Tag: poet

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

Black Be The Color

The walls aren’t painted
And there are orange pips on the table
Arranged like a ten o’clock shadow
Of an ornament left in a glass case
And I dare not disturb
Her architecture
The tainted texture
That peers out, as symbols, as summations
Meaningless veracities, punctuated by punctuations.

I cough
And the dust coughs with me
For the echo is swallowed
By the floorboards
Beneath our feet
So I dance, I tiptoe
I jump and I let go
To remain suspended
An unlighted chandelier
Burning butanol or some such nonsense
In my pockets

My garden has gone grey
The flowers; asthmatic
Now wheeze in the wind
Wrinkled and waiting
For the next iteration of spring
A seasonal afterlife
That feels no soul smile and say;
I will let you live
If you follow my way

Curious is the world’s design
They who smile never know why
And they who claim that they do
Knows in their heart that it’s a lie
Is happiness something
That can never be found
Like corners of a map
Of a world that goes round

If only I had
Eyes that could see all
Every thread of a thought
From even streams and the stone
I think I know
What I would have known
That this all, this enigma
This play supposed to go on
Is not worded by us
We who think we have won
For each life afterall in the end is the same
Closed eyes, broken breaths
And lost dreams with no name.









Diaspora

I have seen the diaspora,
Seen it’s bulbous head set against Saturn’s sky,
Felt it’s pulse,
Dreaming of chalk and charcoal,
Seen it’s veins, deeper nerves,
Coursing through promises
Like an undulating snake.

Men revise,
Their adolescent mournings, teenage dreams made of,
Pink flesh laid to rest,
Against the grain of this world.
A world long forgotten by the habit of forgetting,
The shell of mirror,
Slow as sinking stone,
For lives lived, living,
With unpolluted prose,
Precise, pragmatic.

I have seen the diaspora,
The laughter of death,
That parallel passage,
Guided by fate.

The fault never lied with dark,
To light must fall the blame,
For showing that of all,
None are truly the same.

Half the pleasure,
Lies in having nothing,
And losing it all.

Here in shaped stillness,
I ache for a shattering.

Until I am no more.

Now I am no more.

Shards of Symphony

There has been a song in my head,
Long since we met,
And it had no lyrics of love,
Just a music underway,
I hum it when sad,
When happy I whistled it twice,
Only to find it everywhere, other day,
With people like me; without a choice

Ivory atoned in milk,
Alabaster laid in salt,
Your clothes, moonlight threaded,
Upon skin without a fault.

(I ramble of your beauty,
When nothing is to be thought about)

Remember the vase I gifted you once,
Wrinkled porcelain,
Thunder in glass,
And you kept it hidden, under your warm clothes,
Deep in the closet,
Lest no mourner of life, of eternal charm,
Plucks a fountain of flower,
To abide, this graceful tomb;
We adore and abide and anoint,
With feelings, like watered paint, like warm breathe,
Or something more forgettable.

I found pieces of it the other day,
Shards of symphony,
Scattered voices,
Gleaming, under the stairway,
Spiting neon light;
Forked tongue, poison.

You had after all,
Plucked one, a deep dark red,
It’s fragrance; my fear of all things left unsaid.

There is a reason roses have thorns,
Everything comes at a price,
Love is not a line in stone,
Sometimes its roll of a dice.

Now you tail windmills,
And I can see your feet, nestled in grass,
And your hand in your hair,
Untying my knots,
So the new wind, the new time,
Can hold you aloft
And make you feel at home
As if that can suffice your bohemian soul
That jukebox of rhythms
You shuffle to make whole.

Love to you was just a word to behold
Words to you were feelings to be sold
Feelings to you only a reason to be kind
Reasons to you were reasons to nevermind.

I shall remember, yes,
When waiting for the flowers to bloom
For a ship to set sail
From the corner of my room
That you, love,
Never cared after all
This was no poem or play
You were writing on the wall
But my life, this meagre, stuff made of snow
A candle you alighted
But forgot to blow
And now the wishes they linger
Like rats in the rain
For leftover love
Not poisoned with pain…