It is the morning after And I awake as an origami undone Only yesterday I had her arm on my chest With mine anchored round her waist Balancing our seesaw soul Making whole Those pieces we planted Like bookmarks to find The stories we memorised Keeping in mind Going almost insane Being blinded by pain Once kayaking in chaos To feel alive again
Now I watch my face shiver In the ether of her eyes Now I am fire cold with fever Falling on the rise She is here She is mine She has no say to say Far near Dear divine So I kneel but not to pray Now I watch her face shiver In the ether of my eyes Now I am fire with her fever She is falling when I rise
But I dare not confess that I dreamt of her In the early hours of last night For that would be blasphemy My being alone With only her memory Drenched monochromes Some charcoal art Of me painting her toenails pink And she murmuring shape of my heart Waiting for the words to sink
For her voice is my hymn in exile And here I wander, mile by mile A broken kite Dead dynamite Waiting for her mirage to draw me closer Towards sun kissed horizons Across daydreaming dunes And purple fields Of my pulsing past Through this desert vast, desolate and slow I search for her As the seconds grow
I can see her white hands over black countertop Passing pepper into the pot Waiting for me to finish my worship of her Waiting for me to open the refrigerator And take half a dozen eggs to scramble To toss and turn The yolk and white In the shade of the dim light Wafting from her seashell skin With wafer thin petrichor Of our last night’s rain (Did I drown in her hair? Did my gasps made her growl? Did we swim in stolen silence? Did our motions knew our goal? To be, to be Half mad in ecstasy The sea falling apart At the lips of an estuary)
The dress does to her What dust does to a diamond But she knows it not Even when I beg; a child in disguise To breathe over her facets Between her navel and her thighs But she laughs and she turns Like flower between ferns She waxes into full moon And I am a candle that ever burns To ignite at her sight To surrender without a fight To be answer to her questions Which were never answered right
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
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
I believe the night to be beautiful And polite in its quiet understanding Of letting people be Alone with their monsters That others would never see For the dark cannot differ Between the shape and its shadow Nor cast colours by their causes Or ask more of friend and less of foe To night all belong Both the dreamer and its dreams The silence of frozen lakes And the songs of eternal streams But here in the deep Within the halls of man’s own mind The dark reigns ever awake In hope to one day find The answer all eyes seek Yet doubt to ever know; If the soul is but a seed That once then shall never grow…
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…
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
I look at the wrong things and cry But tears are taboo, aren’t they? Like used razors or sandpaper towel Or the last page of a living novel And yet I do, not because I cannot avert my eyes From the still beauty Subdued by time But that I would witness In those aching final ages Filled with long and random sunlight My disappearance Into wet satin And gossamer ash Of original nothingness
If fire could speak of pain And water too of how it feels to suffocate Beneath the weight Of drowning men They would But flesh cannot heal the sky Nor blood fill a river dry For all thoughtful fantasies are unwritten tragedies Beginning at birth And only deepening when you die
So I weep for the ocean of sadness Clenched inside my throat I pray for the lambs sheltered In the veins of my battered boat And I yearn to leave the answers With my back against the dying day To rest amidst the sleeping shepherds For I have nothing more to say…
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
Forget the world Forget it ever existed for you And then watch one morning As the red sky slowly turns to blue For then you would know How true is the world And old her everyday design That began one day And remembered to stay Without you keeping the time
