THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: life

  • The Art of an Artery


    I see yet know nothing
    I know but can see nothing
    Perhaps because I close my eyes during the day
    And in night I keep them open
    Or perhaps the day dawns when I close my eyes
    And night falls when I do open
    Thus, I am riven, cleaved clean
    And both parts of me are lost to the void
    Where they each calls for one another
    And each fails to answer the other
    So that the half words spilling through the corner of cold blue lips
    Become eddies;
    Wind painting on water
    And the colourless quiet
    Is divided equally to all drowning men

    This darkness of thought
    Tunnels connecting the passage of time
    Yawn endlessly
    For who would turn and fall asleep
    When all answers of today are again questioned tomorrow

    We come and go, we come and go
    With what desire of knowing
    We may never know

    Splashes of white and black
    Stars streaked with paint brushes
    On the decaying horizon
    Universe diluted and powdered into pills
    To be taken twice with warm water
    Before the self-hypnosis servings:
    ‘Ode to me, ode to me
    The orphan child of galaxy’
    A child who sees, who see:
    Spiders crying upon the wall
    And ants dying without a funeral
    With the human belief of being surreal
    Something more than Picasso’s parody of each man watered down into the same shape
    As mercury, slithering inside our throats,
    We paint the dreamland agony on our own
    A martyr decapitated by needle
    Love loaded with gunpowder kiss
    Lucky draw for cursory chemotherapy
    Armchair dissection; with thoughts clinging to the end of the scalpel
    Manufactured magnanimity with expired life lessons
    Vending machines for vison; a dime’s dream for a day
    Granite gods, chiselled, chewing on sand and white vapor of wisdom
    And we the people, popcorn patrons, watching this apocalypse through donated eyes
    In a fostered future where, famished children pose before the camera
    For takeaway Pulitzer
    And the humanitarian prize.

    Walls with wombs
    Gestating hatred
    Watch us, the metallic vultures, as we hover
    With our telescope tuned for hypocrisy
    Our heavy hearts, aching with empathy, from behind the Kevlar vests


    If only the bombs being dropped were bread
    There would be no war left to win

    Two mirrors
    Broken
    Thousand miles apart
    Watch each other and weep

    There is a shell of silence about us
    And all those who can see cannot show
    And all those who cannot see would not know
    How the world is a fish tank
    Submerged in an ocean
    And our giant leaps
    Reaching for stars
    Are paralyzed thoughts
    Trapped in an endless motion

    So, take me to the quiet room
    With windows overlooking green fields
    And empty blackboard,
    Where blank books of history
    Are taught by children;
    I shall be a student of lifelong happenstance
    Waiting for the recess bell to ring
    And sunlight to flood out
    Into the playground
    And make
    Ghosts out of living men

    The texture of wind
    Is not felt by the fingers
    Nor the weight of the shadow
    By the ground
    The time is not seen
    On the skin of the sky
    Nor is the source heard
    Within the sound


  • The End of an Arrival

    Oh this corpse of mine
    Has settled now
    And cannot move anymore
    Let the waves of time
    Drown it deep
    In seas without a shore

  • Offal

    I

    Here in the dim lit room
    Held together with velcro
    I await for an awakening
    There is a gaggle of gods about me
    And I hear the mice being murdered in rafters
    While my stereo melds a melody
    An edible static like
    Ants in my mouth
    And bees on my tongue
    So I spit the honey and drink the stings
    And I drown the birds and cage the wings
    To breathe, to breathe
    The liquid light
    From the cigarette between my gasoline lips
    In amorous delight

    II

    The flame of my flesh and this napthalene world
    Resting upon a rusted needlepoint
    Take heed of the dust motes
    Suspended in time
    For they are you
    And they are me
    Awaiting
    With nothing to see
    In the far too near eternity

    III

    I see stars in my bedroom
    And prophets under my eye
    Rainbows growing from my skin
    As I fall into the sky
    And there is a hymn in my ears
    That aches “Praise to thee”
    And I am drowning in my tears
    Eating a faded tapestry

  • Her Fire and Her Flesh

    Her eyes were on the fire
    Her fingers in the dough
    The smoke; it left her breathless
    Like the kerosene she poured into the stove
    The sweat dipped her lashes
    To her tears were all blind
    She was only a shadow on the wall
    Though being a woman one of a kind

    She had trapped Ganges in her hair
    And Pharaohs praised her lotus feet
    Her’s was Mumtaz’s Taj
    And to her belonged the Papal Seat
    But all that was her she had given
    In dowry for her father’s name,
    With the hope she would be treasured
    And not burnt alive for the same

    But soon a time shall come
    When a Sita will not walk
    A false Ordeal of Fire
    So blind people would not talk
    And soon a time shall come
    When a Draupadi will not accept
    The men and their game of dice
    Weighted against her self-respect
    And no longer any Eve shall answer
    For Adam’s own intent
    And let a Mother be always a Martyr
    And Father always a Saint

  • The Serenade Surrendered


    I know what it means to be
    A man without a memory
    What I see: I see
    What I feel: I feel
    In the moment of me
    I keep a forever concealed

  • The Pedigree of a Patriot


    There is no such thing
    As a country, my friend
    The sooner you know it the better
    All hands are on deck
    But not for your sake
    And to live free is to be a traitor

  • The Dance of the Dying


    I am here in the now
    Without a why
    Or a how
    Leaning upon this thought;
    Who am I
    And belong to what

    Is this world the same as me
    A life made alive in memory
    Of being a being without a voice
    Free to choose but without a choice

    And shall the death be all it take
    To make me cease and never awake
    And to not know what all this meant
    If the sinner in the end is same as a saint

  • Flame


    My life
    A candle
    Waning slowly
    Knows not
    For whom it’s burning
    Or why
    Just that it is
    And soon shall
    Dissolve
    Out of existence
    And there is nothing it can do now
    Except burn, burn and burn
    With a hope
    That when the wick goes out
    Atleast the wax will survive

  • Perdu

    Once I wrote a poem
    The perfect one
    For those who cannot read
    It had, commas, at all the right, places,
    And no exclamation mark!
    Or operose words one does not know
    Or any rhyme to ruin the bitter flow
    If only I had been able to see
    The invisible ink
    I would never have used the poem
    As a tissue paper

  • The Arc

    The old and the dying
    Stood hand in hand crying
    Over the winter that came knocking
    When they were busy talking:
    Of the winter that won’t come knocking
    When they are busy talking