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

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

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

The Men Behind Monuments

Image by Jiyad Nassar @unsplash


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

Remains of the Rain

Image by Mehrsad Rajabi@unsplash


I saw my children standing in the rain
Their faces lined with age and late reason
Watched the abandoned bicycles
And broken seesaws
Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops
Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind
Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old
Seemed painted
In the moist color of quiet
The abandoned delight
Having dissolved
In the lament of the rain
They turn; the motion a sad song
An unfinished lullaby
To look at me with eyes
Half awake but never asleep
As if I with my window earned wisdom
Would know
Why all things grow
Only to die
If life in the very virtue of living
Is a lie
But they know the answer
As well as me
It is better to forget than to believe what we see
In the everyday aftermath
Of the daily demise
Of choices left to chances
And promises made before goodbyes
For in the end all paths
Shall return where they began
Even the oceans with all their eternity
Are but remains of the rain…

The Painted Panther

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