There I stood, assembled, In the centre of a blank room: Unadorned and without any orifice, Time for me was a corpse in an ocean, Swollen, floating, rotten, unrecognisable But the salt still stung, As if death had forgotten about the pain of passing.
The silence of the world rested like mist upon my mind, A common sobriquet, I know, but still one of its kind, Oh and the dark took it, and made me one of its own, But I know not textures of such thoughts, This enslavement comes from whispers; Those slow daggers, Aimed at my slower spine.
But I do dream beyond this shackled dream; This walled precipice, I carry out my sentence, In a sense that makes me, my own judge and jury, And weave myths, For those who dip their finger in the wind, To fold the fabric of the world, One corner at a time.
Am I God? The omnipotent earthling of heaven and hell? The omnipresent search of science and eastern religion? The omniscient questioner of Egypt and Israel? No. Perhaps, yes. Perhaps, we all are a perhaps, A song on the shore made from echoes of lost oars, Each of us existing for the existence of other, We each another’s child, We each another’s mother.
Seems I have turned the men themselves into myth, So, another life sentence for me; I never learn, And it is a gift.
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
Shell of a man In Hell, as he can: Only think of the deeds, You did. When he trusted you most, You just played the host, And when the guests were all gone, You left.
It is four in the morning And I am cold in my blanket, With yesterday’s breakfast Still fresh in its mourning. The honey runs warm, But the bread is tough I stoke coals under my coat, And now my flesh says enough I melt, and I merge Am I the candle on the cake? Years have passed unmarked, I worry about the last second before being awake.
This pain wasn’t in my plan, you know, Nobody caters for such cataclysm, The eventual demise, That permanent procrastination In watching star-filled skies Reflecting in the unseeing eyes; the dead light Like diluted dynamite.
Why the world shifts, flutters, ebbs and flood, Why tears are closer to the heart than colour of the blood, I have no answers, just assumptions; Half drawn sketches Plucked from memory In this Gaussian garden Of life’s self-centredness.
Old age It knocked on my door Like neighbour. He had nowhere to go, And I had nowhere to be, So we sat down together; An empty mouth and a bad knee. He spoke of the past, And I smiled at his tone, Mimicking a million voices, To make me forget: I was alone.
Shell of a man In Hell, as he can: Only think of the deeds, You did. When he trusted you most, You just played the host, And when the guests were all gone, You left.
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 found her seashells burning Sand soaked Scented with cardamom They shone; as white stars neath violent waves As fading scars Of a fallen sky
I touched the constellations on her skin Like a morse code of our memories: The soft bed, warm blanket, cold window and quiet tea Mornings melting into afternoons so the nights could be free
But those dreams kept us awake With heartbeats hiding behind the hour hand A little early, a little late Others plans against our fate
And I know my reminiscence Does not remind one of anything In its vague wordings Of my own ossuary But I rather turn back time, than tiptoe, Into the arms of my love And watch our world burn around us So people could find a path To solace To sanity To self
Burning seashells Can fire keep the water alive? Like the past that feeds on and into the future Fostering the festering Those needlework lies That sewed together the sewers of my soul From overflowing into my eyes To break the view, and the vision The same as that of flies
Man overboard There is mermaid on his mind: Holding his private pearl Made of pieces one of a kind, His heart has no anchor But his toes are touching the shore Waiting to become a fin So he does not drown anymore And be one with that blue She promised with her lips Of how ocean would taste sweet In sharing of their sips
03:00 AM …Fragments fill me And I ramble unheard Part-time prophecies Those cancer of choices Growing—like an echo fades Quieter and quieter Thus, that closer to death Fragments—crawling To heal age old wounds Once festered, now turned to fountains But will those ever ebb Once the path has been found To let go, never to return In the tombs underground The question alas, is one of consequence More than the conscience
11:00 AM Most of my mornings Are straight lines drawn one after another An exercise in forgetting myself In the labyrinth of memories Same thoughts, same turns Falling like Tetris Deriving and dissolving My life in daily dogma The dithyramb At once beautiful and grotesque In simplicity and anonymity Of existence
06:00 PM Often I dream of my nakedness Knowing, I am never truly bare For I may close my eyes But my skin stays aware Of other eyes on me Knives that can see Hear and speak Bury and seek Desires and disasters Broken laughter thus cast out in plaster On being a servant with no master But only the sense of subjugation Builds as arthritis in my knees I claim no consensus with my shadow And this ocean has no keys So my fears, they appear Upon waves not truly mine Thus I plead the fifth amendment For forging my own sign
02:59 AM On numb days and sensitive nights The fear of fight and feeling of flight Is what I must wholly wear When I am made to appear For a jagged stone set soft in satin Is as rare as writing latin To make the pieces fall into place And make the mosaic world force a face Something I could draw In my dreams Coloured black Like silent screams Mimicking the wall clock as it kills Every hour as eternity heals So the balance—it never breaks And the circle evens the stakes And the empty is once again made whole New patches for an old, embroidered soul Just like the hour hand, I now see Beginning again at three…
I licked the ink-pot For leftover words— Words whose foeticide haunts me Like laughter At the end of my eulogy
