Last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire And the blunt desire To bruise And break These filial bonds Of flesh and bones Rose, untainted Like waves on sea Like a dream disguised as a memory
I was sleeping Under the cold warmth Of the ash blanket Till people appeared By my bedside Beings sulphurous Silhouettes of silver smoke Which spoke: ‘Come to us You child of gravity There is a world beyond the world Shaped by chaos and clarity A latticework of lyrics A synagogue sans any saint A cosmos acclaimed by cynics A painting without the paint’ And I alive in tenuous thoughts Of nevermore and forever Could only see and be A shadow of a reflection Unborn thus free And so those excelsior people With ghost hands bore me away Astride the light they had saved Back from their leftover days
What I saw thence I cannot say There is nothing to remember Between the first dawn of January And the last night of December But there are those half dreamt moments When I seem to know The truth breathed upon me: That Soul is what the light don’t show
But last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire…
I wore a blanket for a cape For only in dreams I can escape The mortal wounds So lovingly applied As an afterthought of ache
Oft nights when the world Is turning inside out Being snowflake proud of rainbow vomit and papier-mâché pyramids Growing in a mindless ocean of silver sweat I sit as stillness amidst the walls Like a spineless spider flat and small Aping what I think Is the rhythm I cannot find Do I mind? Do I mind? Stars falling like dandruff on blank shoulder of the night Do I mind? Do I mind? Knowing my common mind preaches that I am one of a kind
The cactus upon the windowsil Looks down on the street and see Other trees meditating Like monks on a subway free Half dead and half high Having two views of one life An ever burning driftwood Entombed in blue ice I am that monk That beggar with bright face Having known no sunshine, I shine Having known no misery, I make mine From the refrigerated leftover of a burnt down town Crying over T-shirts and Blazers, Tank tops and gown
The world with its thorned tendrils and tremors of love The world with its crow’s claws and feathers of a dove Knows the weight and cost of a coin unspent For this life; a tragedy, for this life; a parody Is best lived,unmeasured and as if each day is on rent
I have seen geisha queens Dance on aspen nights Play with children made of fire And love men afraid of light I have known threadbare hearts Bare it all upon the floor And yet be trodden upon Like a foot mat at the door And so much more, so much more I have seen and chosen to ignore The what if and why not The why now and not before So much more, so much more, now no more anymore
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
Pieces of sunlight on my shirt Golden flakes caught unawares in snow I wear the world As a witness upon my eyebrow
Pendulum thoughts, mine, Rising to always fall, falling to ever rise A deaf dance; this one legged tango Should I mourn The forgotten remembrance Of irony bound in common things Like water buried in a coconut or born in one who knows what it means to be a child Without being none I, myself, was born skinless In a seed of wild fern Wordless they named me; those voices in my head, Till I spoke and my friends began to fade One after another Like orange in marmalade
The wind upon the canvas do not dry the paint Nor a fire miles away Help me find my feet Of all the pain in the world; it’s the loss that alone tastes sweet With syrup on my bruise And sugar on my wound I limp away From weeping windows and waking walls For I heard my cupboard say the other day Wear less and be more Was that a dream, a dream Like Dali high on sour cream? I wish only to know Can my hand reach out to my heart and squeeze The last drops of Carpe Diem to please My soul; that cotton candy wrapped in light and luck Made In Bed after a night of soft….
