THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: past

  • 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

  • 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 Half Past

    It was half past ten
    In the broken clock
    Light flooded from the bathroom
    Vintage; as if streaming from another time;
    A past not yet undone by dialysis,
    I laid ankle deep in silk
    The shawl around my neck and feet
    Splitting me in two tragedies;
    Naked and none, while
    The feathers of my pillow whispered in their broken flight: “Do not close your eyes or all that you fear shall come alive”
    There was something in those words
    That left me speechless
    And so I slept
    Wide awake
    Breathing only for breathing’s sake.

  • 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.