Every poet wants to be painter And every painter a poet It is the faint mist Between words and things visible Where great minds Are led astray, You can say From the paper bouquet of your everyday life From the half chewed pencil of your clerical nights; That I with my bedroom lights Turned off Am turned on By the slow shape And soft luminescence of the moon But that would be, probably A crescent quote; Lying halfway between truth and lie And even though it may soothe The immediate argument Like bolt of the door Thoughts would come knocking One midnight at a time Till madness makes me forget my heartbeat And remember only the soft taps The gentle creaks Of those faint footsteps Approaching Dim lit corridors of my conscience Asking to be heard To be understood But in my fragmented prophecies; At the altar of my falsehood I am an orphan Asked to adopt my parents And I am in a mood to err To give over to the permanent suffocation Of savoury sadness That comes from cold hugs In a stuffed room Filled with trophies and dolls Framed history on the walls And the pitter patter of acid rain On the window at dinner time For the cusp of my boyhood Was never crossed by me It appears I shed My skin on the bed And awoke An old man With childish desires Of milk and marmalade At the corner of my lips And though it is said That I have grown and growing Into a man the world can count upon I hardly know the numbers To make it count The stillness of my dreams Is a motion sickness; And I am diving against the gravity Unable to comprehend Home from horizon While the pivot of my existence Is a spinning top Balanced upon a raindrop Being painted by a poet Who writes for his pain to stop
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
I painted a white line Upon a blank canvas And the people they praised me no more They could not see; That the painting was an echo Of my silence that wasn’t seen before
Why cry about things you can laugh at Said the quote on my bathroom mirror It wasn’t funny I thought And smiled to myself
The nights have been short Or perhaps it was I who has been stretched thin Between two impossibilities Of being here and being there An almost everywhere Every thought of mine now Feels like a bullet through the brain The very last; and in a way everlasting But new ones creep out Out of this philosophical yeast Growing in the dark keeps of my mind Nurtured with cold sweat And self taught paralysis
The toothpaste tastes funny Like old age These are those days of winter When sadness feels warm Like a hug or a cup of coffee Something to snuggle into and fall asleep Sadness; the elixir of a dying man Sadness, yes And melancholy (Pretty word) Made of me and the unholy: Thoughts, dreams, desires Snails creeping on a wet wire
I remember a time When I dreamt of being a dog And lie on the carpet Of fallen leaves Dogs can dream, can’t they? (Yes) And so I dreamt of being a dog To come full circle A perfection My being complete A zero
The wind from the window Touches my face And I blush; Love is in the air Or is it despair? How can one compare? When being utterly unaware… (I rhymed on purpose For they say poetry must taste like a painting) I gargle and gag There is blood in my spit A rose line Branching out like a symphony Clarinet and timpani Violins and bassoons Bach and Beethoven Mozart who died too soon The tap turns A thunder The tap turns All silence
My finger on the window Made a rainbow in the dust And I could see my watered down mirage Gasping in surprise Laughter; a dry mist From the flesh of my throat As if my heart knew the humour Was the one that I wrote (I wonder if the people sitting at the table Can hear, discern, decode, confirm)
I should have worn socks It’s cold; The floor, the walls, the ceiling The curtains, the furniture, the feeling Should I wear it now? My toes are already numb And the ankles ache Yes, a mistake To wear it now Better to regret not wearing it at all Than knowing the comfort I lost It won’t solve Anything As such
It is December I do not remember the last December Or the one before All the memories of past winters Are glued together Indecipherable I was alone then In more ways than one Incomplete, high strung To come easily undone But not anymore…
She came from far The horizon was her home I knew her reflection Was same as my own Yet the ocean between us This sapphire separation Was daunting, nigh haunting With adrift ships and lost anchors And mad sailor men upon the shore And lighthouses blinking “Advance No More”
We sell paper boats now Made of torn poetry And write poems upon onion peels And ripe tomatoes It’s beautiful The fragrance of homemade chicken And her smile And that nodding head And the dancing waist She is happy So am I This December So am I…
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
