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
I wore a blanket for a cape For only in dreams I can escape The mortal wounds So lovingly applied As an afterthought of ache
Oft nights when the world Is turning inside out Being snowflake proud of rainbow vomit and papier-mâché pyramids Growing in a mindless ocean of silver sweat I sit as stillness amidst the walls Like a spineless spider flat and small Aping what I think Is the rhythm I cannot find Do I mind? Do I mind? Stars falling like dandruff on blank shoulder of the night Do I mind? Do I mind? Knowing my common mind preaches that I am one of a kind
The cactus upon the windowsil Looks down on the street and see Other trees meditating Like monks on a subway free Half dead and half high Having two views of one life An ever burning driftwood Entombed in blue ice I am that monk That beggar with bright face Having known no sunshine, I shine Having known no misery, I make mine From the refrigerated leftover of a burnt down town Crying over T-shirts and Blazers, Tank tops and gown
The world with its thorned tendrils and tremors of love The world with its crow’s claws and feathers of a dove Knows the weight and cost of a coin unspent For this life; a tragedy, for this life; a parody Is best lived,unmeasured and as if each day is on rent
I have seen geisha queens Dance on aspen nights Play with children made of fire And love men afraid of light I have known threadbare hearts Bare it all upon the floor And yet be trodden upon Like a foot mat at the door And so much more, so much more I have seen and chosen to ignore The what if and why not The why now and not before So much more, so much more, now no more anymore
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
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
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…
My bed is in the corner Of an empty room The irony is self imposed But not without reason I have heard that darkness Gathers more in the deep And perhaps it shall help me sleep Faster than dying by lying wide awake Counting seconds, falling and rising With time’s unreceding tide.
The curtain hanging by my bedside Often flutters in the night And it’s breath though purposeless Fills me with envy By it’s act of pure motion Sans a shred of emotion How can I be more than me When everything I seek I deny to see?
Dreams; they die, my own are no exception Even when I have them Caged behind a glass case Cuddled in red velvet Caressed by Mozart’s Sonatas The flowers shall wilt, roots die and fruits decay Nature by nature of unrequitance Shall swallow none but one’s own For birds do not nest on trees unsown And those that I watch from the moonlit window They shimmer and shine Like gold and wine Broken; yes and crooked and white But they know unlike me the taste of sunlight.
Death, do not cry I know; you are no one’s friend But that does not make you; a foe Like all who have been and are being swept away Like a clove leaf upon a current You too are destined by design To sow and grow; sorrow That abandoned thistle tree Which all passes and pretends not to see
Death, do not cry When your choices go wrong There are so many voices asking To add another verse to their swan song But you know as do I That music is sweet only for so long And it starts with no cymbals and shall end with no gong
Death, do not cry People do care about you a lot You may not always be the fountainhead But you are almost always an afterthought And we may not think of you as we breathe Or when we play the games of Holy Land But we do rehearse our union every night Though not all of us understand
Death, do not cry We shall meet for once and forever But before that I must ask an honest, humble favor: Of all the places for us to meet And greet, if you could visit me when I am fast asleep Then there shall be nothing for me to weep As I skip; the curtain call of my every emotion And be like a nameless raindrop falling into an aimless ocean
I can hear the roots tear Across the breast of resting soil Like blind fingers, stretching the Depths of darkness, Those long forgotten by time For the hours; they fly only above the ground The black womb is all silence And frozen thoughts: Except those murmurs of memories Left by faded footsteps And shadows parched under the sun Of people who could not turn, away. I hear them too, their thoughts, In the leaves yawning with the wind And fruits falling with the same It’s bittersweet syrup; tears and sweat of toil gone unremembered A destiny dismembered Like roots they yearn no reason Nor do they desire The crystal sunlight reserved for carving men All that is needed for the flower to bloom And the fruit to bubble without bursting Is this truth soaked with pain That they stand alive and upright On the shoulders of hanging men
I have danced Many a dances Without a song in my mind And I saw many a chances Yet pretended to be blind There were reasons For these decisions But those reasons were not mine I was a stone, sought for statues But born on an incline And so I fell down the narrow Walls, without a ledge Trapped between tombstones Out of time, for an age And now I await in the dungeons With my heart on the ground In search of an echo That can be heard without a sound
