I saw myself in the sundried leaves,
In the lost rustle of a tired morning,
And the ache reminded me
Of my words in a wastebasket,
Shrivelled and softened by the ceramic blows
Of a morning tea
And I dared not unravel
The smothered ink
With my teaspoon
For who knows what wound,
Its mutilated mind would bestow,
As a belly on my boon.
I chose rhyme over meaning
And choose doors over ceiling,
Walking away
From under trapped moon,
Those uneclipsed chandelier
Into another room:
A quiet place,
A simpler explanation,
Survival through survival,
Where my shadow is not my rival.
The dawn taught me to look for the sun,
But dusk divided my attention,
Its scattered light through broken ice
Like a melting rainbow
Of myriad thoughts,
And the colours drowning time
Till all that remains of the pain
Is silent suffocation
Dark made breath
And men made death
So I befriended the feeling of loneliness
The echoes had things to say,
But the conversation fell silent,
When the game found that there is only one to play.
Often, half my heart is in something else,
For the idea of wholehearted surrender,
The sin of transparency, of nakedness
Of allowing others to converse:
With the frightened child; nascent and wild,
With the broken man; unwilling to understand,
With the future me; who can no more foresee,
Is a debt of denial.
There is a shimmer in my soul,
But they are just ashes in the hole,
There are wrinkles on my heartbeat
And every second takes a toll.
My worst memories are dreams,
Nightmares; imagined and shaped,
Catalogued with colours,
Perfected without an escape.
So I can train for the agony,
The world was supposed to bring,
That’s why I focused on the chorus,
When I was supposed to sing.
Hear, the murmur that passes from the window into the ink,
Hear, the poetry teeming with applauses from the bottom of the sink,
Hear, the tragedies being turned with the poker by the hearth,
Hear, the comedies being created at the moment of our birth.
Tag: time
-
Ceramic Mornings
-
All My Reflections
If music could be made,
Then all rhythms would need a roof.
I am just a quiet kid walking on a silent sidewalk,
Measuring the distance between two tiles,
Counting yellow leaves amongst green,
Ticketing my thoughts beside the traffic light,
And being a lamppost to remain unseen.
My eraser is razor sharp
And my pencilled Picassos
Burn without vapours,
Leaving white carbon,
Like an unprinted newspaper.
This is the heading of the day:
“Do you not do not believe what you say.”
(Was that a question.
And…was that a question too?
Yes, two.
Perhaps.
Who am I to question…)
They brought me from zero
And they taught me infinity,
So I could extrapolate
The contraption called concession,
That middle ground
Where, no one is around,
To plant a seed,
Or to paint a shade.
So, my mind, like every mind has come
To a common conclusion:
That each drawing needs
The name of an artist,
For then, the art can be torn apart.
You cannot hang an anonymous, can you?
It’s the way of the world, boy,
It’s the task of time.
If you divide your days
Between work and play,
You can have coffee at eight,
And your wine at nine.
I am writing like a maniac,
Mesmerised by my own vanity.
Didn’t once, amongst scientists posing as philosophers,
In a shivering old shanty
By the backdoor of my dream,
I said that needle is the greatest weapon ever invented;
For it sews together torn men
And sends them back to be torn apart again,
Stitch by violent stitch,
Till it cannot know which is which:
Cain or Abel,
Bible or Aesop’s Fable,
Eliot or Gertrude Stein,
The Monster or Frankenstein.
Often, when my mind stills,
I can smell my nostrils
And taste my tongue,
Draw mirrors with my eyes,
And make my face go young.
It is a miracle that in silence
One can hear more of all:
The cocoon breathing for caterpillar,
And incense stick in the prayer hall.
I have toothache since yesterday,
So pardon if I seem to mumble,
Bottling sulphur in my philosophy
And murder whilst being humble.
