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
The hall was open Well lit by the intruding sky Peeping from the roof Like dry tongue behind a lie
I remember being here Since forever was yesterday
My heartbeats echoed when my footsteps went quiet And the walls watched When I shifted the silence Like a decade old calendar (Tick Tock but it’s not a clock) For I heard that death in the desert Comes from weight of the ship
Ah, these dark thoughts Burnt cognac on charred cinnamon Keeps me awake For these festive ashes Are kohl for my eyelashes
The piano plays Her faded ebony and darkened ivory But the tune is not twofold It is syrup in syringe It is grease on my hinge Making me murmur and mould my moves To her jazz and her blues Till I saw light in the dark Her flesh flint and my soul spark Oh, and did I burn from her breath Do I roam now as wraith In this hall that stands stilled By my heart that was sealed When she held me and said: I am naked and you are afraid But dare not clothe me For my love, I am sea I have whispered those words Which for even memory weren’t free
I found her seashells burning Sand soaked Scented with cardamom They shone; as white stars neath violent waves As fading scars Of a fallen sky
I touched the constellations on her skin Like a morse code of our memories: The soft bed, warm blanket, cold window and quiet tea Mornings melting into afternoons so the nights could be free
But those dreams kept us awake With heartbeats hiding behind the hour hand A little early, a little late Others plans against our fate
And I know my reminiscence Does not remind one of anything In its vague wordings Of my own ossuary But I rather turn back time, than tiptoe, Into the arms of my love And watch our world burn around us So people could find a path To solace To sanity To self
Burning seashells Can fire keep the water alive? Like the past that feeds on and into the future Fostering the festering Those needlework lies That sewed together the sewers of my soul From overflowing into my eyes To break the view, and the vision The same as that of flies
Man overboard There is mermaid on his mind: Holding his private pearl Made of pieces one of a kind, His heart has no anchor But his toes are touching the shore Waiting to become a fin So he does not drown anymore And be one with that blue She promised with her lips Of how ocean would taste sweet In sharing of their sips
We are sitting in a sun-blown café in the far corner, alone, at 6 in the morning.
You are wearing your blue jeans and my t-shirt— washed out, white, far too large— fitting you perfectly.
The waitress is dusting the tables, pulling up the chairs, shaking the table salt containers, piling up tissue paper.
I watch as the dust motes play in the breeze by the window—behind your hair. They glow auburn—your hair, not the dust motes.
I was wrong to ask for open hair. It looks lovelier now, tied in a loose bun, with wayward strands falling and cupping the contours of your face.
I watch in silence as the cups of coffee are laid, watch as the steam rises and veils your face— You wink. I smile. You sip. I smile again.
You ask something. I nod, far too captivated by the rings on your hand— the black from me, and the blue from your mother.
They rest on your skin, absorbing your essence, your touch, the warmth I long for— something more than black coffee.
The conversation begins, and I try to keep up as words cling to your pink lips and memories roll down from the tip of your tongue.
Your eyes dance, the brown in them melting under the sunlight. I wonder what you see— how deep, how far? Can you see my soul, that I wear so close to my skin, almost like a second shadow when you are around? Can you feel my heart beating, painfully, avidly, as it grasps the reason for its existence— sitting two feet across, legs crossed, feet dangling, covered in white socks and tan boots…
Maybe yes, maybe no— but I long to know.
The breakfast comes: omelette, jam, butter, and bread. You look at me and ask… “Was it something I said?”
I want to see you in the midnight’s dress Alabaster elbows and satin shoulders Open for my interpretation; To gaze and wonder at the sea green veins Charting their course From your heart to mine.
I slept early last night Holding onto this thought; The effervescence of time, Of how our memories drag on Centuries before we met Like a trail Running through the forever forests Of passing people and people passing Like shadows on a summer road.
You belong to my mind At the beginning of my dreams And the end of it An epiphany born of my eyelashes An immortal thirst A fleeting fulfilment That loves to tear me apart Only to make me whole My design is your destiny And your smile, my soul.
