THE HUMAN ANVIL

Category: woman

  • Diaspora

    I have seen the diaspora,
    Seen it’s bulbous head set against Saturn’s sky,
    Felt it’s pulse,
    Dreaming of chalk and charcoal,
    Seen it’s veins, deeper nerves,
    Coursing through promises
    Like an undulating snake.

    Men revise,
    Their adolescent mournings, teenage dreams made of,
    Pink flesh laid to rest,
    Against the grain of this world.
    A world long forgotten by the habit of forgetting,
    The shell of mirror,
    Slow as sinking stone,
    For lives lived, living,
    With unpolluted prose,
    Precise, pragmatic.

    I have seen the diaspora,
    The laughter of death,
    That parallel passage,
    Guided by fate.

    The fault never lied with dark,
    To light must fall the blame,
    For showing that of all,
    None are truly the same.

    Half the pleasure,
    Lies in having nothing,
    And losing it all.

    Here in shaped stillness,
    I ache for a shattering.

    Until I am no more.

    Now I am no more.

  • Parts of a Promise

    Image by Jasmin Chew @unsplash

    If my face now makes you weep
    Let my voice then put you to sleep
    So tomorrow when you awake
    Like a flower on someone’s grave
    Know there lies underneath
    He who asked you once to save

  • Gratitude

    When the world you built,
    Now loves you less,
    Its time to awake,
    Another place.

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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