I am a student of disguise;
To believe me is to mimic surprise. -
The Rites of Remembering
Measure me in marigolds
For in a throw-away thesaurus, outside a church,
I grappled with the dappled god of meaning,
And lost.
What is light and dark?
Where is heaven and hell?
If not in the act of becoming one,
At the last peal of the bell.
(Pardon my parody, but the juxtaposition is justified)
Am I pregnant with pain?
Crawling on the polyester carpet of my burnt-down building,
Wondering if the watchman can watch my agony,
Or the torch is just an ornament,
Like for a cripple is the cane.
Should I wither or give birth?
Is there not enough on this earth:
Pain, I mean; the people they can pray,
Dancing upon the anthill,
A divine massacre so to say,
Thus I ask for an answer and the Answer, it asks:
Is that your true face,
Or the mask of your masks?
Should I memorise now,
The punctuations on my face?
Or claw down to a carcass,
The primordial preface?
Whence time could be tasted,
As old flint struck new bone,
When men bowed and prayed,
To the shape of the stone.
So, Summon me, Suleiman;
Who darkened the Siberian plain,
Red snow on his arrow-tip
From the blood of a thousand slain.
Summon me too, Great Elixir,
He of immortal name,
Who tore down towers of sandstone,
As part of a checkered game.
Summon me, Lady Myleth,
She who crowned her husband as Queen,
And watched as the kingdom danced
On the watered edge of a dagger unseen.
Summon me too, the People Pleaser,
For whom did the senate end,
But died as an enemy
In the circle of enslaved friends.
Thus, my answer to the Answer,
Is a question in disguise
For isn’t truth an orphan
Born out of lies?
I ask: Do I dwell on the delusion,
That maybe everything is as it should be,
That change is a charlatan
Only a reflection of what could be,
As the nature of all things,
Is to echo and not sing,
Why tie the knot and be anchored,
When you can hold onto the string? -
A Buffet
Shell of a man
In Hell, as he can:
Only think of the deeds,
You did.
When he trusted you most,
You just played the host,
And when the guests were all gone,
You left.
It is four in the morning
And I am cold in my blanket,
With yesterday’s breakfast
Still fresh in its mourning.
The honey runs warm,
But the bread is tough
I stoke coals under my coat,
And now my flesh says enough
I melt, and I merge
Am I the candle on the cake?
Years have passed unmarked,
I worry about the last second before being awake.
This pain wasn’t in my plan, you know,
Nobody caters for such cataclysm,
The eventual demise,
That permanent procrastination
In watching star-filled skies
Reflecting in the unseeing eyes; the dead light
Like diluted dynamite.
Why the world shifts, flutters, ebbs and flood,
Why tears are closer to the heart than colour of the blood,
I have no answers, just assumptions;
Half drawn sketches
Plucked from memory
In this Gaussian garden
Of life’s self-centredness.
Old age
It knocked on my door
Like neighbour.
He had nowhere to go,
And I had nowhere to be,
So we sat down together;
An empty mouth and a bad knee.
He spoke of the past,
And I smiled at his tone,
Mimicking a million voices,
To make me forget: I was alone.
Shell of a man
In Hell, as he can:
Only think of the deeds,
You did.
