and sells
    Your perfume; twigs of spring broken underfoot
    Ashes in the air; this midnight snow,
    And still figures, lifeless statues, staring in envy at
    The echo of our footsteps
    We walk, in discord, my toe timed to your heel
    Crude judgement
    Capricious
    To mock the pedestal born
    So frozen in time that a grey hair
    Succumbs only once in a millennia

    You see, I see
    The lights red and yellow
    Bleeding fireflies
    Resting upon rooftops
    In mechanical merriment
    Happy at the thought of being happy
    And you now know you cannot see more than you know
    And thus you cry
    At the anomaly of your eye
    And I do not have a handkerchief
    To spare
    For I care no more of your other face
    Or the one within
    That exists only to dream
    The desires
    So I leave you at the crossroads
    Knowing sooner or later
    An Adonis shall pass
    Dressed in angel dust
    God forbidden

  • Her Other Half

    We talk like strangers
    Unwilling to laugh
    Unable to cry
    Like two shells remembering
    The sound of a sea
    Buried deep
    Somewhere
    In fissures of our bone…
    Yours too my love?
    Or of mine alone?

    I was wrong to dream, wasn’t I?
    Wrong to feel
    Wrong to hope
    A fool who thought her happiness starts
    At the end of his joke
    O Pagliacci, Pagliacci
    Thou story of my life
    Why didn’t you laugh and say:
    It’s the heart which pierced the knife

    Bye now, it’s late
    And I have old wounds to tear
    Like promises to make love
    Or I wish you were here
    The night is still young
    Do not waste it on me
    You had my life once
    But you never stopped to see

  • A Lifetime


    If all the nights
    And all the days
    Of my life
    Condense
    In one epiphany without end
    Then friend hear well
    That the clock, when it strikes midnight,
    Will not be pointing at twelve

  • Some Lotus Are All Roses

    I have spent half my life
    Looking how I was wanted to be seen
    Powdered to the tip of my nose
    Accurately thin
    With anklets on my feet
    That laughed alone in night
    And a locket round my neck
    Buried out of sight
    I had flowers on my frocks
    When I was a lotus bud soft pink
    And roses in my hair locks
    When I was allowed to think
    As if my beauty was just a face
    Without a wish or voice
    As if being born the way I was
    Had something to do with choice
    If only I could have told them then
    The thoughts I had in my mind
    Of my mantelpiece existence
    Of being beautiful but kept blind
    Alone as my own mirror
    Echoing solitude
    Days spent dressed for the world to wonder
    And nights being ashamed to be nude