THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: philosophy

  • Periphery


    Between sleeping and falling asleep 
    I lost a lifetime
    To live some dreams

  • Leftovers


    In the end
    I am just a footprint in someone’s mind
    Till the dust of time settles 
    And there is nothing more one can find

  • Branches in my Backyard


    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

  • My Woman


    He carried a corpse on his shoulder 
    A straw man made of stone
    And walked the nowhere path
    A footstep in a crowd; alone
    He had feathers on his broken back
    Which wept on silent nights
    And he wished for a shooting star
    Having never had one in sight
    The man was armed with silence 
    And buried tears in each eye
    Had no heart of which to speak of 
    And dared not ask why
    So he searched his own shadow 
    That wet the mosaic floor 
    And wondered if his life
    Even mattered anymore
    For he was a mortal man
    Who died in his own dreams
    And come night only his pillow
    Answered back his screams
    He thought of leaving it all
    And be dust and be free
    He thought of casting his anchor
    In the middle of the barren sea
    For him the changing world
    Was a wave that ever repeats
    And he questioned unto the chaos
    Why do I rhyme when nothing fits?

    Her face was a prison of prisms 
    Her eyes twin melodies of mind
    Her skin shone like vanishing velvet 
    Her kiss was one of a kind
    But she was no fabled princess 
    Wandering lost at his open door
    Nor was she a cast away goddess 
    He had once prayed to before
    She was a woman in making
    And held her heart in her own hand
    She knew the world as her oyster 
    And she a pearl in the prophetic sand
    She saw the world with its visage brimming
    With light bulbs and bright lies 
    So she searched for the one who stood 
    With bruises like midnight skies 
    He was a naked man
    Unclothed; without a name
    Who counted a single star
    Thinking that all were same
    To her he was a child unfed
    Left to roam as a newborn in wild
    Once without a home
    Through fate utterly exiled 

    He saw her hand in the ocean
    And the world closed around his eyes
    As he drowned in the water that whispered 
    Breathe now or the dream dies
    He felt her fingers upon his shoulder
    And he answered back in kind
    Till their lips sealed shut a secret 
    Which no soul could ever find
    And they danced in the depths like dolphins 
    Two kindred hearts as one
    Who wished so much for the stars
    That they grew their own sun
    So that when the leaves now rustle
    And the colours do not make sense
    They can watch the silence get slower
    And the rainbow go back in rain

  • Rowing Till The Riverbed

    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…

  • The Silence Along My Spine


    It is a dream I do not remember 
    But remember all the same
    Like those faces I desire 
    Without knowing their name
    As if in the grand scheme of things
    Wherein a million stories unfold 
    I am just a chapter 
    Of a young man who grew old

    These oceans which are open
    These skies which are blind
    These forests which aren’t silent 
    These mountains sans a mind
    Are mine to behold and break
    To bind and to find
    For the similes to be kept never similar 
    And metaphors ever one of a kind

    You can call my claims childish 
    Or let my words make you weep
    When you see the vacuum in my voice
    Hover upon my lower lip
    Where the broken wind balances 
    Those desires and despair 
    And life in its likeliest form 
    Is heartbeat at the end of a hair

    If only I could myself see and show 
    What I have lost in my pursuit to know 
    The allegories of living 
    Without wanting to grow
    Alas, I have my own 
    Reason to bear the blame:
    For to the man who shall leave no footprints 
    The dust is all the same

  • Filaments

    Have you been silent for so long
    That you wondered if you belong 
    With the people
    Who left
    Listening to all that could be heard
    Whilst wondering about each word
    As if the carcass of it’s meaning 
    Will somehow survive
    Those ages spent playing dead
    Trying to stay alive

  • Nothing to Dream

    Image by Atlas Green @unsplash

    If I could be free
    From the echoes of other people
    And be something more than
    A traffic light thought
    Winking in the dim halls of their tragic mind
    I would prefer being a butterfly
    Frozen in ice
    That way
    My beauty though long lost; euthanised,
    Will live still
    In regret
    That beautiful cancer
    Common to all men
    Drooling on sad lips of time
    Like honey gone bad;
    A tasteless parable for
    Once a good man now gone mad
    From the cold touch of metal people that I meet
    With their eyes upon my river back, my other face and feet
    With yellow leaves gathering
    In a dry rage to drown
    My steps towards the hilltop
    Within the noise of a dead town
    Asking me to surrender
    Asking me to still
    For being born amidst wrong angels
    To die right under heel

    On nights like paraffin
    When shadows too burn
    I curl into concrete
    And cease to ache
    To be deeply awake
    Of all the things I am not
    As sought by those carvers
    Shaping my form into chess pieces,
    Dull black and off white;
    A crooked king, a broken queen and two quixotic knights
    To be kept alive and conquered
    Or cast into the unheard
    Age of borrowed sentiment
    A proud brick in a ruinous monument
    Should I now pray
    To whetstones
    Wet with sweat wounds of men
    Pierced alive
    With the worms of their own wisdom
    Or within the confines of my
    Diluted divinity
    Fall prey
    To the sinful delight
    Of being right
    And fall asleep
    With this winter as witness
    And awake when the dying dream
    Is truly dead
    And the sound of turning wheels
    No longer praise
    Destinations remembered along forgotten ways…

  • In The Heart Of What We Know

    The Sea reminds me
    Of falling in love
    With a shadow
    Of a Dove
    Who, having slept in flight
    At the stroke of midnight
    Awoke falling for
    Dewdrops of sunlight

    But the Sea is sadness
    And her roots are all songs
    Left by sailors
    Too eager to sail
    Alone into oblivion
    In a hope to live a tale
    Written by some abandoned watchtower
    Laughing beside the dock

    And the Dove, crystalline in her virgin whiteness
    Covets the Shore;
    With his silence a song
    Played by the sand
    Unaware that only the lost
    Will be found
    In the seed of his sound

    Thus they remain knitted
    The Dove, Sea and Shore
    In search of another
    Forevermore
    So blind in their yearning
    Of the love they cannot find
    That none waits to see
    The one left behind

  • Mosaics

    Image by Drew Collins @unsplash


    I wish to speak with myself
    The conversation
    Neither a monologue nor a soliloquy
    But I am afraid I would not allow
    My own confessions
    This heart knows far too much
    Of envy and hate
    And much too less
    Of chance and fate; those dark mistresses
    Pulling and pushing
    The tide of each rebirth
    Should I excuse myself within reason then
    And let the age that passes through each of us
    Sunder me to atoms
    Annihilating; once and for all
    Each kingly cause
    And gangrene dream
    Festering upon the thin skin of mind;
    For the soul in the end is nothing more
    Than a shadow aware of it’s own existence.
    Or should I in opus thoughts claim
    The Midas Touch
    And let the pleasure and pain
    Every loss and gain, ravage me alive
    Into my own version of heaven and hell
    Beyond resistance and repercussions
    Or time and it’s tale
    And dare to be free
    For once all of me?
    Alas the soul cannot know
    Of which the mind did not sow
    Thus I remain here
    Within this blindness which seek
    The mirror left behind;
    And await my reflection to speak.