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)
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
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
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
Let me fall now, no Let me fade away instead I am tired of being ever alone Of being always afraid
I was a fool to grapple with the dark, you know, A fool to light my heart on fire A fool to eat the wounded ashes To taste the honey of that sweet desire
I was blind with my eyes open Blind to the water rising around my waist Blind to see that I with my words Was no different than the rest
So here I am now, here, A face amongst other faces: All fools condemned henceforth To die; by hanging on her tresses
I should have known it, I should have For it was no secret after all That there was magic in her voice And that it was a siren’s call
It was this damned dream, you see, To be together in the end So surreal that I forgot It was all make-believe, a pretend
I am going now, I am gone There are other lovers in the line They ask me if she is a goddess And I answer: Yes, if the Devil’s Divine…
In this sudden stillness A final silence grows From beneath the dead branches Enveloping ants and Angels alike
The dry mist of purpose That once haunted men Now haunts their monuments The mindless mortar Made and remade For each thought And every contour Which seeks in itself The forever form That everlasting aspiration Of becoming a being
But the Promethean promises Are but promises Just as the silhouette stems from the shape So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette Like a circle trapped Within its own circumference Sans a seen beginning Sans any unseen end
There is a witness For every arrival Till no one arrives anymore And then the fishes are left alone in the desert To drown in the mirage of memories The breathing carcass Reminiscent of living In an abandoned womb Never to awake Never to walk Like ages unspent Upon the faces of the rock
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…
All I can think about is dust and dusk And drowning in a shattered sea Made of glass Like a photograph of a falling man Who is never truly falling But eternally trapped With a suspended scream In an endless dream Like a dreamless wraith; Weightless and wordless As an orphan in death
But sometimes the night is too strong for me to sleep And the dreams I have are too dark for me to keep So I become a cobweb on the far wall Or a three pin plug lost in a socket Some crumpled paper on the floor Or a faded face in an old heart shaped locket A catharsis of cause Building prisons to be free An empty ship sailing An emptier sea
Where there is fog in the air And yet I stare Like a blind man blinking Without thinking at the sky Wondering in my own vacuum About the mute purpose of ‘Why’ With voices at the edge of my vision And footsteps at the back of my mind I am dreaming of being asleep And afraid of losing what I cannot find
Thus, in this black and white world In this sharp and smooth world In this loud and quiet world In this bitter and sweet world In this dull and fragrant world I shall remain awake Till a different tomorrow
I was born out of the blue Like a star without a face And shall one day be falling too As dust without a trace In hope that when I am gone Those very few whom I knew Kept something of the light With which their wish came true…
