I draw myself With a red charcoal Still breathing and burning In afterlife
The shape of my head is a shade Made of thousands of fingerprints Left by all the people I met Some I remember But mostly I forget Those with their teeth Sunk in my throat As if ripping me apart For the words that I wrote
Wind takes my torso and I am turning into a tide Flowing with flayed limbs; Deeper into the drawing Past pulp of the paper Into the girth of the ground Like roots and fruits I am sold by the pound Sold to wishes and worship Sold to order and obedience Sold to answers and acceptance Sold to nothing and negligence
Transparent flesh I design my thoughts so they can please Eyes of the beholder And as I grow older I intend to paint myself as a mosaic man And many see in me What I may see in many: Eyes coming closer Merging on the bridge of my nose A single center For my dissolving circumference And it is odd to fall inwards For the implosion leaves no leftover Other than the suspended emptiness In the middle of the throat That neither screams nor stays silent But echoes; this pencil stroke pain Rising, apprising my churning nerves Like nails dragged upon my spine
The shadow beneath my feet Portends a prerequisite that light must be nearby So I shade, the lines of my face The folds in my dress Gifting myself my gratitude In a bow made of shoelace For I am poor man Who breaks one pencil in two halves And loses both in no time For I am poor man Who when his world is being coloured Pretends it is a crime
Most nights I sleep Sitting and looking at a blank canvas As if it is the canvas which is painting me In colours kept secret by mirrors and mirages It is sad though that feelings cannot be reflected Only inflicted and affected Feelings by their virtue of being A past participle and present continuous Is man’s eternal tense A void with wisdom Aware that the sum of all it’s infinities Is simply a zero
There are times when I rhyme My gestating philosophy With archaic words So that when I speak There is rebirth And I am assured That my thoughts Those infinitesimal, dust motes Will live on In the veins of mortals Addicted to immortality
So perhaps I draw myself In a way I shouldn’t be drawn For who has seen one using charcoal To colour the perfect swan But I am not a swan, you see, I am crow beaten black and blue In an attempt to create something new Out of desolate frequencies And distilled time A still life portrait Dead by design
Has an ant ever crossed an ocean Or a swan reached the sun Has any flower ever saved a thorn Or lost love ever won
II
I scratched; Upon the whitewashed wall of my sanctum My nails bled With the semicolons and commas But the pain that rested Like autumn in my chest Stayed The heartbeats shifting dark roots and yellow leaves A raw pulse Decaying With each bartered breath (Perhaps I have written these lines before Or perhaps I have felt the same Long time back When out of the blue The blackness took over Like a bubble of bile)
Sometimes I want to be another man Someone whose shallow thoughts Never leaves his hollow lips And if I were to dissect myself In a cold blue room And remove these tumours that I can feel Lying along my spine like roadblocks I may perhaps get better But I do not want to be better Not alone and not by myself For I know my hand would betray Even if the scalpel stays loyal
So I sew my torn sweater One stitch at a time And I can feel at the back of my neck The mist beyond the window Hiding a drowsy world A quiet world From the memories of Edgar Allen Poe I don’t know… For I am sewing my sweater One stitch at a time
It is easier to break than build My grandmother told me Long ago, when my shoe size was half of what it is now We were sitting in the veranda Watching sparrows without nests Search for shade Her wrinkled hands were beautiful They knew only to give To me, to the sparrows Her today for our tomorrows I did not understand what she meant Only that she meant what she said
III
The face of my love Is an enigma A diamond made of star dust And dew drops I have seen her as none have During hours longer than light In dreams deeper than the night And yet if I were to hold A paintbrush Her shape would disappear In the shadows of my mind Like fragrance does from a flower
I know her to be beautiful Like rainbow after rain Or an ocean undressing at midnight Whispering the tales Of sailors and their sails And I often try In an absentminded earnestness That of a child never chided To try and catch her featherlight hair To hold that waterfall The obsidian madness as she sways Like a soft swan Without silhouette
The nights are hard Rebels and roses And I write of my love in poems and proses As I reach for the soft molasses Surrounding my heart Breaking and bleeding From Cupid’s blue dart
She taught me to write, you know… When all I could do was recite And bruise the pages Perhaps I with all my innocence Was nothing but a man wanted for my own murder But with her I am me; Irrepressibly free A child dressed in clothes too big for him. Perhaps I never grew up after 2007 Forever eleven An Abandoned ectoplasm Morphed in shape by satire Drowning in the desire To be wanted and stay haunted By the spectre of love
IV
I am rhyming the verses For I know nothing more My poems are to the paper What waves are to the shore
