Tag: longing

The Nectar Of Her Neck

                   I

The tip of the grass was yellow
The root of the grass was green
They waved at me like water in winter
And I waved back just glad at being seen
The words rolled back
Dyeing my tongue
Like a dry river

Rocks and pebbles
Fishbones and silt
Traced my thorax
Grinding my guilt
So I could swallow and wallow 
The echo of oars
Belonging to those ancient mariners before me
Who sought loneliness 
And found it
One step before horizon 


                II


In my dream
I pool out from the fissure of earth
After a midlife rebirth
Gleaming, polished, welted and wet
Watching the woman holding my fate
Nestled like a flower
Asleep in my rubicon arms
Dreaming of fragrance 
At once tender and torn;
Oh to be born beautiful 
And in all beauties, a unicorn,
In my mythical ache
I keep this universe at stake
For it’s brutal to awake
When I am so brittle to break.                            

It is night
But the dark shines
A soft black
Such perceptible blindness 
Such untouchable familiarity 
Should I succumb to the magic touch?
Drawn like a dying man to the nectar of her neck 
Should I summarise eons of my afterthoughts in an afternoon with her?
And let her reciprocate the same
On a kohl claimed evening 
So my ashtray mind
Can drift 
And ignite 
My field of dreams 
A purple blue;
That colour of a newfound forgetfulness 
Unnoticed to the irises of her eyes.

I dim and she shimmers
As we dance in the glass case
She; of velvet toes
And I; of rubber gloves 
With her hand in my hand
Like time through sand
Passing, and staying
This melting portrait 
Of our memories 
And I am aware, suddenly,
At the soft sweetness of everything 
That percolates into the inchoate perfection 
Wavering and waiting to crystallise in our kiss;
I lean in
And the world holds still
Till another breath finds me
And it feels what I feel












Abrasion

My life is a loose translation 
Barely read, rarely understood 
And sits, with an air of years spent 
Suspended between two strokes
Of a broken down pendulum 
Ages have passed undivided
A single line, perpetually drawn
Getting thin and thinner 
Till the Parallax Error
Caters for my silence 
At the center of my heart
And I am able to remember 
The taste of my first breath
The warmth of my first touch 
The colour of my first view
All amounting to nothing much

I submit to the auguries made about me
By people who claim to know
When the leaves of a tree in the autumn would fall
And when the sun would melt the snow

Fire in the birdcage 
Would the wings be able to save?
Can feathers and the flame
Be the same
Can the ashes for once be brave?

I humour the dinner table
My hands carefully caressing 
The cold, silver cutlery 
And my words
Churning in my mouth with the morsels 
Breaking down
With every bite, with every conversation
Leaves a taste
Something lingering upon the tongue
They watch me as I listen 
They listen as I watch 
The thin sound, going around 
A tiptoeing whisper 
Toeing a line;
I am known to these strangers 
I am shared and savoured 
Wound licked with salt
I am a pariah and thus favoured 

Long into the night
I stare at my soul
Standing by the window 
Stitching itself whole
And the night breeze is painting 
And the dark woods; they dream
Only the blind sky is witness 
As I thread down my scream

Her Other Half

We talk like strangers
Unwilling to laugh
Unable to cry
Like two shells remembering
The sound of a sea
Buried deep
Somewhere
In fissures of our bone…
Yours too my love?
Or of mine alone?

I was wrong to dream, wasn’t I?
Wrong to feel
Wrong to hope
A fool who thought her happiness starts
At the end of his joke
O Pagliacci, Pagliacci
Thou story of my life
Why didn’t you laugh and say:
It’s the heart which pierced the knife

Bye now, it’s late
And I have old wounds to tear
Like promises to make love
Or I wish you were here
The night is still young
Do not waste it on me
You had my life once
But you never stopped to see

The Shadow Of Absent Things


I can smell the brown sugar
Melting in my tea pot
And I am rooted
Between two oak trees
Made immovable
By the stone lips oaring my depths
Reaching for the sky silhouetted against me
But the ache of it does not feel like tooth decay
Nor the pleasure makes me shiver and rain
Glass beads and spirit of grain
Into the hands of praying men

I can feel my skin
Breathing under your fingernails
Like snail on a hot tar road
While your voice in my ear
Whisper garbage
Something about me, my hair,
My face and the rest
Of me but not about
As if your eyes are nothing but mirror
Or old shoes spit polished this morning
And my heart wanders like flies on foodstuffs
Unable to digest
The truth of you touching me
In and beyond
Anymore

Steel on the tip of my tongue
Marble on the base of my back
I am pierced and pinned to the pedestal
A naked butterfly
At once transparent and tarnished
Bruised, battered and bludgeoned into being;
Beautiful sans beauty

So I stare like a light bulb numb in its holder:
The roof is blank
A grey slate
False sky
Absent mind
White chessboard
And the omniscient blind

The Sailor

There was dust upon his eyebrows
And stars under his eye
Each for one color of the rainbow
Taped to the woolen sky
I was swimming on a rose bridge
And saw him drink the sea
He was a dolphin from the desert
Dressed as a honeybee

So I fell for him forever
Like lovers on rainy night
And my heart was Christmas carol
Raw as Eve’s apple bite
Thus we drowned in whispering voices
Pouring out our crystal skin
There were wings upon our shoulders
And a shared velvet fin

But the man he was a sailor
With a thirst for sea green ocean
All I had was sky blue eyes
And a sense of moonlight motion
So I kissed his salt shaped lips
And set his anchor free
And I watched him drift asleep
On a heavy wooden sea
Now I am swimming on a rose bridge
Alone on rainy night
And I have apples around my ankles
But no heart to leave a bite

Kohl

There is shadow under her eyes
Eclipses she called them
From the tears left behind
Of the pain that came far too late
To flow and feel with the pulse of time

I look at her bare back
With the bedsheet pattern
Still alive on her skin
The crests of her shoulders
Peeking like crescent moons
From under the sea of argent hair

So I turn away
To another day
A still life, blur, Monet.
Years ago to this Tinseltown:
People leaping out of their skins
Skeletons dancing in glass cases
The enamel skulls selling
A hollow reed laugh
And a touch at the base of your spine
As a keepsake

She was standing
Under the irreparable light
Doused in city flames
And dressed in the dark left behind by dirty minds,
Counting cars that passed
Without halting for her

My feet were silent
My thoughts far too loud
As I hovered round her shadow
Like a leftover cloud
With neither thunder nor rain
In the threads of my vein
But the promise of a shade
And the warmth of a bed

It’s been years since that night
And every night since then
Whence I swallowed her sorrow
And she pardoned my pain
And together we have slept
Counting each other’s scar
Some dealt amongst us
Others unremembered for far
And yet I can hear her
Counting cars passing by
And there are eclipses under her eyes
From all the kohl she forgot to dry…