Psk

Tag: divine

  • The Nectar Of Her Neck

                       I

    The tip of the grass was yellow
    The root of the grass was green
    They waved at me like water in winter
    And I waved back just glad at being seen
    The words rolled back
    Dyeing my tongue
    Like a dry river

    Rocks and pebbles
    Fishbones and silt
    Traced my thorax
    Grinding my guilt
    So I could swallow and wallow 
    The echo of oars
    Belonging to those ancient mariners before me
    Who sought loneliness 
    And found it
    One step before horizon 


                    II


    In my dream
    I pool out from the fissure of earth
    After a midlife rebirth
    Gleaming, polished, welted and wet
    Watching the woman holding my fate
    Nestled like a flower
    Asleep in my rubicon arms
    Dreaming of fragrance 
    At once tender and torn;
    Oh to be born beautiful 
    And in all beauties, a unicorn,
    In my mythical ache
    I keep this universe at stake
    For it’s brutal to awake
    When I am so brittle to break.                            

    It is night
    But the dark shines
    A soft black
    Such perceptible blindness 
    Such untouchable familiarity 
    Should I succumb to the magic touch?
    Drawn like a dying man to the nectar of her neck 
    Should I summarise eons of my afterthoughts in an afternoon with her?
    And let her reciprocate the same
    On a kohl claimed evening 
    So my ashtray mind
    Can drift 
    And ignite 
    My field of dreams 
    A purple blue;
    That colour of a newfound forgetfulness 
    Unnoticed to the irises of her eyes.

    I dim and she shimmers
    As we dance in the glass case
    She; of velvet toes
    And I; of rubber gloves 
    With her hand in my hand
    Like time through sand
    Passing, and staying
    This melting portrait 
    Of our memories 
    And I am aware, suddenly,
    At the soft sweetness of everything 
    That percolates into the inchoate perfection 
    Wavering and waiting to crystallise in our kiss;
    I lean in
    And the world holds still
    Till another breath finds me
    And it feels what I feel












  • The Dying Dandelions


    I have never spoken of it. 
    The secret, although not shameful on its own, makes me feel ashamed. 
    It’s like being able to see among a group of blind people. 
    You want to describe the beauty of the world or dissect the violence of a man’s motion, to complete the cracks of a woman’s expression but you can’t: without feeling acutely guilty. 
    So, here I speak of it—

    I preyed on promises 
    Like a thoughtful vulture 
    Of culture and cheap compromise 
    For facade of feeling was important 
    To alter the illusion
    That gift-wrapped horrors
    Are comedy of errors
    A reality divided 
    By the cause and the causality:
    For a broken man
    Does not bleed in the mirror 

    (Perhaps heaven is a heart 
    That is heavier to hold)

    I know my poem feels like practice 
    A frozen hand 
    Combing through rough edges of life
    To even out the answers
    So music may appear
    Vibrating crystal clear
    A tear tainted with tear
    Like lyrics of King Lear
    Alas, this exercise 
    Is not to exorcise any answer 
    But to await and witness
    The silent decay
    Of solitude 

    (For has any mind every mastered
    The art of interrupting its own soliloquy?)

    I thread my threshold;
    Some common words are never welcome,
    Words that suture out from chafed lips
    Carried over as gangrene
    For whom mind’s a myth
    And memory a mind
    Words that evolve as themselves 
    Over and over
    A curated cancer called as a cure
    The next iteration
    The final step
    On life’s drowning ladder

    (Do they know that the ocean
    Is deeper at the top?)

    Beyond the compass needle
    I discover a horizon
    Painted in haste
    Made of waste paper 
    And a pulverised sun
    It stretches-this myriad moment 
    This suspended time
    This grotesque mask of shattering beauty
    Like a dragon’s yawn
    And near her maw
    I dance: daring death to dandelions 
    Till the fire came
    Like algebra on music-sheet
    Unreadable
    Exquisite 
    And I was reborn
    A particle
    Singular 
    Similar
    A sinner

    (I summarise in theory
    That a poem knows more of the poetry
    Than a poet does)






  • Lazarus

    The hall was open
    Well lit by the intruding sky
    Peeping from the roof
    Like dry tongue behind a lie

    I remember being here
    Since forever was yesterday 

    My heartbeats echoed when my footsteps went quiet
    And the walls watched
    When I shifted the silence
    Like a decade old calendar
    (Tick Tock but it’s not a clock)
    For I heard that death in the desert
    Comes from weight of the ship

    Ah, these dark thoughts
    Burnt cognac on charred cinnamon
    Keeps me awake 
    For these festive ashes 
    Are kohl for my eyelashes 

    The piano plays
    Her faded ebony and darkened ivory 
    But the tune is not twofold 
    It is syrup in syringe 
    It is grease on my hinge
    Making me murmur and mould my moves
    To her jazz and her blues
    Till I saw light in the dark
    Her flesh flint and my soul spark
    Oh, and did I burn from her breath
    Do I roam now as wraith
    In this hall that stands stilled
    By my heart that was sealed
    When she held me and said:
    I am naked and you are afraid
    But dare not clothe me
    For my love, I am sea
    I have whispered those words
    Which for even memory weren’t free

