THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: musings

  • Daydreams Of a Day

    I wore a blanket for a cape
    For only in dreams I can escape
    The mortal wounds
    So lovingly applied
    As an afterthought of ache

    Oft nights when the world
    Is turning inside out
    Being snowflake proud of rainbow vomit and papier-mâché pyramids
    Growing in a mindless ocean of silver sweat
    I sit as stillness amidst the walls
    Like a spineless spider flat and small
    Aping what I think
    Is the rhythm I cannot find
    Do I mind? Do I mind?
    Stars falling like dandruff on blank shoulder of the night
    Do I mind? Do I mind?
    Knowing my common mind preaches that I am one of a kind

    The cactus upon the windowsil
    Looks down on the street and see
    Other trees meditating
    Like monks on a subway free
    Half dead and half high
    Having two views of one life
    An ever burning driftwood
    Entombed in blue ice
    I am that monk
    That beggar with bright face
    Having known no sunshine, I shine
    Having known no misery, I make mine
    From the refrigerated leftover of a burnt down town
    Crying over T-shirts and Blazers, Tank tops and gown

    The world with its thorned tendrils and tremors of love
    The world with its crow’s claws and feathers of a dove
    Knows the weight and cost of a coin unspent
    For this life; a tragedy, for this life; a parody
    Is best lived,unmeasured and as if each day is on rent

    I have seen geisha queens
    Dance on aspen nights
    Play with children made of fire
    And love men afraid of light
    I have known threadbare hearts
    Bare it all upon the floor
    And yet be trodden upon
    Like a foot mat at the door
    And so much more, so much more
    I have seen and chosen to ignore
    The what if and why not
    The why now and not before
    So much more, so much more, now no more anymore

  • Short-lived Lotuses

    Forlorn face
    Hollow heart
    Granite grace
    And me
    Together we
    Are falling apart
    Like shadow of the tree
    And though they make a single sound
    All leaves are not the same
    The sky is blue
    But never new
    And memories;
    They have no name

  • A Line On The Sand


    Amidst the dunes of Rajasthan
    I breathed as an ocean would;
    Endless and eternal

  • Death, Dear Friend

    Image by Dave Hoefler @ Unsplash

    Death, do not cry
    I know; you are no one’s friend
    But that does not make you; a foe
    Like all who have been and are being swept away
    Like a clove leaf upon a current
    You too are destined by design
    To sow and grow; sorrow
    That abandoned thistle tree
    Which all passes and pretends not to see

    Death, do not cry
    When your choices go wrong
    There are so many voices asking
    To add another verse to their swan song
    But you know as do I
    That music is sweet only for so long
    And it starts with no cymbals and shall end with no gong

    Death, do not cry
    People do care about you a lot
    You may not always be the fountainhead
    But you are almost always an afterthought
    And we may not think of you as we breathe
    Or when we play the games of Holy Land
    But we do rehearse our union every night
    Though not all of us understand

    Death, do not cry
    We shall meet for once and forever
    But before that I must ask an honest, humble favor:
    Of all the places for us to meet
    And greet, if you could visit me when I am fast asleep
    Then there shall be nothing for me to weep
    As I skip; the curtain call of my every emotion
    And be like a nameless raindrop falling into an aimless ocean

  • The Art of an Artery


    I see yet know nothing
    I know but can see nothing
    Perhaps because I close my eyes during the day
    And in night I keep them open
    Or perhaps the day dawns when I close my eyes
    And night falls when I do open
    Thus, I am riven, cleaved clean
    And both parts of me are lost to the void
    Where they each calls for one another
    And each fails to answer the other
    So that the half words spilling through the corner of cold blue lips
    Become eddies;
    Wind painting on water
    And the colourless quiet
    Is divided equally to all drowning men

    This darkness of thought
    Tunnels connecting the passage of time
    Yawn endlessly
    For who would turn and fall asleep
    When all answers of today are again questioned tomorrow

    We come and go, we come and go
    With what desire of knowing
    We may never know

    Splashes of white and black
    Stars streaked with paint brushes
    On the decaying horizon
    Universe diluted and powdered into pills
    To be taken twice with warm water
    Before the self-hypnosis servings:
    ‘Ode to me, ode to me
    The orphan child of galaxy’
    A child who sees, who see:
    Spiders crying upon the wall
    And ants dying without a funeral
    With the human belief of being surreal
    Something more than Picasso’s parody of each man watered down into the same shape
    As mercury, slithering inside our throats,
    We paint the dreamland agony on our own
    A martyr decapitated by needle
    Love loaded with gunpowder kiss
    Lucky draw for cursory chemotherapy
    Armchair dissection; with thoughts clinging to the end of the scalpel
    Manufactured magnanimity with expired life lessons
    Vending machines for vison; a dime’s dream for a day
    Granite gods, chiselled, chewing on sand and white vapor of wisdom
    And we the people, popcorn patrons, watching this apocalypse through donated eyes
    In a fostered future where, famished children pose before the camera
    For takeaway Pulitzer
    And the humanitarian prize.

    Walls with wombs
    Gestating hatred
    Watch us, the metallic vultures, as we hover
    With our telescope tuned for hypocrisy
    Our heavy hearts, aching with empathy, from behind the Kevlar vests


    If only the bombs being dropped were bread
    There would be no war left to win

    Two mirrors
    Broken
    Thousand miles apart
    Watch each other and weep

    There is a shell of silence about us
    And all those who can see cannot show
    And all those who cannot see would not know
    How the world is a fish tank
    Submerged in an ocean
    And our giant leaps
    Reaching for stars
    Are paralyzed thoughts
    Trapped in an endless motion

    So, take me to the quiet room
    With windows overlooking green fields
    And empty blackboard,
    Where blank books of history
    Are taught by children;
    I shall be a student of lifelong happenstance
    Waiting for the recess bell to ring
    And sunlight to flood out
    Into the playground
    And make
    Ghosts out of living men

    The texture of wind
    Is not felt by the fingers
    Nor the weight of the shadow
    By the ground
    The time is not seen
    On the skin of the sky
    Nor is the source heard
    Within the sound