THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: Poetry

All poetry

  • Incandescent

    I was born out of the blue
    Like a star without a face
    And shall one day be falling too
    As dust without a trace
    In hope that when I am gone
    Those very few whom I knew
    Kept something of the light
    With which their wish came true…

  • 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

  • The Painted Panther

    She was a painted panther
    Black skin and velvet dye
    Her eyes had all the answers
    But her lips knew when to lie
    Her home was a silver wasteland
    A piece of moon was her throne at night
    She spoke only in shadows
    And heard only the sound of light
    Her shape was god and movement
    And her name was without a face
    People worshipped her from far
    Like a pilgrim without a place
    And before long we all will be dreaming
    Her dreams on the final bed
    Where all eyes turn inward ever after
    And no more any word is said
    Because she was a painted panther
    Black skin and velvet dye
    Her eyes had all the answers
    But her lips knew when to lie

  • Akin

    Let me go
    And I shall be
    Something akin
    To a memory
    My flesh it burns
    My bones they weigh
    The nights are tough
    And it’s hard these days
    For my soul it wanes
    Like wax neath flame
    And I know the pain
    To always feel the same
    Thus there is no way
    Where I can sow
    A seed of pearl
    For a sea to grow
    So I shall pass
    Through the veil of sand
    Alone with eternity
    Hand in hand…

  • An Answer to the Abyss

    This moment
    It is endless
    There is nothing more to be
    It is the past you predicted
    And future you didn’t see…

  • Nescience

    I wait at the newspaper stand
    Reading, the morning is grey
    Ash tinted
    Like an old man’s asthma

    Buds of people are sprouting
    From windows and eggshell alleyways
    Dressed in yesterday’s dreams
    And tommorow’s promises
    Faces creased, bespectacled
    With white hairs a halo
    From the century long sunlight
    Age ever ached to swallow

    A ballad pours from the the barbershop
    The old stereo is crooning about
    Footsteps falling on azure fields
    And carts on country roads
    I can smell the aftershave
    At once bitter and sweet
    The razor once again vacant
    Without the borrowed heartbeat

    There is a fallacy here
    Between the words and vision
    I read and see
    The stories seem vibrant but life colour-free
    Perhaps it is the weight of being
    That makes it so
    For all of us do wither
    But only some of us grow

    The children have gathered on the footpath
    A bell in some temple tolls
    The priests are praying for bliss
    And in laughter a football rolls
    I watch, I watch
    The world divided in unison
    Each hour be day or night
    Being a part of every season

    So I pay my fair share
    It’s time for me to leave
    And be one amongst the masses
    Who in eternity believe
    Of everyday man and their everyday deeds
    In the cycle of fruit from the flower and flower from the seeds
    If only one would question; Does the roots if ever know?
    Of the world that blooms outside from their breaths buried below

  • 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…

  • Lyra


    What heaven and earth shall answer me
    What fire and brimstone shall answer me
    What thunder and tempest shall answer me
    When all I ask in a whisper
    Is the source of their silence