    I remember being here
    Since forever was yesterday



  • The Ghost Of Your Breasts


    My past now grows impatient 
    Under its tortoise shell
    Eons passed and I have moved
    Only a fingernail 
    Closer to you

    Much of my music is lost 
    Listening to the wall clock 
    Counting, sixty seconds and a minute 
    Sixty minutes and an hour
    Twelve hours, twice over,
    Again and again
    Through wind, winter and rain
    This dilemma, delusion and pain
    Of having met you
    And loved you for a millennia 
    But having no permanent memory 
    No cup of your captured laughter
    No mirror of your misty eyes
    No sunlight captured by your tresses
    No sweet scent of your sighs
    All I am left with, are yellow pieces of fractured time
    And a heart that mostly murmurs 
    For all truths out aloud are lies

    The blanket we wear
    Smells like Sunday morning 
    A waking warmth 
    Of hay and honeysuckle 
    And a quiet happiness 
    Equally sad and empty
    So we hold each other
    From falling apart
    From drifting into different dreamlands
    Where one of us ends and the other starts

    I watch as you breathe in
    Life, my life 
    For I am haunted
    By the ghost of your breasts
    Buried and hidden
    A catacomb of our heartbeats 
    Growing restless
    Like a river ever running
    But never reaching
    The estuary of my arms

    You see
    I am obsessed 
    With the idea of your existence 
    Insanely infatuated 
    So unequivocally infantile 
    To see your warm womb
    As the walls of my tomb 
    And the pulse of your veins
    Like all the seasons I have ever seen

    I know, I know
    I am mad to my bones
    But my death is being alone
    Without your hand in my own
    So, I place myself in your hand like a petal
    You drop me
    I am cold
    I am hard
    I am metal
    With nothing more to see
    And nothing more to be
    With nothing to call mine
    And nothing is for free

  • To Blush Or To Bruise

    Blue lines on my face
    Teardrops on my dress
    She said, she said
    There is no one at my place 
    But he wasn’t standing far
    The man in violent garb
    Pining compliments 
    Like flowers on the barb

    His brutal hands were red
    From all life, playing dead
    And like a rose to the cactus 
    She wed, she wed
    Merry was the man
    Like cherry blossomed lies
    The kiss was murder weapon
    Aided by garter and bow ties 

    And so years were spent
    Part in bruises, part as prize
    With smoke in the lungs
    With mirror in the eyes 
    While the violent man he waltzed
    Alone on the floor
    With a corpse in his arms
    To a music playing no more


  • Origami

    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

  • Razzmatazz

    Dry twigs wrestle the wind 
    Shadows burn on the ground 
    Here I stand in the center 
    And the world turns around 
    With yellow leaves laughing 
    White sand dyed brown
    In Nameless nothingness 
    I named a pronoun 
    All of me
    All of me
    At the bottom of this sea
    Sand dunes shrunk to seashell 
    Like past framed into memory 

    I watch dazed morning 
    Walk drunk upon the shore
    Where my footsteps on the sand 
    Leave footprints no more
    As if all of my life 
    Was a mirage from the start
    A mirror holding together 
    A man falling apart 

    All of me
    All of me
    At the bottom of this sea
    In the sky a sun wrinkled
    And stars breaking free
    Am I drowning 
    Am I drowning 
    Should I breathe this darkness and lay
    As a dead man in a dying womb being fed everyday 
    The same old desires 
    The same old silver songs 
    The same old praise and promises
    That nothing would go wrong

    And only if only
    I could no longer be here
    Be a past that never happened 
    And a future always near
    But never coming together 
    With the rhythm of our heart
    An end that is unending 
    A beginning that never did start
    You and me, you and me
    The Sand and the sea
    Away forever 
    Our little infinity 

    The edges of the world 
    Like pages from a play
    A Recurring razzmatazz 
    Occurring everyday 
    The blue’s beats
    Jarring jazz
    And ballads on the way 
    Razzmatazz, razzmatazz 
    As Liquored lovers say
    “You be thought and I the mind 
    To reminisce and remind
    That love is not litmus
    To be tested everyday 
    Let it flower, let it grow
    Be careful what you sow
    For the soil takes it all
    Your flight and your fall
    And it’s the way of the crowd
    To take as truth what is loud 
    While our love is all silence 
    Strong sans the violence 
    So take care of the petals 
    They are flesh and not metal
    And do not look for reflection 
    Till the water; it has settled”

    Dry twigs wrestle the wind 
    Shadows burn on the ground 
    Here I stand at the edge 
    And the world is not round 
    Black leaves moan 
    Under heels; trodden down
    In Nameless nothingness 
    I named a pronoun 
    All of me
    All of me
    At the bottom of this sea
    Falling nowhere
    With two skies above me 
    All of me
    All of me
    At the bottom of this sea
    Fading in the distance
    Once man now memory

  • 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…

  • The Lost Sense of Bewilderment

    Jayson Hinrichsen @ unsplash

    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…

  • Orison

    Image by Bahador @Unsplash

    Life has always been one dream
    Dreamt together by many
    And those Awakened will find
    No single mind
    Keeping count of any blasphemy