It is the morning after And I awake as an origami undone Only yesterday I had her arm on my chest With mine anchored round her waist Balancing our seesaw soul Making whole Those pieces we planted Like bookmarks to find The stories we memorised Keeping in mind Going almost insane Being blinded by pain Once kayaking in chaos To feel alive again
Now I watch my face shiver In the ether of her eyes Now I am fire cold with fever Falling on the rise She is here She is mine She has no say to say Far near Dear divine So I kneel but not to pray Now I watch her face shiver In the ether of my eyes Now I am fire with her fever She is falling when I rise
But I dare not confess that I dreamt of her In the early hours of last night For that would be blasphemy My being alone With only her memory Drenched monochromes Some charcoal art Of me painting her toenails pink And she murmuring shape of my heart Waiting for the words to sink
For her voice is my hymn in exile And here I wander, mile by mile A broken kite Dead dynamite Waiting for her mirage to draw me closer Towards sun kissed horizons Across daydreaming dunes And purple fields Of my pulsing past Through this desert vast, desolate and slow I search for her As the seconds grow
I can see her white hands over black countertop Passing pepper into the pot Waiting for me to finish my worship of her Waiting for me to open the refrigerator And take half a dozen eggs to scramble To toss and turn The yolk and white In the shade of the dim light Wafting from her seashell skin With wafer thin petrichor Of our last night’s rain (Did I drown in her hair? Did my gasps made her growl? Did we swim in stolen silence? Did our motions knew our goal? To be, to be Half mad in ecstasy The sea falling apart At the lips of an estuary)
The dress does to her What dust does to a diamond But she knows it not Even when I beg; a child in disguise To breathe over her facets Between her navel and her thighs But she laughs and she turns Like flower between ferns She waxes into full moon And I am a candle that ever burns To ignite at her sight To surrender without a fight To be answer to her questions Which were never answered right
And the world It is falling And there are no secrets Left to share I am found Someone’s calling And all I need is To be there So it’s a goodbye Everyone And I shall see you When the summer’s sun Is finally won
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
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…
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
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…
Last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire And the blunt desire To bruise And break These filial bonds Of flesh and bones Rose, untainted Like waves on sea Like a dream disguised as a memory
I was sleeping Under the cold warmth Of the ash blanket Till people appeared By my bedside Beings sulphurous Silhouettes of silver smoke Which spoke: ‘Come to us You child of gravity There is a world beyond the world Shaped by chaos and clarity A latticework of lyrics A synagogue sans any saint A cosmos acclaimed by cynics A painting without the paint’ And I alive in tenuous thoughts Of nevermore and forever Could only see and be A shadow of a reflection Unborn thus free And so those excelsior people With ghost hands bore me away Astride the light they had saved Back from their leftover days
What I saw thence I cannot say There is nothing to remember Between the first dawn of January And the last night of December But there are those half dreamt moments When I seem to know The truth breathed upon me: That Soul is what the light don’t show
But last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire…
