Ether

I rest my faults on my tongue
And though it is textured as glass
The taste is of raspberry
Or blood
I fail to distinguish
My throat hurts
From the cuts
The bed is warm
Like unwavering ash
Like a tired pyre
And I search with numb fingers
My eyes; closed now
For this is a dream
I am not dead
For this is a dream
There is no bed
The room I wake up to is all ochre
And I am naked waist up
Breath fills my belly
And I shiver as the cold air claims my hunger
My lungs, this ribcage holding together
Heartbeats tearing to escape
Stands out
Like fingers from my skin
I am a man no more
Just random thoughts on a paper
And my infinitesimal existence
Like rings of rising vapour
I remember being beautiful
I remember being a being
I remember writing those lyrics
Which no man could ever sing
But it is cold now
And I feel I am too old to be young
Now it is cold
And I know I am too young to be old
The winter is at the window
And it is not going to wait
The fire is long gone
Now I am just a butterfly under the blanket
And I would have closed my eyes
Had the pillow not snored back
Whispering to me
All the things that I lack
Privy to my dreams
It does so on my behalf
So when my dream does shatters
I am not alone when I laugh

Razzmatazz

Dry twigs wrestle the wind 
Shadows burn on the ground
Here I stand in the center
And the world turns around
With yellow leaves laughing
White sand dyed brown
In Nameless nothingness
I named a pronoun
All of me
All of me
At the bottom of this sea
Sand dunes shrunk to seashell
Like past framed into memory

I watch dazed morning
Walk drunk upon the shore
Where my footsteps on the sand
Leave footprints no more
As if all of my life
Was a mirage from the start
A mirror holding together
A man falling apart

All of me
All of me
At the bottom of this sea
In the sky a sun wrinkled
And stars breaking free
Am I drowning
Am I drowning
Should I breathe this darkness and lay
As a dead man in a dying womb being fed everyday
The same old desires
The same old silver songs
The same old praise and promises
That nothing would go wrong

And only if only
I could no longer be here
Be a past that never happened
And a future always near
But never coming together
With the rhythm of our heart
An end that is unending
A beginning that never did start
You and me, you and me
The Sand and the sea
Away forever
Our little infinity

The edges of the world
Like pages from a play
A Recurring razzmatazz
Occurring everyday
The blue’s beats
Jarring jazz
And ballads on the way
Razzmatazz, razzmatazz
As Liquored lovers say
“You be thought and I the mind
To reminisce and remind
That love is not litmus
To be tested everyday
Let it flower, let it grow
Be careful what you sow
For the soil takes it all
Your flight and your fall
And it’s the way of the crowd
To take as truth what is loud
While our love is all silence
Strong sans the violence
So take care of the petals
They are flesh and not metal
And do not look for reflection
Till the water; it has settled”

Dry twigs wrestle the wind
Shadows burn on the ground
Here I stand at the edge
And the world is not round
Black leaves moan
Under heels; trodden down
In Nameless nothingness
I named a pronoun
All of me
All of me
At the bottom of this sea
Falling nowhere
With two skies above me
All of me
All of me
At the bottom of this sea
Fading in the distance
Once man now memory

The I in Why?

I do not desire
To lie naked in a rattrap life
And lubricate my verse with victorian words;
Filled with awe inspiring acts
Led by mundane lust
Of Angels and Men alike
Nor do deep desires murder me
Nerve by nerve
Peeling away my eggshell skin
To illuminate the onion within;
A coiled rainbow, boiled white
Neither am I a shadow
Fallen far from crowded feet
Awaiting on indifferent paths
For a heavenly retreat
If at all I were to bare myself and be
One thing that should suffice how I see
Myself, in this crystal world
Of self reflection and askewed insight
I would be a thoughtful statue
Sitting alone in a far off land
With infinity in my head
And nothing in my hand

Thinking of You

Thoughts of you 
A wounded prism
Bleeding rainbow blood
From skin the colour of acrylic
Water upon water
Wet upon wet
(Random noise;
My pseudo poetry,
Commas and semicolons limping across the verses
In a desolate frequency
Like an empty road echoing;
The silhouettes of silent wheels
The smell of burnt rubber
And the touch of gasoline)
I long to stare at your face that stands stark against the sky
A newborn moon; unblemished
Rolling upon tethered horizons
Like a dime in the dark

O how I ache to be in your arms now
To be your ice and your fire
Your utter despair and open desire
I wish I could hold you
Like ink in my paper palm
Like an unformed word
Like a fleeting thought
I wish I could know how you see me
Am I an anchor that keeps you calm
Or wings that sets you free?
I know I heal as an afterthought
And you are careful in remembrance
And although we have met few times
These moments that pass
This liquid life
Is reshaped by our every touch
For the fire that burns us feels the same
Today, tomorrow, after an eternity again

I remember being
Your dream
When you were wide awake
A flower trapped within sunshine
And I know I am not destiny’s choice
For my voice
That dark tobacco of my baritone
Is neither honey nor nectar
And my eyes that reach out
Through the veiled carcass of some velveteen night
Belongs to shadow and to spectre
But love
Through the shards of slow time
That ebbed our feet away for many days
Now we walk
With our two hearts disguised as one

Part-time Philosophies

The ocean does not speak of sadness
For sadness has no voice that can say
That being empty is like being filled forever
An infinite without a way
And when I with my eyes look out
At a world where each face has a place
I wonder who really wins
If it’s in a circle that everyone does race
True it is tragic that in the end
There is no magic that holds all the cards
For his is the glory of the game
Who plays his joker as ace when it’s hard
And I know in this mesmerizing madness
For the follicle of that forever fame
People play their pieces for practice
Unaware that they will never be the same
And so do I yearn to sit
By the shore where horizons do cease
And thank the seed of silence
For this life that I had on a lease

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

Rowing Till The Riverbed

Let me fall now, no
Let me fade away instead
I am tired of being ever alone
Of being always afraid

I was a fool to grapple with the dark, you know,
A fool to light my heart on fire
A fool to eat the wounded ashes
To taste the honey of that sweet desire

I was blind with my eyes open
Blind to the water rising around my waist
Blind to see that I with my words
Was no different than the rest

So here I am now, here,
A face amongst other faces:
All fools condemned henceforth
To die; by hanging on her tresses

I should have known it, I should have
For it was no secret after all
That there was magic in her voice
And that it was a siren’s call

It was this damned dream, you see,
To be together in the end
So surreal that I forgot
It was all make-believe, a pretend

I am going now, I am gone
There are other lovers in the line
They ask me if she is a goddess
And I answer: Yes, if the Devil’s Divine…

The Silence Along My Spine


It is a dream I do not remember
But remember all the same
Like those faces I desire
Without knowing their name
As if in the grand scheme of things
Wherein a million stories unfold
I am just a chapter
Of a young man who grew old

These oceans which are open
These skies which are blind
These forests which aren’t silent
These mountains sans a mind
Are mine to behold and break
To bind and to find
For the similes to be kept never similar
And metaphors ever one of a kind

You can call my claims childish
Or let my words make you weep
When you see the vacuum in my voice
Hover upon my lower lip
Where the broken wind balances
Those desires and despair
And life in its likeliest form
Is heartbeat at the end of a hair

If only I could myself see and show
What I have lost in my pursuit to know
The allegories of living
Without wanting to grow
Alas, I have my own
Reason to bear the blame:
For to the man who shall leave no footprints
The dust is all the same