Thoughts of you A wounded prism Bleeding rainbow blood From skin the colour of acrylic Water upon water Wet upon wet (Random noise; My pseudo poetry, Commas and semicolons limping across the verses In a desolate frequency Like an empty road echoing; The silhouettes of silent wheels The smell of burnt rubber And the touch of gasoline) I long to stare at your face that stands stark against the sky A newborn moon; unblemished Rolling upon tethered horizons Like a dime in the dark
O how I ache to be in your arms now To be your ice and your fire Your utter despair and open desire I wish I could hold you Like ink in my paper palm Like an unformed word Like a fleeting thought I wish I could know how you see me Am I an anchor that keeps you calm Or wings that sets you free? I know I heal as an afterthought And you are careful in remembrance And although we have met few times These moments that pass This liquid life Is reshaped by our every touch For the fire that burns us feels the same Today, tomorrow, after an eternity again
I remember being Your dream When you were wide awake A flower trapped within sunshine And I know I am not destiny’s choice For my voice That dark tobacco of my baritone Is neither honey nor nectar And my eyes that reach out Through the veiled carcass of some velveteen night Belongs to shadow and to spectre But love Through the shards of slow time That ebbed our feet away for many days Now we walk With our two hearts disguised as one
I once had branches That burned in my backyard A pyre sans desire A fire drowned by its fire And at night In the dark When ghost grew like fruits From the shadow of its seeds From the ashes of its roots One could hear In the cast out whispers that they kept Broken words bandaged Pain yet un-wept And they said, they said In the black waves of bright flames We are faces without faces Nameless within our names And if night be a star in the ocean And infinity an eternal motion If silence be the words without sound And self a state never to be found Then the world with it’s weight held in a grain And poets with their pens dipped in pain The weathered visages with their vermillion words And the horizon a home for forgotten birds Is there to be seen, is there to be shown And not to be alone or utterly unknown
O the desire to be Loved by all And the ache of letting go When it is harder to fall Because of the world with it’s quiet words left to rot On transparent eyelashes Of eyes that dream, of eyes that dare Of eyes that hold, of eyes that care Should I wish upon myself an early demise Would the darkness in it’s view find it wise Why then sometimes I want to be The silence that shapes the sea Why then sometimes I want to be Someone whom none can see
Despair, beware I am a sky without cause My pain, insane Do not ache for applause Stare in the mirror O horror of my mind What you see is what you are Be gentle if not kind And whisper unto the wind These fables of your own For you are no Pietá But a statue turned to stone
He carried a corpse on his shoulder A straw man made of stone And walked the nowhere path A footstep in a crowd; alone He had feathers on his broken back Which wept on silent nights And he wished for a shooting star Having never had one in sight The man was armed with silence And buried tears in each eye Had no heart of which to speak of And dared not ask why So he searched his own shadow That wet the mosaic floor And wondered if his life Even mattered anymore For he was a mortal man Who died in his own dreams And come night only his pillow Answered back his screams He thought of leaving it all And be dust and be free He thought of casting his anchor In the middle of the barren sea For him the changing world Was a wave that ever repeats And he questioned unto the chaos Why do I rhyme when nothing fits?
Her face was a prison of prisms Her eyes twin melodies of mind Her skin shone like vanishing velvet Her kiss was one of a kind But she was no fabled princess Wandering lost at his open door Nor was she a cast away goddess He had once prayed to before She was a woman in making And held her heart in her own hand She knew the world as her oyster And she a pearl in the prophetic sand She saw the world with its visage brimming With light bulbs and bright lies So she searched for the one who stood With bruises like midnight skies He was a naked man Unclothed; without a name Who counted a single star Thinking that all were same To her he was a child unfed Left to roam as a newborn in wild Once without a home Through fate utterly exiled
He saw her hand in the ocean And the world closed around his eyes As he drowned in the water that whispered Breathe now or the dream dies He felt her fingers upon his shoulder And he answered back in kind Till their lips sealed shut a secret Which no soul could ever find And they danced in the depths like dolphins Two kindred hearts as one Who wished so much for the stars That they grew their own sun So that when the leaves now rustle And the colours do not make sense They can watch the silence get slower And the rainbow go back in rain
