Tag: poem

  • The Men Behind Monuments

    Image by Jiyad Nassar @unsplash


    In this sudden stillness
    A final silence grows
    From beneath the dead branches
    Enveloping ants and Angels alike

    The dry mist of purpose
    That once haunted men
    Now haunts their monuments
    The mindless mortar
    Made and remade
    For each thought
    And every contour
    Which seeks in itself
    The forever form
    That everlasting aspiration
    Of becoming a being

    But the Promethean promises
    Are but promises
    Just as the silhouette stems from the shape
    So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette
    Like a circle trapped
    Within its own circumference
    Sans a seen beginning
    Sans any unseen end

    There is a witness
    For every arrival
    Till no one arrives anymore
    And then the fishes are left alone in the desert
    To drown in the mirage of memories
    The breathing carcass
    Reminiscent of living
    In an abandoned womb
    Never to awake
    Never to walk
    Like ages unspent
    Upon the faces of the rock

  • In the Light of the Darkness

    I believe the night to be beautiful
    And polite in its quiet understanding
    Of letting people be
    Alone with their monsters
    That others would never see
    For the dark cannot differ
    Between the shape and its shadow
    Nor cast colours by their causes
    Or ask more of friend and less of foe
    To night all belong
    Both the dreamer and its dreams
    The silence of frozen lakes
    And the songs of eternal streams
    But here in the deep
    Within the halls of man’s own mind
    The dark reigns ever awake
    In hope to one day find
    The answer all eyes seek
    Yet doubt to ever know;
    If the soul is but a seed
    That once then shall never grow…

  • Hubris

    I am just another
    Diluted human being
    Strained with whetstone thoughts
    And rhinestone dream
    Tracing the echo of my footsteps
    In silent halls
    Sans any walls
    Was I born to burn
    And cling to life
    Like cigarette ash
    Dying and dying
    One breath at a time?
    I can hear the puppets talk
    At night
    Their voice
    Made of wood and string
    Mirrors of what the violin sing
    My tragedy and ivory
    A comedy and ebony
    My face is falling apart
    Like wallpaper
    And what’s beneath is no longer me
    It’s a different shade
    This bruise beneath the bandage
    I am alone
    And awake
    And I know
    That I ache
    Somewhere deep inside
    Where those things hide
    Which I keep
    So not to weep
    At every pain that passes
    Like needle through my arm
    For I am just another
    Diluted human being
    Strained with whetstone thoughts
    And rhinestone dream

  • The Ash Blanket

    Last night
    In dim light
    Of half closed fridge
    My pale skin
    Shone
    Like snow on fire
    And the blunt desire
    To bruise
    And break
    These filial bonds
    Of flesh and bones
    Rose, untainted
    Like waves on sea
    Like a dream disguised as a memory

    I was sleeping
    Under the cold warmth
    Of the ash blanket
    Till people appeared
    By my bedside
    Beings sulphurous
    Silhouettes of silver smoke
    Which spoke:
    ‘Come to us
    You child of gravity
    There is a world beyond the world
    Shaped by chaos and clarity
    A latticework of lyrics
    A synagogue sans any saint
    A cosmos acclaimed by cynics
    A painting without the paint’
    And I alive in tenuous thoughts
    Of nevermore and forever
    Could only see and be
    A shadow of a reflection
    Unborn thus free
    And so those excelsior people
    With ghost hands bore me away
    Astride the light they had saved
    Back from their leftover days

    What I saw thence I cannot say
    There is nothing to remember
    Between the first dawn of January
    And the last night of December
    But there are those half dreamt moments
    When I seem to know
    The truth breathed upon me:
    That Soul is what the light don’t show

    But last night
    In dim light
    Of half closed fridge
    My pale skin
    Shone
    Like snow on fire…

  • 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

  • Marmalade

    Pieces of sunlight on my shirt
    Golden flakes caught unawares in snow
    I wear the world
    As a witness upon my eyebrow

    Pendulum thoughts, mine,
    Rising to always fall, falling to ever rise
    A deaf dance; this one legged tango
    Should I mourn
    The forgotten remembrance
    Of irony bound in common things
    Like water buried in a coconut or born in one who knows what it means to be a child
    Without being none
    I, myself, was born skinless
    In a seed of wild fern
    Wordless they named me; those voices in my head,
    Till I spoke and my friends began to fade
    One after another
    Like orange in marmalade