When he trusted you most,
You just played the host,
And when the guests were all gone,
You left. -
A Confetti of Concussions
I licked the ink-pot
For leftover words—
Words whose foeticide haunts me
Like laughter
At the end of my eulogy
I succumb to the watered down version of myself
They watch me—
As I haunt fireflies under streetlights:
Like a modern mosque,
Some cannibalised church
A trapped temple
Random discourse
A faint idea
Keeling over the volume of vomit
Ready to be regurgitated
Like a scripture
Of my life
The moon pools like piss
Around my ankles
As I weep
Watching my nightmares
Walk the night
Whilst I fade—
From sky’s painted blue to horizon’s scratched red
When I follow
The pole star of no path
Like a wish
Yearning to be granted
A Yggdrasil, dying to be planted
And then
Left alone
To be inert
At birth
Standing somewhere
I apologised to the air-
It isn’t fair, I said
Half grateful, part afraid
Of being proven wrong in my regret—
The closest thing to a closeted fate
And it’s easier to evaporate
In the space between
My neck and my pillow
And became the indivisible
That incalculable afterthought
Which succumbs
Ever so wilfully
To dream’s dying desires-
Like a wound
Unwilling to heal
And able to feel
The hurt, all the pain,
Driving the flesh slowly insane
Inch by inch
Till all that remains of one
Is a red hand
Reaching for the heart
I let my mind unravel
Like a knotted string
That never went through
The eye of the needle
My theory for this is that sometimes
The affliction comes from affection-
Affection for the effects of the affliction
As if the race between the tortoise and the hare
Was won by the tortoise
While never being there
At the finish line
And there is much I need to ask
From myself before that,
But the catapult of questions
Can only aim so far
So I vie for the fruits
Hanging on the lower branches
Sweet residues, softer shadows
Of a grand world
Made of crystals and confetti
Confessions and curiosities
A woollen world
Of shapeless horizons
And mirror-tinted sea
Made of mythical people
For whom the world comes from ‘Me’
I wish to cover the world under the blanket
And tell the ghost story
Of how it all ended
At the very beginning
-
The First Light
We are sitting in a sun-blown café
in the far corner, alone,
at 6 in the morning.
You are wearing your blue jeans
and my t-shirt—
washed out, white, far too large—
fitting you perfectly.
The waitress is dusting the tables,
pulling up the chairs,
shaking the table salt containers,
piling up tissue paper.
I watch as the dust motes play in the breeze
by the window—behind your hair.
They glow auburn—your hair, not the dust motes.
I was wrong to ask for open hair.
It looks lovelier now, tied in a loose bun,
with wayward strands
falling and cupping the contours of your face.
I watch in silence as the cups of coffee are laid,
watch as the steam rises
and veils your face—
You wink.
I smile.
You sip.
I smile again.
You ask something.
I nod, far too captivated by the rings on your hand—
the black from me,
and the blue from your mother.
They rest on your skin,
absorbing your essence,
your touch,
the warmth I long for—
something more than black coffee.
The conversation begins,
and I try to keep up
as words cling to your pink lips
and memories roll down
from the tip of your tongue.
Your eyes dance,
the brown in them melting
under the sunlight.
I wonder what you see—
how deep, how far?
Can you see my soul, that I wear
so close to my skin,
almost like a second shadow
when you are around?
Can you feel my heart beating,
painfully, avidly,
as it grasps
the reason for its existence—
sitting two feet across,
legs crossed, feet dangling,
covered in white socks
and tan boots…
Maybe yes, maybe no—
but I long to know.
The breakfast comes:
omelette, jam, butter, and bread.
You look at me and ask…
“Was it something I said?” -
Toes of Time
I whisper the words you were not meant to read If one were to wipe me from your memory,
you would still be you,
and I would still be me
walking the same paths,
crossing the same crossroads,
eyes on the sun,
hearts aflutter,
searching for a glimpse:
one for the brown hand,
and one for the white,
one for the long days,
and one for the night.
I wish I could close the world,
draw each corner of it unto me
like a blanket,
like falling asleep at the center of petals
and let the silence mould me
into something beautiful,
something lost,
something forgotten,
so that when I am found
in the middle of nowhere,
a child
unable to understand
the depths of the finger he holds to walk
I am appreciated,
welcomed home,
and not left
like a wrapper
on the road.
I feel the feathers in my bones,
and eddies in my soul,
as my mind flows
passing through life,
through gentle retributions,
via murmured aspirations
like wave after wave,
conquering and crashing,
a second of victory,
only to dissolve,
and dance on the auburn sand
between time’s pink toes,
walking on eternity’s shore,
barefoot.
