being – Page 3 – THE HUMAN ANVIL

Seismic Soul

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

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 Lost Sense of Bewilderment

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…

Taste of Sunlight

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.

A Line On The Sand

Amidst the dunes of Rajasthan
I breathed as an ocean would;
Endless and eternal

Last of the Living

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

Tag: being

The Serenade Surrendered