    The wind upon the canvas do not dry the paint
    Nor a fire miles away
    Help me find my feet
    Of all the pain in the world; it’s the loss that alone tastes sweet
    With syrup on my bruise
    And sugar on my wound
    I limp away
    From weeping windows and waking walls
    For I heard my cupboard say the other day
    Wear less and be more
    Was that a dream, a dream
    Like Dali high on sour cream?
    I wish only to know
    Can my hand reach out to my heart and squeeze
    The last drops of Carpe Diem to please
    My soul; that cotton candy wrapped in light and luck
    Made In Bed after a night of soft….

    Dear Diary
    I am exhausted
    Ginsberg and Sexton, Whitman and Poe
    Conrad, Tolstoy, Orwell and Thoreau
    I read about them all
    Copperfield and Twist
    And Einstein’s Relativity and Marie Antoinette’s false feast
    Should I sleep now
    Will the night ask me no more
    Questions and answers
    Legends and lores

    There is a spider on the bed
    (Yes, it’s a thought in my head)
    Should I scream or be quiet
    (There is nothing to be said)
    So twinkle twinkle little star
    There are bottles in the hotel bar
    And many miles to drink before I sleep
    Till the laughter stops and it soothes to weep…

  • Pillars


    I have seen Heroes
    Shinning alone on the battlefield
    Sword bare in bloodied hands
    Hiding tears behind their shield
    And the poets who wrote of courage
    Knew not from those sunlit tower
    That all wars are fought by them
    Who has no ounce of power

    I have seen Teachers
    Cradling books in their velvet hand
    Certain of the wisdom beneath the words
    That the world fails to withstand
    And the pupils who stay blind
    And believe in it all
    Are kept to learn the truth
    Nailed as paintings upon the wall

    I have seen Kings
    Holding heaven in their earthly palms
    Dive deep in the selfish seas
    And make fist while breathing alms
    And the people who praise the lord
    For the health of the dear monarch
    Knows not that the hand which feeds
    Is the one that lays the nark

    I have seen Saints
    Swimming in the grey, tepid pool alone
    And where hundreds had fallen
    The saints could never drown
    A miracle that belonged to them
    Not by the blessings of the Throne
    But because of the fact that the misery
    Was not of their own

  • 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

  • Taste of Sunlight

    Image by Riccardo Mion on unsplash


    My bed is in the corner
    Of an empty room
    The irony is self imposed
    But not without reason
    I have heard that darkness
    Gathers more in the deep
    And perhaps it shall help me sleep
    Faster than dying by lying wide awake
    Counting seconds, falling and rising
    With time’s unreceding tide.

    The curtain hanging by my bedside
    Often flutters in the night
    And it’s breath though purposeless
    Fills me with envy
    By it’s act of pure motion
    Sans a shred of emotion
    How can I be more than me
    When everything I seek I deny to see?

    Dreams; they die, my own are no exception
    Even when I have them
    Caged behind a glass case
    Cuddled in red velvet
    Caressed by Mozart’s Sonatas
    The flowers shall wilt, roots die and fruits decay
    Nature by nature of unrequitance
    Shall swallow none but one’s own
    For birds do not nest on trees unsown
    And those that I watch from the moonlit window
    They shimmer and shine
    Like gold and wine
    Broken; yes and crooked and white
    But they know unlike me the taste of sunlight.

  • Streetside Socrates

    Flesh and light
    Bone and stone
    Are same, similar; a synonym
    Of everything

    I gazed into the night
    Fragmented by the city lights
    Knifing the dreams dead in their tracks

    Scalped thoughts
    Hanging from the cumerbund
    Of the comedian
    Laugh with the wind

    There is no framework for fame
    Nietzsche is not a name
    And all that I know of shame
    Came from the fingers that blame;
    Et tu?
    Fuck you
    Bad words don’t exist
    At all
    For thoughts know not their origin
    But only the sin
    Of being
    The way they are

    Broken mirrors
    Cannot mend the man
    And broken man
    Never has a mirror

    Everything is going to disappear soon
    And the leftover void shall know
    There is nothing known as nothingness
    For even in silence the silence shall grow