Dear Diary I am exhausted Ginsberg and Sexton, Whitman and Poe Conrad, Tolstoy, Orwell and Thoreau I read about them all Copperfield and Twist And Einstein’s Relativity and Marie Antoinette’s false feast Should I sleep now Will the night ask me no more Questions and answers Legends and lores
There is a spider on the bed (Yes, it’s a thought in my head) Should I scream or be quiet (There is nothing to be said) So twinkle twinkle little star There are bottles in the hotel bar And many miles to drink before I sleep Till the laughter stops and it soothes to weep…
Naked pictures painted on the world map, a global ache this systematic subjugation, arraigned with signatures and rubber stamps and blue and black ink with red smeared hands from…
Ants committing suicide for sugar cubes, mountains sundered for a grain of sand, weighing a ton by common belief of a wishful world running in a race without an end around a toilet flush I hear music in the smoking firmament, the guttural snort and fart of the engine like Mozart’s Requiem for Modern Times; graveyards filled with scraps, dusty medals pinned upon pigeon chests, chest with springs and cogs inside, all mechanisms of a meager mind,
Breathed upon by gunpowder gods never crucified, but kept alive, unchained unlike Prometheus or castrated unlike Cronus, with 9mm eyes watching over the supposed universe, Lives televised, a miniscule mime renting life per hour, human carcass threaded, talking puppets mimicking everyday shambles with double exclamation and undying opinions; graffiti upon bathroom walls, the enlightenment of our age; our Bible, our Koran, our Commandments, our Veda,
An ocean of umbilical madness, Medusas of mind, writhing in the depths of drowned time, left helpless at the bottom, garbage cans, lobster traps, Ahab’s ambition, little mermaid’s fin, all part of the abyss, woven tales of Atlantis
Beggars upon sidewalk, watching the neon lights blink at the mannequins dressed and fed better than them, breathing in glass case while the Caesar supine on steps as flat piece of bread looks on: Et tu, Et tu, until a coin clatters in the bowl and Rome falls, democracy dissolved under the acid rain of paint thinner,
Red sky running, blind horse racing against the rider till the tollbooth where hands on hips the old man walks the zebra crossing, unmindful of the airplanes lined at the red light, waiting one and all to fly away, without passengers or Blackbox, to a land where runways end
Phantoms fasting upon a fingernail, the sound of anarchy, electric guitar with strings of lightning, rainbow flooding the floor, and the people waving, a mingled marsh undecipherable, a canvas coated with paint, avant-garde asylum overflowing with stone heads
Rows of velvet cushion upon glass, red carpet laid upon mud, hyenas laughing in the hallway in high heels and mothball tuxedos from pawn shop, faceless fornication behind the screen, lips locked together in war, breathes dying with alcohol,
And outside the Ghost of Christmas Past selling mint in the rain, poets pass him and politicians, all made of papers full of question marks and Venn diagram that depicts everything said and done, the saying it has the bigger circle and the deeds it had none,
The Van Gogh World waking, rivers of gas flowing under matchstick houses waiting for madmen, toothpick buildings dancing for children playing whack-a-mole, Las Vegas without lights like teeth of a key; all cards of the fleeting reality playing pinochle with constant uncertainty,
Dismal days these, age of enlightenment, recoilless Renaissance, people paying people to understand people paying people, round around the circumference of Drachma with Copernicus we fly, we fly, taking one day kryptonian crash course, and pretend to die with cries towards the sky; O father thou art in heaven, look down now and weep, for seven days you worked, and on the eighth it all went to dust, you knew it and yet you left it so, now weeds gather in your garden, and even Lucifer stays away and pray free from this drama; Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama
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…
I have seen Heroes Shinning alone on the battlefield Sword bare in bloodied hands Hiding tears behind their shield And the poets who wrote of courage Knew not from those sunlit tower That all wars are fought by them Who has no ounce of power
I have seen Teachers Cradling books in their velvet hand Certain of the wisdom beneath the words That the world fails to withstand And the pupils who stay blind And believe in it all Are kept to learn the truth Nailed as paintings upon the wall
I have seen Kings Holding heaven in their earthly palms Dive deep in the selfish seas And make fist while breathing alms And the people who praise the lord For the health of the dear monarch Knows not that the hand which feeds Is the one that lays the nark
I have seen Saints Swimming in the grey, tepid pool alone And where hundreds had fallen The saints could never drown A miracle that belonged to them Not by the blessings of the Throne But because of the fact that the misery Was not of their own
Some day I want to be The man in the book Who knew what he wanted And loved what he took With no one to question And no answer to give With no thoughts on living And only to live Some day I want to be The man in the book
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
Dear, I know it is too late to write It’s midnight here too, the sun is lying dead at the bottom of the ocean With the dry lipstick caps You left. I rinsed their marks off the sink you know, The bold maroon, the autumn orange and the pink of summer blossoms I hope you are wearing something else now A colour I could never know; otherwise all the bite marks you left Like a river of pain From the nape of my neck to the small of my back Dividing me; amongst myself Would be futile.
See! No you cannot, but I am, seeing The stars, do you know they are long gone And the light that we are looking at Is no more true than those promises we made In bed, everyday Looking at each other Melting under the red haze of love Or else I would not be alone Straddled between both lampshades Stretched midst two lights And the same, same darkness Shifting me out of sight
And yet, oh yet I miss You with your half asleep smile Carefully constructed To be dreamlike I miss the time when we were us Shared shadows in the day And in night our silhouettes I miss your half baked cake And bitter burnt coffee With me humming the song You love at three; in the morning Watching just watching Nothing at all But the same thing Always the same
There was a time when I used to write for you When I should have written about, But I was naive; eggshell white, A crystal goblet balanced upon the edge of a two-legged table Drunk with my own wine And I know the fault was mine As ever the fault was mine Flowers wilted and the fault was mine Winter came and the fault was mine Nothing remained Everything changed It began again And the fault was mine And so I am no more Than a corpse carrying out a chore Dreaming of a world before It broke upon my door Oh yes well before I even built the door…
THE HUMAN ANVIL 