Tag: Poems

All poems

Comatose

I found the whiskey sages
Dancing in the dim
Their eyes on the music
And carved teeth on crystal rim 
They wore leather gloves and spandex 
They carried bullets in their heads
They spoke of liberty and lunacy 
And took daydreams to their beds

I found the wounded women
Walking down the aisle
Their face a plastic painting
Melting for a smile
They held too many secrets
Their eyes were far too bright
For a world that loved the dark
Who wished let there be no light 

I found the neon soldiers 
Trapped beneath a grenade pin
Soon to be a sea of roses
For it is the war that always win
They guarded children in the basement 
They were taught to stand and fight
They were told the recoil’s same
Even if the barrel’s wrong or right

I found my fallen pieces
Flowing down the ice cold river
My skin the colour of water
Burning with an old fever:
I had seen the cards beforehand 
And called out the eternal bluff
With so many lives to play
One life is not enough







December

My finger on the window 
Made a rainbow in the dust
And I could see my watered down mirage 
Gasping in surprise 
Laughter; a dry mist 
From the flesh of my throat 
As if my heart knew the humour 
Was the one that I wrote 
(I wonder if the people sitting at the table
Can hear, discern, decode, confirm)

I should have worn socks
It’s cold;
The floor, the walls, the ceiling 
The curtains, the furniture, the feeling
Should I wear it now?
My toes are already numb
And the ankles ache 
Yes, a mistake
To wear it now
Better to regret not wearing it at all
Than knowing the comfort I lost
It won’t solve 
Anything
As such

It is December 
I do not remember the last December 
Or the one before 
All the memories of past winters
Are glued together 
Indecipherable 
I was alone then
In more ways than one
Incomplete, high strung 
To come easily undone 
But not anymore…

She came from far
The horizon was her home 
I knew her reflection 
Was same as my own
Yet the ocean between us
This sapphire separation 
Was daunting, nigh haunting 
With adrift ships and lost anchors 
And mad sailor men upon the shore 
And lighthouses blinking 
“Advance No More”

We sell paper boats now
Made of torn poetry 
And write poems upon onion peels
And ripe tomatoes 
It’s beautiful 
The fragrance of homemade chicken
And her smile 
And that nodding head
And the dancing waist
She is happy 
So am I
This December 
So am I…

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

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…

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

One Drop Of A Lifetime

Would I sleep tonight
Knowing you have slept too
Tucked into blankets without borders
Dreaming of everything new
Would I sleep tonight
Knowing you have a mirror beside your bed
Which answers all your questions
With everything I left unsaid
Would I sleep tonight
Knowing we shan’t grow old
Share wrinkles in the grey of night
As we did lips in the days of gold
Would I sleep tonight
Knowing our fingers won’t anymore entwine
For yours are ash upon the altar
And I have ceased to saw my own as mine
Would I sleep tonight
Knowing you have slept too
Tucked into blankets without borders
Dreaming of everything new

Light From Another Star

The tommorow lingers far,
Like light from another star,
And there is mist,
With eyes in the middle,
That speaks with tears,
Of smoke and tar.

I talk not of human,
And their negligible nuisance of narcissistic necessity,
Nor of the world with it’s viscous veracity,
I speak of nectar, world of gods,
Poets and paramours, artists and art,
Of the innumerable sand,
Dreaming upon the beach,
And those stars falling every night,
Who never truly reach.

I speak of the brilliant acting dumb,
The sensitive roughened numb,
Blind men holding hands,
Children without a stand,
And oasis with scarlet seas,
Gold honey, dead bees.

I invoke the untamed,
I call the wild,
Into this land of frozen blood,
Where once were sowed diamonds,
Now remains but dried mud.

I know, my voice is hoarse,
And these sharp words are truly coarse,
For I too am of your kind,
The omniscient God without a mind.