THE HUMAN ANVIL

Category: verse

  • Rowing Till The Riverbed

    Let me fall now, no
    Let me fade away instead
    I am tired of being ever alone
    Of being always afraid

    I was a fool to grapple with the dark, you know,
    A fool to light my heart on fire
    A fool to eat the wounded ashes
    To taste the honey of that sweet desire

    I was blind with my eyes open
    Blind to the water rising around my waist
    Blind to see that I with my words
    Was no different than the rest

    So here I am now, here,
    A face amongst other faces:
    All fools condemned henceforth
    To die; by hanging on her tresses

    I should have known it, I should have
    For it was no secret after all
    That there was magic in her voice
    And that it was a siren’s call

    It was this damned dream, you see,
    To be together in the end
    So surreal that I forgot
    It was all make-believe, a pretend

    I am going now, I am gone
    There are other lovers in the line
    They ask me if she is a goddess
    And I answer: Yes, if the Devil’s Divine…

  • 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

  • The Silence Along My Spine


    It is a dream I do not remember 
    But remember all the same
    Like those faces I desire 
    Without knowing their name
    As if in the grand scheme of things
    Wherein a million stories unfold 
    I am just a chapter 
    Of a young man who grew old

    These oceans which are open
    These skies which are blind
    These forests which aren’t silent 
    These mountains sans a mind
    Are mine to behold and break
    To bind and to find
    For the similes to be kept never similar 
    And metaphors ever one of a kind

    You can call my claims childish 
    Or let my words make you weep
    When you see the vacuum in my voice
    Hover upon my lower lip
    Where the broken wind balances 
    Those desires and despair 
    And life in its likeliest form 
    Is heartbeat at the end of a hair

    If only I could myself see and show 
    What I have lost in my pursuit to know 
    The allegories of living 
    Without wanting to grow
    Alas, I have my own 
    Reason to bear the blame:
    For to the man who shall leave no footprints 
    The dust is all the same

  • Fault of the Flower

    Would it pain
    She asks
    Knowing all too well that it would
    But I said No
    As if saying thus shall make it so
    And watched
    Drifting in the lap of the night
    Horror’s hand take hold
    And smother
    The last filaments
    Those final particles
    Ruminated remnants
    Hers and my own
    Settle on the dying petals
    Of the flower we painted
    But forgot to plant
    If only we had not been
    Part myopic, part colourblind
    There would have been gardens to tend
    New flowers to sow
    Some fragrance to find