THE HUMAN ANVIL

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

  • Periphery


    Between sleeping and falling asleep 
    I lost a lifetime
    To live some dreams

  • 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