I wrote on paper And was called a poet I wrote on walls And was asked to wait On a chair nailed to the floor In a cold, cold white room Where the only sound was of my breath; No different from a writer’s womb So I sat in the pleated emptiness With a glass of water left to precipitate Watching the walls seduce me to sadness When the pendulum peeled an eight And in came this ladybug green Glasses carved on the tip of her nose She had grey pad and a bald blue pen And a red ring in the shape of rose ‘Ahem, ahem’ She said ‘Ahem, ahem’ And I coughed and cleared my throat She looked at me for a second Then this is what she wrote: ‘The subject is kind of rude He has no manners so to speak He sits like a beggar on his throne A man of power sold in sale to the weak’ It made no sense, nonsense, I tell you For she was no poet for god’s own sake She was too tidy to have chaos inside And that is how I knew she was fake ‘The subject now seems annoyed He is watching me with furrowed brows As if I have stolen something of his And now pretending that everyone knows’ Ah the audacity of this usurper Who claims my kingdom as her own I have pieces of paper in my pocket And a dozen verses to loan ‘The subject is trying to smile And I am feeling all sick and ill There is wrong with his mind He says naught but I can feel’ She knows nothing of my madness Of how it hurts to sit and smile For only writing on the wall I pretend to die once in a while ‘The subject has tears in his eyes Maybe my saying something will change But what should I say at this point That will not make him seek revenge’ The fool, the fool is writing And what a caricature does she draw Looking from behind a pair of glasses She writes what she thinks she saw ‘The subject does not comply To any form of my treatment So must be treated in harsher terms Or in an asylum must be sent’ Oh I did snatch her pen and pad And wrote down my own choice Before you judge what others have said First make sure if they even have a voice…
I painted a white line Upon a blank canvas And the people they praised me no more They could not see; That the painting was an echo Of my silence that wasn’t seen before
A poet knows The name of all places And directions to none - Not a Poet
I write because it hurts And if I scream they will know my pain I don’t want to scream Don’t want to shatter the serene mirror That holds together All false reflections The world holds dear For the blame of it Would lie on me And I have enough confessions to pardon In my soliloquy
I slept late yesterday There was a tempest inside me And my mind was anchored loose I was swayed, buffeted And at once painted still As if my soul Was the albatross From the Rime of the Ancient Mariner And I thought: Every murder is a suicide in a way Isn’t it? To surrender the right of your life to someone else Without a fight There are many types of murders Of trust, flesh and mind Common massacres Gruesome One of a kind… It’s getting dark
I should have had dinner But the lights were too bright And candles too dim The plate felt soft And the spoon too thin Or was it me Who felt brittle and blind With so many dreams to dream And so few days to do (Now that was a lie For I cherish my own incompetence Like a child does it’s once favourite but now broken toy)
I am afraid I have found The edge of my reason And the world beyond (And would you believe it?) Is a mirror… It seems me and this mirror We are obsessed with each other In finding faults In pointing out to one another Our own shrinking horizons Until one of us agrees The threshold of our limitations
I slept late yesterday (No, I already said that Pardon, it’s the mirror reflecting my memories God I am tired)
Why cry about things you can laugh at Said the quote on my bathroom mirror It wasn’t funny I thought And smiled to myself
The nights have been short Or perhaps it was I who has been stretched thin Between two impossibilities Of being here and being there An almost everywhere Every thought of mine now Feels like a bullet through the brain The very last; and in a way everlasting But new ones creep out Out of this philosophical yeast Growing in the dark keeps of my mind Nurtured with cold sweat And self taught paralysis
The toothpaste tastes funny Like old age These are those days of winter When sadness feels warm Like a hug or a cup of coffee Something to snuggle into and fall asleep Sadness; the elixir of a dying man Sadness, yes And melancholy (Pretty word) Made of me and the unholy: Thoughts, dreams, desires Snails creeping on a wet wire
I remember a time When I dreamt of being a dog And lie on the carpet Of fallen leaves Dogs can dream, can’t they? (Yes) And so I dreamt of being a dog To come full circle A perfection My being complete A zero
The wind from the window Touches my face And I blush; Love is in the air Or is it despair? How can one compare? When being utterly unaware… (I rhymed on purpose For they say poetry must taste like a painting) I gargle and gag There is blood in my spit A rose line Branching out like a symphony Clarinet and timpani Violins and bassoons Bach and Beethoven Mozart who died too soon The tap turns A thunder The tap turns All silence
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…
And the world It is falling And there are no secrets Left to share I am found Someone’s calling And all I need is To be there So it’s a goodbye Everyone And I shall see you When the summer’s sun Is finally won
I sleep upon the windowpane And the glass cracks under my face Like lightning from my breath The night below is strange; Captured stars howling On streets and in houses As people dance To hide the shadow of their shame I can smell their perfume here Thirty stories high Scent filled with lost sleep and sadness It numbs me My throat, my voice And I choke without a choice (Should I shift? Should I turn? I do…and the thunder swims to my belly The glass gasps But the shattering never comes)
Sound of a million footsteps Collapse into a single chord Time’s thread This linear, pinpoint eternity Do I merge or do I dare Far foolish when being aware That there are no ripples in the ocean Just reflections of the air Lives, candles Last days in wreath Desire turned dream Dream turned to death
I now see the eyelashes Left by a lost time For cinders on the shore For hearts saying no more For children born sans choice Once people now toys And so the dying swans dance Vying for a chance To nibble the breadcrumbs Of broken down plans And I, this vain, stitched flesh in pain Lie supine, and divine, my tears through rain And sing against the chorus Those verses that say Ask and you shall get And to get you must pray As if prayers are questions As if questions would find a way As if ways would take me home As if home is for what I pray
So I await Under the cold sun of midnight Watching myself Falling out of sight First a man Then a memory Now a stranger Forever a stray A silhouette Some shadow All silence Is what I say
