Category: verse

  • The Man Asleep


    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…

  • Pillars


    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

  • The Man in the Book

    Sebastián León Prado @Unsplash

    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

  • Short-lived Lotuses

    Forlorn face
    Hollow heart
    Granite grace
    And me
    Together we
    Are falling apart
    Like shadow of the tree
    And though they make a single sound
    All leaves are not the same
    The sky is blue
    But never new
    And memories;
    They have no name

  • The Shadow Of Absent Things


    I can smell the brown sugar
    Melting in my tea pot
    And I am rooted
    Between two oak trees
    Made immovable
    By the stone lips oaring my depths
    Reaching for the sky silhouetted against me
    But the ache of it does not feel like tooth decay
    Nor the pleasure makes me shiver and rain
    Glass beads and spirit of grain
    Into the hands of praying men

    I can feel my skin
    Breathing under your fingernails
    Like snail on a hot tar road
    While your voice in my ear
    Whisper garbage
    Something about me, my hair,
    My face and the rest
    Of me but not about
    As if your eyes are nothing but mirror
    Or old shoes spit polished this morning
    And my heart wanders like flies on foodstuffs
    Unable to digest
    The truth of you touching me
    In and beyond
    Anymore

    Steel on the tip of my tongue
    Marble on the base of my back
    I am pierced and pinned to the pedestal
    A naked butterfly
    At once transparent and tarnished
    Bruised, battered and bludgeoned into being;
    Beautiful sans beauty

    So I stare like a light bulb numb in its holder:
    The roof is blank
    A grey slate
    False sky
    Absent mind
    White chessboard
    And the omniscient blind

  • Vestiges

    Dear,
    I know it is too late to write
    It’s midnight here too, the sun is lying dead at the bottom of the ocean
    With the dry lipstick caps
    You left.
    I rinsed their marks off the sink you know,
    The bold maroon, the autumn orange and the pink of summer blossoms
    I hope you are wearing something else now
    A colour I could never know; otherwise all the bite marks you left
    Like a river of pain
    From the nape of my neck to the small of my back
    Dividing me; amongst myself
    Would be futile.

    See! No you cannot, but I am, seeing
    The stars, do you know they are long gone
    And the light that we are looking at
    Is no more true than those promises we made
    In bed, everyday
    Looking at each other
    Melting under the red haze of love
    Or else I would not be alone
    Straddled between both lampshades
    Stretched midst two lights
    And the same, same darkness
    Shifting me out of sight

    And yet, oh yet I miss
    You with your half asleep smile
    Carefully constructed
    To be dreamlike
    I miss the time when we were us
    Shared shadows in the day
    And in night our silhouettes
    I miss your half baked cake
    And bitter burnt coffee
    With me humming the song
    You love at three; in the morning
    Watching just watching
    Nothing at all
    But the same thing
    Always the same

    There was a time when I used to write for you
    When I should have written about,
    But I was naive; eggshell white,
    A crystal goblet balanced upon the edge of a two-legged table
    Drunk with my own wine
    And I know the fault was mine
    As ever the fault was mine
    Flowers wilted and the fault was mine
    Winter came and the fault was mine
    Nothing remained
    Everything changed
    It began again
    And the fault was mine
    And so I am no more
    Than a corpse carrying out a chore
    Dreaming of a world before
    It broke upon my door
    Oh yes well before
    I even built the door…

  • The Lost Sense of Bewilderment

    Jayson Hinrichsen @ unsplash

    I wonder if life would have been the same
    If I had but a different name
    As common as the monsoon rain
    Somewhere between John and Jane

    I wonder who would have called me close
    Gifted whiskey or a blood red rose
    Shared laughter with a list of woes
    And left me where the west wind blows

    I wonder if I would have been happy more
    Being a seashell on a shallow shore
    Drunk with madness like never before
    Following the echo of my silent roar

    I wonder if I would have lived long
    Sang a chorus in some choir song
    Before in life it all went wrong
    For now I am but not where I belong…

  • Deadbeat

    I beg…
    To differ
    From all those who earn
    At the cost of letting their freedom burn
    Away…

  • The Aroma of Sadness


    I look at the wrong things and cry
    But tears are taboo, aren’t they?
    Like used razors or sandpaper towel
    Or the last page of a living novel
    And yet I do, not because I cannot avert my eyes
    From the still beauty
    Subdued by time
    But that I would witness
    In those aching final ages
    Filled with long and random sunlight
    My disappearance
    Into wet satin
    And gossamer ash
    Of original nothingness

    If fire could speak of pain
    And water too of how it feels to suffocate
    Beneath the weight
    Of drowning men
    They would
    But flesh cannot heal the sky
    Nor blood fill a river dry
    For all thoughtful fantasies are unwritten tragedies
    Beginning at birth
    And only deepening when you die

    So I weep for the ocean of sadness
    Clenched inside my throat
    I pray for the lambs sheltered
    In the veins of my battered boat
    And I yearn to leave the answers
    With my back against the dying day
    To rest amidst the sleeping shepherds
    For I have nothing more to say…

  • Orison

    Image by Bahador @Unsplash

    Life has always been one dream
    Dreamt together by many
    And those Awakened will find
    No single mind
    Keeping count of any blasphemy