Tag: living

Caricature


I draw myself 
With a red charcoal 
Still breathing and burning 
In afterlife 

The shape of my head is a shade
Made of thousands of fingerprints 
Left by all the people I met
Some I remember 
But mostly I forget 
Those with their teeth
Sunk in my throat 
As if ripping me apart
For the words that I wrote

Wind takes my torso and I am turning into a tide
Flowing with flayed limbs;
Deeper into the drawing 
Past pulp of the paper
Into the girth of the ground
Like roots and fruits 
I am sold by the pound 
Sold to wishes and worship 
Sold to order and obedience 
Sold to answers and acceptance 
Sold to nothing and negligence 

Transparent flesh
I design my thoughts so they can please
Eyes of the beholder
And as I grow older
I intend to paint myself as a mosaic man
And many see in me
What I may see in many: 
Eyes coming closer
Merging on the bridge of my nose
A single center 
For my dissolving circumference
And it is odd to fall inwards
For the implosion leaves no leftover 
Other than the suspended emptiness 
In the middle of the throat 
That neither screams nor stays silent
But echoes; this pencil stroke pain
Rising, apprising my churning nerves 
Like nails dragged upon my spine 

The shadow beneath my feet 
Portends a prerequisite that light must be nearby 
So I shade, the lines of my face
The folds in my dress
Gifting myself my gratitude 
In a bow made of shoelace 
For I am poor man
Who breaks one pencil in two halves
And loses both in no time
For I am poor man
Who when his world is being coloured 
Pretends it is a crime

Most nights I sleep
Sitting and looking at a blank canvas
As if it is the canvas which is painting me
In colours kept secret by mirrors and mirages
It is sad though that feelings cannot be reflected 
Only inflicted and affected 
Feelings by their virtue of being 
A past participle and present continuous 
Is man’s eternal tense
A void with wisdom
Aware that the sum of all it’s infinities 
Is simply a zero

There are times when I rhyme
My gestating philosophy 
With archaic words
So that when I speak 
There is rebirth
And I am assured 
That my thoughts 
Those infinitesimal, dust motes 
Will live on
In the veins of mortals
Addicted to immortality

So perhaps I draw myself
In a way I shouldn’t be drawn
For who has seen one using charcoal 
To colour the perfect swan 
But I am not a swan, you see,
I am crow beaten black and blue
In an attempt to create something new
Out of desolate frequencies 
And distilled time 
A still life portrait 
Dead by design

Ashes and Eyelashes

I see strangers with my face
Wave at me from afar
They line the luminous city
With knowledge in their hand
While I am fishing for sequin sardines
Left upon the land 
In my mind the caltrops stops
Every thought that grew from ground
For Promethean parentheses 
My open mind is unsound 
I shift and sway, I shift and sway 
Holding on to sweet yesterday
For the World’s decree
Is that dreams are free
But to breathe life in them
I have to pay

Pauper with papers 
I write of thousand priceless things
I have feathers made of vapours 
But that does not make them wings
So I turn around and retreat
When it’s time for me fly
For who would lend a lap 
When it’s time for me to die 
I have my fingers in the sand
And I am searching for lost time
Would I be shown mercy in the end
If I solved my own crime?


It Isn’t Merry To Go Around


I sleep, knee deep
For my world weeps unaware
I awake, in heart break 
For I see you aren’t there

Once in a blue moon
I see the sun shining 
I am lost in my past’s love
In a search of silver lining 

Tangerine toenails 
I have henna on my feet
I dance, in trance
As old shadows come to greet 

Do I dare, and I dare
To touch the liner of my eye
Wax in my flesh seeks
A flame to make me cry

And I cry, so I cry
Was it an ocean that once said
Remember the silence 
For words can be unmade

Blue lips, fingertips 
I grasp the rosary and pray
For life, that life 
Gives no lesson everyday 

I am cold, and I am told
All my thoughts are a lie
And my home is no home
I must roam, no goodbye 

I picture my own life 
And my face is a blur
Mutilated by soft fingernails
Covered in the fur

Should I if could I
Breathe and then awake
The armour on the inside 
Dreaming for daybreak

If so, I know
The brook would then flow
From the roots of my hair
Where dreams do not grow

Dearth of Memories

                     I
  

Has an ant ever crossed an ocean
Or a swan reached the sun 
Has any flower ever saved a thorn
Or lost love ever won

                    II

I scratched;
Upon the whitewashed wall of my sanctum 
My nails bled
With the semicolons and commas
But the pain that rested
Like autumn in my chest
Stayed 
The heartbeats shifting dark roots and yellow leaves
A raw pulse 
Decaying 
With each bartered breath 
(Perhaps I have written these lines before
Or perhaps I have felt the same
Long time back
When out of the blue 
The blackness took over
Like a bubble of bile)

Sometimes I want to be another man
Someone whose shallow thoughts 
Never leaves his hollow lips
And if I were to dissect myself 
In a cold blue room 
And remove these tumours that I can feel
Lying along my spine like roadblocks
I may perhaps get better
But I do not want to be better 
Not alone and not by myself 
For I know my hand would betray 
Even if the scalpel stays loyal

So I sew my torn sweater 
One stitch at a time
And I can feel at the back of my neck
The mist beyond the window
Hiding a drowsy world
A quiet world
From the memories of Edgar Allen Poe
I don’t know…
For I am sewing my sweater
One stitch at a time

