THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: prose

  • 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

  • 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…

  • 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

  • Taste of Sunlight

    Image by Riccardo Mion on unsplash


    My bed is in the corner
    Of an empty room
    The irony is self imposed
    But not without reason
    I have heard that darkness
    Gathers more in the deep
    And perhaps it shall help me sleep
    Faster than dying by lying wide awake
    Counting seconds, falling and rising
    With time’s unreceding tide.

    The curtain hanging by my bedside
    Often flutters in the night
    And it’s breath though purposeless
    Fills me with envy
    By it’s act of pure motion
    Sans a shred of emotion
    How can I be more than me
    When everything I seek I deny to see?

    Dreams; they die, my own are no exception
    Even when I have them
    Caged behind a glass case
    Cuddled in red velvet
    Caressed by Mozart’s Sonatas
    The flowers shall wilt, roots die and fruits decay
    Nature by nature of unrequitance
    Shall swallow none but one’s own
    For birds do not nest on trees unsown
    And those that I watch from the moonlit window
    They shimmer and shine
    Like gold and wine
    Broken; yes and crooked and white
    But they know unlike me the taste of sunlight.

  • Streetside Socrates

    Flesh and light
    Bone and stone
    Are same, similar; a synonym
    Of everything

    I gazed into the night
    Fragmented by the city lights
    Knifing the dreams dead in their tracks

    Scalped thoughts
    Hanging from the cumerbund
    Of the comedian
    Laugh with the wind

    There is no framework for fame
    Nietzsche is not a name
    And all that I know of shame
    Came from the fingers that blame;
    Et tu?
    Fuck you
    Bad words don’t exist
    At all
    For thoughts know not their origin
    But only the sin
    Of being
    The way they are

    Broken mirrors
    Cannot mend the man
    And broken man
    Never has a mirror

    Everything is going to disappear soon
    And the leftover void shall know
    There is nothing known as nothingness
    For even in silence the silence shall grow

  • Death, Dear Friend

    Image by Dave Hoefler @ Unsplash

    Death, do not cry
    I know; you are no one’s friend
    But that does not make you; a foe
    Like all who have been and are being swept away
    Like a clove leaf upon a current
    You too are destined by design
    To sow and grow; sorrow
    That abandoned thistle tree
    Which all passes and pretends not to see

    Death, do not cry
    When your choices go wrong
    There are so many voices asking
    To add another verse to their swan song
    But you know as do I
    That music is sweet only for so long
    And it starts with no cymbals and shall end with no gong

    Death, do not cry
    People do care about you a lot
    You may not always be the fountainhead
    But you are almost always an afterthought
    And we may not think of you as we breathe
    Or when we play the games of Holy Land
    But we do rehearse our union every night
    Though not all of us understand

    Death, do not cry
    We shall meet for once and forever
    But before that I must ask an honest, humble favor:
    Of all the places for us to meet
    And greet, if you could visit me when I am fast asleep
    Then there shall be nothing for me to weep
    As I skip; the curtain call of my every emotion
    And be like a nameless raindrop falling into an aimless ocean

  • Ambit


    Outside my window
    A caterpillar crawls
    And I watch as it gains
    Inch by inch
    An eternity
    On me

  • Erosion


    I keep awake
    Watching the parched lightbulb
    (And the lightbulb perhaps watching me)
    With my hand on the warm doorknob;
    Leading halfway to hell,
    Till the caterpillar thoughts crawl out into the silence
    And cocoons of dreamless desires
    Flood the floor
    As dark pools of velvet;
    With skin like ash and skin like glue.
    Fingers of fire
    And butterfly blood
    Seals the sound of the oboe
    In the roots of time
    So the seeds of silk may flower
    And the fountainhead of pulse
    Breathe in the open every night
    To let the swan song of love;
    Traced on the tips of arched spine
    Leave the lips
    And take hold of the walls
    To make the voice of world
    Like beads of sweat; evaporate,
    And the colours of a carnal mind collapse
    Into nothingness
    Of everyday afterlife

  • Colloquy

    Some words I whisper
    Others I swallow
    The rest left to echo
    Are for silence to follow