I succumb to the watered down version of myself They watch me— As I haunt fireflies under streetlights: Like a modern mosque, Some cannibalised church A trapped temple Random discourse A faint idea Keeling over the volume of vomit Ready to be regurgitated Like a scripture Of my life
The moon pools like piss Around my ankles As I weep Watching my nightmares Walk the night Whilst I fade— From sky’s painted blue to horizon’s scratched red When I follow The pole star of no path Like a wish Yearning to be granted A Yggdrasil, dying to be planted And then Left alone To be inert At birth
Standing somewhere I apologised to the air- It isn’t fair, I said Half grateful, part afraid Of being proven wrong in my regret— The closest thing to a closeted fate And it’s easier to evaporate In the space between My neck and my pillow And became the indivisible That incalculable afterthought Which succumbs Ever so wilfully To dream’s dying desires- Like a wound Unwilling to heal And able to feel The hurt, all the pain, Driving the flesh slowly insane Inch by inch Till all that remains of one Is a red hand Reaching for the heart
I let my mind unravel Like a knotted string That never went through The eye of the needle My theory for this is that sometimes The affliction comes from affection- Affection for the effects of the affliction As if the race between the tortoise and the hare Was won by the tortoise While never being there At the finish line
And there is much I need to ask From myself before that, But the catapult of questions Can only aim so far So I vie for the fruits Hanging on the lower branches Sweet residues, softer shadows Of a grand world Made of crystals and confetti Confessions and curiosities A woollen world Of shapeless horizons And mirror-tinted sea Made of mythical people For whom the world comes from ‘Me’
I wish to cover the world under the blanket And tell the ghost story Of how it all ended At the very beginning
I dropped a coin in the wishing well But did not wish at all
And so it began The exodus of my existence: At night I painted The black skies On white bed sheets Spilling ink Spilling tar Spilling ashes sent back from war I painted Night after night From dusk till dawn But the stars never showed Neither the moon manifested Nor the auroras appeared The only light I saw Was from the white of my eyes
Rubies line my lips I bury diamond in the dark Deep in my throat Foams a rabid, rabid bark But I do not dare For the censure is too strong Lashes even if you are right Why wonder when you are wrong So I paint And I paint A monk And some saint Both parts of same hypocrisy Part blotch and part a taint
This endless evolution Is just revision of the rot Mirages made images And themes turned to thought For we begin our blasphemies By begging to be left Away from the trials While accepting the act of theft For then the onus lies On those ailing institutions Who accepts blood and bile To darken words of the constitutions Oh how I wither in this weather Where all claim the right to rest Whilst walking naked through the fire Hoping for the best
So, my bed sheet it is dark My bed sheet; it is wet, And my menstruating mind Loves to water hate And grow flowers that are golden And encased in a thousand thorn A beauty to be envied Not to be woven and worn Thus I sleep In the shadows Aware at my loss Dreaming of the silver disc Falling at the toss
I dropped a coin in the wishing well But did not wish at all
The poet in me, wants to write of pain, And the child inside is euphoric At the nigh nakedness At the bare it all bluntness For once, it won’t be alone Like a lotus left In the middle of the forest For once, it would be a dandelion Seeding away the agony In search of answers
Pain, I write, Willing for it to appear To bloom out Like wave, like lava Inescapable, obliterating And free me And my own Christ on the cross; Those wounds on my memory, So that I may get paralysed From the things heretofore unrealised, But all I found Were the dust motes Blowing from my breath
Pain, I thought As I smiled in the dark At the death of my spark In the hollow of my heart Was it empty from the start? It takes all my willpower To ignore the whispers from the wall And breathe in the ground So while floating I do not fall
Nobody knows a poet, you see For he is a never was And thus never will be; A saint, a servant, a shadow of the soul, All but the devil’s advocate And someone who stole Each morsel of truth From those immortal minds Who lived their lives Beyond the hives
Ashes in my ink I am the fire from the far A hope never igniting But guiding like a star An untouched absolution A dye that does not dissolve A rhythm sans rhyme An equation that does not solve But remains like a constant A fulcrum on the edge All the weight of the world Against the end of my page
Breathe baby Nights like tonight (When cold clothes the bones And flesh is just fistful of snow; Numb and delicate) Are rare
The stars wheel Don’t they? Like an umbrella on our head Once I knew Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Ursa Major But now when I look up The stars tremble Beneath the tears upon the rim of my eyes Dear lord, am I drowning? While reaching for the sky beneath my feet Like ink in water
A long while ago Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry that I could not travel both I turned back Away from the scintillating offerings From oft repeated quotes And ever appearing jargon I turned back from literature From Shakespeare’s sweet sonnets From Orwell’s orphic auguries From the cold contours of Plato’s caves From the new nothingness of Nietzsche I turned back To the primitive mind of mirages Of breathing seas And singing trees But if I were to begin my philosophy It would end with this sentence; The whole world is a theory Words using words to make sense of the words So I write with chalk on the paper And with pen on the blackboard To see if the meaning Is lost in the act of asking (It is)
So, breathe baby Nights like tonight (When the cold clothes the bones And flesh is just fistful of snow; Numb and delicate) Are rare And in the end here I have No melancholy to spare
