THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: author

  • The Painted Panther

    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

  • Akin

    Let me go
    And I shall be
    Something akin
    To a memory
    My flesh it burns
    My bones they weigh
    The nights are tough
    And it’s hard these days
    For my soul it wanes
    Like wax neath flame
    And I know the pain
    To always feel the same
    Thus there is no way
    Where I can sow
    A seed of pearl
    For a sea to grow
    So I shall pass
    Through the veil of sand
    Alone with eternity
    Hand in hand…

  • An Answer to the Abyss

    This moment
    It is endless
    There is nothing more to be
    It is the past you predicted
    And future you didn’t see…

  • Nescience

    I wait at the newspaper stand
    Reading, the morning is grey
    Ash tinted
    Like an old man’s asthma

    Buds of people are sprouting
    From windows and eggshell alleyways
    Dressed in yesterday’s dreams
    And tommorow’s promises
    Faces creased, bespectacled
    With white hairs a halo
    From the century long sunlight
    Age ever ached to swallow

    A ballad pours from the the barbershop
    The old stereo is crooning about
    Footsteps falling on azure fields
    And carts on country roads
    I can smell the aftershave
    At once bitter and sweet
    The razor once again vacant
    Without the borrowed heartbeat

    There is a fallacy here
    Between the words and vision
    I read and see
    The stories seem vibrant but life colour-free
    Perhaps it is the weight of being
    That makes it so
    For all of us do wither
    But only some of us grow

    The children have gathered on the footpath
    A bell in some temple tolls
    The priests are praying for bliss
    And in laughter a football rolls
    I watch, I watch
    The world divided in unison
    Each hour be day or night
    Being a part of every season

    So I pay my fair share
    It’s time for me to leave
    And be one amongst the masses
    Who in eternity believe
    Of everyday man and their everyday deeds
    In the cycle of fruit from the flower and flower from the seeds
    If only one would question; Does the roots if ever know?
    Of the world that blooms outside from their breaths buried below

  • 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…

  • Her Fire and Her Flesh

    Her eyes were on the fire
    Her fingers in the dough
    The smoke; it left her breathless
    Like the kerosene she poured into the stove
    The sweat dipped her lashes
    To her tears were all blind
    She was only a shadow on the wall
    Though being a woman one of a kind

    She had trapped Ganges in her hair
    And Pharaohs praised her lotus feet
    Her’s was Mumtaz’s Taj
    And to her belonged the Papal Seat
    But all that was her she had given
    In dowry for her father’s name,
    With the hope she would be treasured
    And not burnt alive for the same

    But soon a time shall come
    When a Sita will not walk
    A false Ordeal of Fire
    So blind people would not talk
    And soon a time shall come
    When a Draupadi will not accept
    The men and their game of dice
    Weighted against her self-respect
    And no longer any Eve shall answer
    For Adam’s own intent
    And let a Mother be always a Martyr
    And Father always a Saint

  • Verbatim

    There is steel in my eyes
    And the world with its tuning fork lies
    Asking me to mourn along
    Knows nothing
    Of that cold, hard touch
    For I am no maker nor master
    But only a thinking man
    One step away from disaster