THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: loss

  • In the Light of the Darkness

    I believe the night to be beautiful
    And polite in its quiet understanding
    Of letting people be
    Alone with their monsters
    That others would never see
    For the dark cannot differ
    Between the shape and its shadow
    Nor cast colours by their causes
    Or ask more of friend and less of foe
    To night all belong
    Both the dreamer and its dreams
    The silence of frozen lakes
    And the songs of eternal streams
    But here in the deep
    Within the halls of man’s own mind
    The dark reigns ever awake
    In hope to one day find
    The answer all eyes seek
    Yet doubt to ever know;
    If the soul is but a seed
    That once then shall never grow…

  • Remains of the Rain

    Image by Mehrsad Rajabi@unsplash


    I saw my children standing in the rain
    Their faces lined with age and late reason
    Watched the abandoned bicycles
    And broken seesaws
    Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops
    Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind
    Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old
    Seemed painted
    In the moist color of quiet
    The abandoned delight
    Having dissolved
    In the lament of the rain
    They turn; the motion a sad song
    An unfinished lullaby
    To look at me with eyes
    Half awake but never asleep
    As if I with my window earned wisdom
    Would know
    Why all things grow
    Only to die
    If life in the very virtue of living
    Is a lie
    But they know the answer
    As well as me
    It is better to forget than to believe what we see
    In the everyday aftermath
    Of the daily demise
    Of choices left to chances
    And promises made before goodbyes
    For in the end all paths
    Shall return where they began
    Even the oceans with all their eternity
    Are but remains of the rain…

  • 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

  • Fairytale

    Permit me to say a few,
    Words of my choice,
    Before the whispers that they all echo,
    Replace my own voice.

    Ye tremble truly,
    Come day, come night,
    And lay woe on passing feet,
    Who knows you as a leaf to scribble,
    And leave in wind to never meet.

    In dreams you rule the dawn and dusk,
    Alive, you pick no pebble,
    You turn to stone when the time is ripe,
    Afraid of being unable,
    This place, it’s a wilderness,
    And the wild are lurking low,
    Here all shapes are drawn as one,
    Here your foe is friend and friend a foe.

    You aim to swim from shore to shore,
    And bare the ocean upon thy palm,
    Eye tempests for it’s hollowness,
    Dive deep in her bloodless calm,
    But the ship you choose,
    Have no mast, nor sail,
    There be no oars to row,
    Deep in desert thy anchor sinks,
    And the wind; she seldom blow.

    The hands you lay,
    Against the sky,
    With the hope that they will hold,
    Will you shatter too, like others before,
    When those pillars of pride grow old.
    For if so then they will come for you,
    Wherever you may roam,
    And put thou in a cage, and say,
    Now you have a home.

    For this fairy world,
    This wilderness,
    Tries one at every turn,
    Here reigns he who knows the truth;
    To shine one has to burn.

    ( To those of us who dream but never do.)

  • Damask

    Her bright cheeks,
    Were stately cold,
    My hand young,
    Hers far too old,
    Raven hair mine,
    Matched my gown,
    A snow pierced mantle,
    Covered her crown,
    I was night,
    She was day at dawn,
    I saw all,
    She looked blind as fawn,
    We held hand,
    And we walked our way,
    I left for the past,
    She came for today.

  • Magnum

    Deep into this journey,
    Long after the deep susurration of life,
    And the sense of longing,
    Of natal desire,
    Is dried and shorn as bark and wool,
    And bright as the nectar corals,
    Burnt with tired timber,
    Does the dull truth of things,
    Worm in.

    Baleful eyes, kissed with Kohl yet
    Empty inside,
    Burrowed by the undoing of this ethereal Magnum,
    This caustic world,
    With it’s walls of freedom, aching,
    Breaking against blindness,
    Seek,
    Weep,
    And speak, no more than what the silence taught them in form of tears.

    A panacea,
    To all immutable happenstance. Measured, immeasurable,
    Paraded or parodied,
    Through one life iterated, in many lives over,
    Rags and rags, covering a bareness,
    That reflects in no light,
    But unfurls in each darkness,
    Like moon upon lotus lips,
    Of philosophers and Pharaohs,
    Of travellers and treasurers,
    Of hunters and hoarders.

    Unceasingly mitigated,
    Yet never really moving,
    Until stillness itself stills,
    And all forms, wither into one,
    And all one’s merge into none.

    Panacea,
    The answer to no question.

  • Stardust

    Far too long ago,
    I stood on a bridge,
    In crowded solitude,
    Counting stardust; those city lights,
    Ignorant that it belonged,
    Each for a man and his dream,
    Limping endlessly, by alleys,
    Of censored minds.

  • The Colonnades

    The wind tastes of stale season,
    Filaments of it dry from disuse,
    Twist and turn, twist and turn,
    Into morsels for those,
    Who have nothing less,
    And wish nothing more.

    Wait inside,
    Let the walls fall down,
    For wide in the open,
    There is no one around,
    Only a yawning road leading away,
    Into a darkness done in artistic way,
    From whence spills laughter; lost voices sorrow,
    Wishful pretenders of a belated tommorow.

    Wayside rises Colonnades; meaningless, grotesque,
    Attempts at perfection,
    Pillars of pain,
    Heaved by hands, long buried under. Wonder-less, vacant eyes,
    Still life, still life,
    Breathing in the earth,
    The moisture, the metal
    The irony, the mirth.

    Their raised fists, now barnacled;
    In iron forged upon
    A green glade, now barren,
    Weaned and watered, once;
    By the hands long buried,
    Under wayside colonnades.

    So the ghosts have gathered,
    For a better afterlife,
    Pale mouths, witnesses, sing
    And march in naked apparel,
    For a debt long unpaid,
    By those visionary,
    By the blind men,
    Who dreamt of the colonnades.