I miss the time
when my shadow was small. -
Crevasses
There is something about memories
That never lets me trust them
Maybe because they appear
When I have nothing more to think
Or perhaps because I can think of nothing more
The paradox is a juxtaposition
Memories, like dust on a photograph, fading,
Reminiscent of a forgotten spider’s web
In the cold corner of a locked room
At the end of an abandoned hallway
Of a castle in ruin
And if I were to drop a stone
In the crevasses of my mind
The sound would be of memories
Coming back to life
O Forgetful me
Remember the sea
That which goes silent
When the sun goes down
But Dreams!
Those nocturnal delights
Full of sins and sensibilities
Like a ballerina en pointe on a needle
A sylph threaded
And wedded to life’s leftover canvas
To stitch and make whole
Pieces of prosaic poetry
Oh, the dreams are my delicacies
With daydreaming being my favourite
The flavour; incurably sweet yet alarmingly bitter
As I teeter
Between death and sleep
Between Morpheus and Orpheus
Between soliloquies and singing
For a drifting island of my own
Where waves are stories grown
And I sail all alone
Towards horizons
Etched in stone
But reality is like rust
Over time it chips away
Parts of you; to take you apart,
And away from your Cinderella story,
Reality, that monster which appears
When fairy tales of everyone coalesce
And things that made sense
Becomes white-noise in your ears
The blinding buzz
At once a siren and a lullaby
So that you sleepwalk
Out into the ocean of possibilities
To first drown and then float
Before a man and now a boat,
To get boarded on and sailed
Just another oyster that failed
In understanding the pearls of wisdom;
That not all ports get hailed -
The Ghost Of Your Breasts
My past now grows impatient
Under its tortoise shell
Eons passed and I have moved
Only a fingernail
Closer to you
Much of my music is lost
Listening to the wall clock
Counting, sixty seconds and a minute
Sixty minutes and an hour
Twelve hours, twice over,
Again and again
Through wind, winter and rain
This dilemma, delusion and pain
Of having met you
And loved you for a millennia
But having no permanent memory
No cup of your captured laughter
No mirror of your misty eyes
No sunlight captured by your tresses
No sweet scent of your sighs
All I am left with, are yellow pieces of fractured time
And a heart that mostly murmurs
For all truths out aloud are lies
The blanket we wear
Smells like Sunday morning
A waking warmth
Of hay and honeysuckle
And a quiet happiness
Equally sad and empty
So we hold each other
From falling apart
From drifting into different dreamlands
Where one of us ends and the other starts
I watch as you breathe in
Life, my life
For I am haunted
By the ghost of your breasts
Buried and hidden
A catacomb of our heartbeats
Growing restless
Like a river ever running
But never reaching
The estuary of my arms
You see
I am obsessed
With the idea of your existence
Insanely infatuated
So unequivocally infantile
To see your warm womb
As the walls of my tomb
And the pulse of your veins
Like all the seasons I have ever seen
I know, I know
I am mad to my bones
But my death is being alone
Without your hand in my own
So, I place myself in your hand like a petal
You drop me
I am cold
I am hard
I am metal
With nothing more to see
And nothing more to be
With nothing to call mine
And nothing is for free -
Ashes and Eyelashes
I see strangers with my face
Wave at me from afar
They line the luminous city
With knowledge in their hand
While I am fishing for sequin sardines
Left upon the land
In my mind the caltrops stops
Every thought that grew from ground
For Promethean parentheses
My open mind is unsound
I shift and sway, I shift and sway
Holding on to sweet yesterday
For the World’s decree
Is that dreams are free
But to breathe life in them
I have to pay
Pauper with papers
I write of thousand priceless things
I have feathers made of vapours
But that does not make them wings
So I turn around and retreat
When it’s time for me fly
For who would lend a lap
When it’s time for me to die
I have my fingers in the sand
And I am searching for lost time
Would I be shown mercy in the end
If I solved my own crime?