In this sudden stillness A final silence grows From beneath the dead branches Enveloping ants and Angels alike
The dry mist of purpose That once haunted men Now haunts their monuments The mindless mortar Made and remade For each thought And every contour Which seeks in itself The forever form That everlasting aspiration Of becoming a being
But the Promethean promises Are but promises Just as the silhouette stems from the shape So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette Like a circle trapped Within its own circumference Sans a seen beginning Sans any unseen end
There is a witness For every arrival Till no one arrives anymore And then the fishes are left alone in the desert To drown in the mirage of memories The breathing carcass Reminiscent of living In an abandoned womb Never to awake Never to walk Like ages unspent Upon the faces of the rock
Last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire And the blunt desire To bruise And break These filial bonds Of flesh and bones Rose, untainted Like waves on sea Like a dream disguised as a memory
I was sleeping Under the cold warmth Of the ash blanket Till people appeared By my bedside Beings sulphurous Silhouettes of silver smoke Which spoke: ‘Come to us You child of gravity There is a world beyond the world Shaped by chaos and clarity A latticework of lyrics A synagogue sans any saint A cosmos acclaimed by cynics A painting without the paint’ And I alive in tenuous thoughts Of nevermore and forever Could only see and be A shadow of a reflection Unborn thus free And so those excelsior people With ghost hands bore me away Astride the light they had saved Back from their leftover days
What I saw thence I cannot say There is nothing to remember Between the first dawn of January And the last night of December But there are those half dreamt moments When I seem to know The truth breathed upon me: That Soul is what the light don’t show
But last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire…
She was a painted panther Black skin and velvet dye Her eyes had all the answers But her lips knew when to lie Her home was a silver wasteland A piece of moon was her throne at night She spoke only in shadows And heard only the sound of light Her shape was god and movement And her name was without a face People worshipped her from far Like a pilgrim without a place And before long we all will be dreaming Her dreams on the final bed Where all eyes turn inward ever after And no more any word is said Because she was a painted panther Black skin and velvet dye Her eyes had all the answers But her lips knew when to lie
What heaven and earth shall answer me What fire and brimstone shall answer me What thunder and tempest shall answer me When all I ask in a whisper Is the source of their silence
Naked pictures painted on the world map, a global ache this systematic subjugation, arraigned with signatures and rubber stamps and blue and black ink with red smeared hands from…
Ants committing suicide for sugar cubes, mountains sundered for a grain of sand, weighing a ton by common belief of a wishful world running in a race without an end around a toilet flush I hear music in the smoking firmament, the guttural snort and fart of the engine like Mozart’s Requiem for Modern Times; graveyards filled with scraps, dusty medals pinned upon pigeon chests, chest with springs and cogs inside, all mechanisms of a meager mind,
Breathed upon by gunpowder gods never crucified, but kept alive, unchained unlike Prometheus or castrated unlike Cronus, with 9mm eyes watching over the supposed universe, Lives televised, a miniscule mime renting life per hour, human carcass threaded, talking puppets mimicking everyday shambles with double exclamation and undying opinions; graffiti upon bathroom walls, the enlightenment of our age; our Bible, our Koran, our Commandments, our Veda,
An ocean of umbilical madness, Medusas of mind, writhing in the depths of drowned time, left helpless at the bottom, garbage cans, lobster traps, Ahab’s ambition, little mermaid’s fin, all part of the abyss, woven tales of Atlantis
Beggars upon sidewalk, watching the neon lights blink at the mannequins dressed and fed better than them, breathing in glass case while the Caesar supine on steps as flat piece of bread looks on: Et tu, Et tu, until a coin clatters in the bowl and Rome falls, democracy dissolved under the acid rain of paint thinner,
Red sky running, blind horse racing against the rider till the tollbooth where hands on hips the old man walks the zebra crossing, unmindful of the airplanes lined at the red light, waiting one and all to fly away, without passengers or Blackbox, to a land where runways end
