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.)