You look like an ocean in disguise Laughing somewhere between My heart and the horizon With a storm in your chest And sunset around your waist Wherefore I set sail Alone with an oar Parting bubbles and blossoms To touch your darkening depths Beneath white waves, And now I am drowning In your purple pulse Safe under The midnight’s dress And my hands they are coloured bright In the light of your enraptured face
Breathe baby Nights like tonight (When cold clothes the bones And flesh is just fistful of snow; Numb and delicate) Are rare
The stars wheel Don’t they? Like an umbrella on our head Once I knew Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Ursa Major But now when I look up The stars tremble Beneath the tears upon the rim of my eyes Dear lord, am I drowning? While reaching for the sky beneath my feet Like ink in water
A long while ago Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry that I could not travel both I turned back Away from the scintillating offerings From oft repeated quotes And ever appearing jargon I turned back from literature From Shakespeare’s sweet sonnets From Orwell’s orphic auguries From the cold contours of Plato’s caves From the new nothingness of Nietzsche I turned back To the primitive mind of mirages Of breathing seas And singing trees But if I were to begin my philosophy It would end with this sentence; The whole world is a theory Words using words to make sense of the words So I write with chalk on the paper And with pen on the blackboard To see if the meaning Is lost in the act of asking (It is)
So, breathe baby Nights like tonight (When the cold clothes the bones And flesh is just fistful of snow; Numb and delicate) Are rare And in the end here I have No melancholy to spare
It is 1996 And my first breath makes me cry I reach out, empty fists reaching to clench The hem of this world But all there is, is a sudden, alien emptiness Guilt flows as I find Those warm walls The nest of my nescience Dissolved, collapsed to nature’s cruel balance Or were it my kicks that brought down My Rome on me
It is 2007 And I am eleven And alone Watching a new world from old eyes Somewhere back home my mother is crying Watching my clothes, neatly folded, at the bottom shelf of the almirah But those tears won’t teach me That love won’t reach me Here, in my bunk bed covered with mosquito net My voice has settled deep in my gullet Like a sharp flint So I keep quiet For seven years In dust, duty and delusion In camouflage, country and confusion
It is 2023 And I am watching through the half open door My sun, up close, She is waiting with my world in her lap, And I wonder if she is a dream And would dissolve too on my rebirth For my life, all tragic, I had lived out in sin But her touch was magic A symphony on my skin And I was afraid to hold her Afraid too to let her go She was all I had never known She was all I would ever know My last bastion My clarion call My swan song My Eden’s fall
I wonder if being truly lost Is the same as never being found Would I know I am able to speak If I never did hear any sound There, I have spoken A pencil pushing philosopher Watching the sunset out of the window And sunrise in my bed My years passed like traffic on tarmac But I am still a kid in my head
Before you I was an afterthought A sunflower shy of the sun Walking the slow shades beneath lost footpaths Afraid of every turn So I searched for radio-silence And grew deserts in my yard Thus no one came to claim me I was both bastard and a bard
I open my eyes and your face evaporates, In thin threads of memories From the diaphanous diary Of our love that is losing Its scent by the mile So I smile and you smile And wait for time to take its toll When our flesh turns to foliage And two souls are made whole
I know that my name For you is a blessing and a curse And I am holding still your world And trying to reverse Your agony and your pain And instances insane Like catching your falling tears In the middle of the rain And I have lost some And the rest I am losing Neither by choice nor by choosing The best for us both Promising a broken oath To heal and to mend Nightmares that never end But goes on like this poem With an intent to ascend The fate of a dying flower; Which has no beauty left to lend
Before you I was an afterthought With you I breathe and burn I now have sun on my left shoulder And towards you, my sunflower, I turn
My past now grows impatient Under its tortoise shell Eons passed and I have moved Only a fingernail Closer to you
Much of my music is lost Listening to the wall clock Counting, sixty seconds and a minute Sixty minutes and an hour Twelve hours, twice over, Again and again Through wind, winter and rain This dilemma, delusion and pain Of having met you And loved you for a millennia But having no permanent memory No cup of your captured laughter No mirror of your misty eyes No sunlight captured by your tresses No sweet scent of your sighs All I am left with, are yellow pieces of fractured time And a heart that mostly murmurs For all truths out aloud are lies
The blanket we wear Smells like Sunday morning A waking warmth Of hay and honeysuckle And a quiet happiness Equally sad and empty So we hold each other From falling apart From drifting into different dreamlands Where one of us ends and the other starts
I watch as you breathe in Life, my life For I am haunted By the ghost of your breasts Buried and hidden A catacomb of our heartbeats Growing restless Like a river ever running But never reaching The estuary of my arms
You see I am obsessed With the idea of your existence Insanely infatuated So unequivocally infantile To see your warm womb As the walls of my tomb And the pulse of your veins Like all the seasons I have ever seen
I know, I know I am mad to my bones But my death is being alone Without your hand in my own So, I place myself in your hand like a petal You drop me I am cold I am hard I am metal With nothing more to see And nothing more to be With nothing to call mine And nothing is for free
I was a soldier in search of seashells On my way to a foreign land I was promised a piece of paradise But left with burying bayonet in the sand
There are omens and tokens and totems I carry in the colour of my skin Of leading strangers from ashes to Asphodel But leaving behind my own kin
And by this ocean of giving and forgetting I toss my morsel to the receding tide And build a mausoleum out on the seashore And pieces of my heart therein I hide
For the mountains I crossed on my way Told me that silence comes to those who seek Meaning at the end of an answer And not winning; because that’s for the weak
Now as I sit by lap of the waves And watch my bullet holes go larger around I align my irises to the horizon Till my heartbeats makes no more sound