Phantoms fasting upon a fingernail, the sound of anarchy, electric guitar with strings of lightning, rainbow flooding the floor, and the people waving, a mingled marsh undecipherable, a canvas coated with paint, avant-garde asylum overflowing with stone heads
Rows of velvet cushion upon glass, red carpet laid upon mud, hyenas laughing in the hallway in high heels and mothball tuxedos from pawn shop, faceless fornication behind the screen, lips locked together in war, breathes dying with alcohol,
And outside the Ghost of Christmas Past selling mint in the rain, poets pass him and politicians, all made of papers full of question marks and Venn diagram that depicts everything said and done, the saying it has the bigger circle and the deeds it had none,
The Van Gogh World waking, rivers of gas flowing under matchstick houses waiting for madmen, toothpick buildings dancing for children playing whack-a-mole, Las Vegas without lights like teeth of a key; all cards of the fleeting reality playing pinochle with constant uncertainty,
Dismal days these, age of enlightenment, recoilless Renaissance, people paying people to understand people paying people, round around the circumference of Drachma with Copernicus we fly, we fly, taking one day kryptonian crash course, and pretend to die with cries towards the sky; O father thou art in heaven, look down now and weep, for seven days you worked, and on the eighth it all went to dust, you knew it and yet you left it so, now weeds gather in your garden, and even Lucifer stays away and pray free from this drama; Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama
To speak Without being heard With words like wind Asleep in windchimes, To be far away, breathing in a distant past dyed sepia and smelling of crushed leaves: The aroma of time dried through the ages, To taste a fruit away from the tongue And let it linger in a seedless ecstasy On each pair of lips In every burnished breath between the lungs To weave sunlight In the skin of dewdrops And bare a rainbow upon the floor Brought home to a full circle To smile at the madness of it all And mean it in the mirror of mind Grassroots enveloping Memories I cannot find Now leads me to believe That life with all its thorns and petals Is more in the act of living Than waiting for it to settle
Life, look out This man asleep Is walking a dream His pulse, afraid of inimical things, dance At the incoherent din of the cattle bell, For he knows only the time of tommorow Prophesied by blind sages Sages left by the world to marinate in old age And he carries it; the cattle bell, it’s dead weight, it’s rue weight, like a talisman Through the thick fog of promises To the other side, where the light, yet unseen, seems to shine differently For the sages who have looked on the winter From far, would know something of the snow Or so he hoped, with his face coddled within the blinkers And crowned with a horseshoe
Life, look out The man asleep Knows not that he is sleeping And so as waves he worship the shore Unaware that he stands with men Too afraid to blink at the sea And soon he too would be watching the waters Shiver with each breath of the seagull Till his own wings wither and rot away Leaving him; this epileptic Icarus A common man among the common men Left to watch each sunrise And every sunset From the shade of a dry sacamore The hinterland of heart That burned in winter Knows both fire and ice is the same; Perhaps, in the slow dance of the dying fire He seeks the heat some more Perhaps, his dreams are dreams of a dream He dreamt he has dreamt before…
I have seen Heroes Shinning alone on the battlefield Sword bare in bloodied hands Hiding tears behind their shield And the poets who wrote of courage Knew not from those sunlit tower That all wars are fought by them Who has no ounce of power
I have seen Teachers Cradling books in their velvet hand Certain of the wisdom beneath the words That the world fails to withstand And the pupils who stay blind And believe in it all Are kept to learn the truth Nailed as paintings upon the wall
I have seen Kings Holding heaven in their earthly palms Dive deep in the selfish seas And make fist while breathing alms And the people who praise the lord For the health of the dear monarch Knows not that the hand which feeds Is the one that lays the nark
I have seen Saints Swimming in the grey, tepid pool alone And where hundreds had fallen The saints could never drown A miracle that belonged to them Not by the blessings of the Throne But because of the fact that the misery Was not of their own
Some day I want to be The man in the book Who knew what he wanted And loved what he took With no one to question And no answer to give With no thoughts on living And only to live Some day I want to be The man in the book