It is easier to break than build
My grandmother told me
Long ago, when my shoe size was half of what it is now 
We were sitting in the veranda 
Watching sparrows without nests
Search for shade
Her wrinkled hands were beautiful 
They knew only to give
To me, to the sparrows 
Her today for our tomorrows 
I did not understand what she meant 
Only that she meant what she said 

                    III

The face of my love
Is an enigma 
A diamond made of star dust
And dew drops 
I have seen her as none have
During hours longer than light 
In dreams deeper than the night 
And yet if I were to hold
A paintbrush 
Her shape would disappear 
In the shadows of my mind
Like fragrance does from a flower

I know her to be beautiful 
Like rainbow after rain
Or an ocean undressing at midnight 
Whispering the tales
Of sailors and their sails
And I often try
In an absentminded earnestness 
That of a child never chided 
To try and catch her featherlight hair
To hold that waterfall 
The obsidian madness as she sways
Like a soft swan 
Without silhouette 

The nights are hard
Rebels and roses
And I write of my love in poems and proses 
As I reach for the soft molasses 
Surrounding my heart
Breaking and bleeding 
From Cupid’s blue dart

She taught me to write, you know…
When all I could do was recite   
And bruise the pages 
Perhaps I with all my innocence 
Was nothing but a man wanted for my own murder 
But with her I am me;
Irrepressibly free
A child dressed in clothes too big for him.
Perhaps I never grew up after 2007
Forever eleven
An Abandoned ectoplasm
Morphed in shape by satire
Drowning in the desire
To be wanted and stay haunted
By the spectre of love

                    IV

I am rhyming the verses 
For I know nothing more
My poems are to the paper
What waves are to the shore

The Nuances of My Nights

            A poet knows
        The name of all places
        And directions to none
           - Not a Poet 


I write because it hurts
And if I scream they will know my pain 
I don’t want to scream
Don’t want to shatter the serene mirror
That holds together 
All false reflections 
The world holds dear
For the blame of it
Would lie on me
And I have enough confessions to pardon 
In my soliloquy 

I slept late yesterday 
There was a tempest inside me
And my mind was anchored loose
I was swayed, buffeted
And at once painted still
As if my soul
Was the albatross 
From the Rime of the Ancient Mariner 
And I thought: 
Every murder is a suicide in a way
Isn’t it?
To surrender the right of your life to someone else
Without a fight 
There are many types of murders
Of trust, flesh and mind
Common massacres
Gruesome
One of a kind…
It’s getting dark

I should have had dinner
But the lights were too bright
And candles too dim
The plate felt soft
And the spoon too thin
Or was it me
Who felt brittle and blind
With so many dreams to dream
And so few days to do
(Now that was a lie
For I cherish my own incompetence 
Like a child does it’s once favourite but now broken toy)

I am afraid I have found
The edge of my reason
And the world beyond (And would you believe it?)
Is a mirror…
It seems me and this mirror
We are obsessed with each other
In finding faults
In pointing out to one another 
Our own shrinking horizons 
Until one of us agrees
The threshold of our limitations 

I slept late yesterday 
(No, I already said that
Pardon, it’s the mirror reflecting my memories
God I am tired)

Good night

The Cold Sun of Midnight

I sleep upon the windowpane 
And the glass cracks under my face
Like lightning from my breath 
The night below is strange;
Captured stars howling
On streets and in houses 
As people dance
To hide the shadow of their shame
I can smell their perfume here
Thirty stories high
Scent filled with lost sleep and sadness 
It numbs me
My throat, my voice
And I choke without a choice 
(Should I shift? Should I turn?
I do…and the thunder swims to my belly
The glass gasps
But the shattering never comes)

Sound of a million footsteps 
Collapse into a single chord
Time’s thread
This linear, pinpoint eternity 
Do I merge or do I dare
Far foolish when being aware
That there are no ripples in the ocean
Just reflections of the air
Lives, candles 
Last days in wreath
Desire turned dream
Dream turned to death 

I now see the eyelashes 
Left by a lost time
For cinders on the shore
For hearts saying no more
For children born sans choice
Once people now toys
And so the dying swans dance 
Vying for a chance
To nibble the breadcrumbs 
Of broken down plans
And I, this vain, stitched flesh in pain
Lie supine, and divine, my tears through rain
And sing against the chorus
Those verses that say
Ask and you shall get
And to get you must pray
As if prayers are questions 
As if questions would find a way
As if ways would take me home
As if home is for what I pray

So I await
Under the cold sun of midnight 
Watching myself
Falling out of sight
First a man
Then a memory 
Now a stranger  
Forever a stray
A silhouette 
Some shadow 
All silence 
Is what I say




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

The I in Why?

I do not desire
To lie naked in a rattrap life
And lubricate my verse with victorian words;
Filled with awe inspiring acts
Led by mundane lust
Of Angels and Men alike
Nor do deep desires murder me
Nerve by nerve
Peeling away my eggshell skin
To illuminate the onion within;
A coiled rainbow, boiled white
Neither am I a shadow
Fallen far from crowded feet
Awaiting on indifferent paths
For a heavenly retreat
If at all I were to bare myself and be
One thing that should suffice how I see
Myself, in this crystal world
Of self reflection and askewed insight
I would be a thoughtful statue
Sitting alone in a far off land
With infinity in my head
And nothing in my hand

Branches in my Backyard


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