I can hear the roots tear Across the breast of resting soil Like blind fingers, stretching the Depths of darkness, Those long forgotten by time For the hours; they fly only above the ground The black womb is all silence And frozen thoughts: Except those murmurs of memories Left by faded footsteps And shadows parched under the sun Of people who could not turn, away. I hear them too, their thoughts, In the leaves yawning with the wind And fruits falling with the same It’s bittersweet syrup; tears and sweat of toil gone unremembered A destiny dismembered Like roots they yearn no reason Nor do they desire The crystal sunlight reserved for carving men All that is needed for the flower to bloom And the fruit to bubble without bursting Is this truth soaked with pain That they stand alive and upright On the shoulders of hanging men
I have danced Many a dances Without a song in my mind And I saw many a chances Yet pretended to be blind There were reasons For these decisions But those reasons were not mine I was a stone, sought for statues But born on an incline And so I fell down the narrow Walls, without a ledge Trapped between tombstones Out of time, for an age And now I await in the dungeons With my heart on the ground In search of an echo That can be heard without a sound
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
I keep awake Watching the parched lightbulb (And the lightbulb perhaps watching me) With my hand on the warm doorknob; Leading halfway to hell, Till the caterpillar thoughts crawl out into the silence And cocoons of dreamless desires Flood the floor As dark pools of velvet; With skin like ash and skin like glue. Fingers of fire And butterfly blood Seals the sound of the oboe In the roots of time So the seeds of silk may flower And the fountainhead of pulse Breathe in the open every night To let the swan song of love; Traced on the tips of arched spine Leave the lips And take hold of the walls To make the voice of world Like beads of sweat; evaporate, And the colours of a carnal mind collapse Into nothingness Of everyday afterlife
Forget the world Forget it ever existed for you And then watch one morning As the red sky slowly turns to blue For then you would know How true is the world And old her everyday design That began one day And remembered to stay Without you keeping the time
Here in the dim lit room Held together with velcro I await for an awakening There is a gaggle of gods about me And I hear the mice being murdered in rafters While my stereo melds a melody An edible static like Ants in my mouth And bees on my tongue So I spit the honey and drink the stings And I drown the birds and cage the wings To breathe, to breathe The liquid light From the cigarette between my gasoline lips In amorous delight
II
The flame of my flesh and this napthalene world Resting upon a rusted needlepoint Take heed of the dust motes Suspended in time For they are you And they are me Awaiting With nothing to see In the far too near eternity
III
I see stars in my bedroom And prophets under my eye Rainbows growing from my skin As I fall into the sky And there is a hymn in my ears That aches “Praise to thee” And I am drowning in my tears Eating a faded tapestry
Her eyes were on the fire Her fingers in the dough The smoke; it left her breathless Like the kerosene she poured into the stove The sweat dipped her lashes To her tears were all blind She was only a shadow on the wall Though being a woman one of a kind
She had trapped Ganges in her hair And Pharaohs praised her lotus feet Her’s was Mumtaz’s Taj And to her belonged the Papal Seat But all that was her she had given In dowry for her father’s name, With the hope she would be treasured And not burnt alive for the same
But soon a time shall come When a Sita will not walk A false Ordeal of Fire So blind people would not talk And soon a time shall come When a Draupadi will not accept The men and their game of dice Weighted against her self-respect And no longer any Eve shall answer For Adam’s own intent And let a Mother be always a Martyr And Father always a Saint
THE HUMAN ANVIL 