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
Last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire And the blunt desire To bruise And break These filial bonds Of flesh and bones Rose, untainted Like waves on sea Like a dream disguised as a memory
I was sleeping Under the cold warmth Of the ash blanket Till people appeared By my bedside Beings sulphurous Silhouettes of silver smoke Which spoke: ‘Come to us You child of gravity There is a world beyond the world Shaped by chaos and clarity A latticework of lyrics A synagogue sans any saint A cosmos acclaimed by cynics A painting without the paint’ And I alive in tenuous thoughts Of nevermore and forever Could only see and be A shadow of a reflection Unborn thus free And so those excelsior people With ghost hands bore me away Astride the light they had saved Back from their leftover days
What I saw thence I cannot say There is nothing to remember Between the first dawn of January And the last night of December But there are those half dreamt moments When I seem to know The truth breathed upon me: That Soul is what the light don’t show
But last night In dim light Of half closed fridge My pale skin Shone Like snow on fire…
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
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…
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
Pieces of sunlight on my shirt Golden flakes caught unawares in snow I wear the world As a witness upon my eyebrow
Pendulum thoughts, mine, Rising to always fall, falling to ever rise A deaf dance; this one legged tango Should I mourn The forgotten remembrance Of irony bound in common things Like water buried in a coconut or born in one who knows what it means to be a child Without being none I, myself, was born skinless In a seed of wild fern Wordless they named me; those voices in my head, Till I spoke and my friends began to fade One after another Like orange in marmalade
The wind upon the canvas do not dry the paint Nor a fire miles away Help me find my feet Of all the pain in the world; it’s the loss that alone tastes sweet With syrup on my bruise And sugar on my wound I limp away From weeping windows and waking walls For I heard my cupboard say the other day Wear less and be more Was that a dream, a dream Like Dali high on sour cream? I wish only to know Can my hand reach out to my heart and squeeze The last drops of Carpe Diem to please My soul; that cotton candy wrapped in light and luck Made In Bed after a night of soft….
Dear Diary I am exhausted Ginsberg and Sexton, Whitman and Poe Conrad, Tolstoy, Orwell and Thoreau I read about them all Copperfield and Twist And Einstein’s Relativity and Marie Antoinette’s false feast Should I sleep now Will the night ask me no more Questions and answers Legends and lores
There is a spider on the bed (Yes, it’s a thought in my head) Should I scream or be quiet (There is nothing to be said) So twinkle twinkle little star There are bottles in the hotel bar And many miles to drink before I sleep Till the laughter stops and it soothes to weep…
I can smell the brown sugar Melting in my tea pot And I am rooted Between two oak trees Made immovable By the stone lips oaring my depths Reaching for the sky silhouetted against me But the ache of it does not feel like tooth decay Nor the pleasure makes me shiver and rain Glass beads and spirit of grain Into the hands of praying men
I can feel my skin Breathing under your fingernails Like snail on a hot tar road While your voice in my ear Whisper garbage Something about me, my hair, My face and the rest Of me but not about As if your eyes are nothing but mirror Or old shoes spit polished this morning And my heart wanders like flies on foodstuffs Unable to digest The truth of you touching me In and beyond Anymore
Steel on the tip of my tongue Marble on the base of my back I am pierced and pinned to the pedestal A naked butterfly At once transparent and tarnished Bruised, battered and bludgeoned into being; Beautiful sans beauty
So I stare like a light bulb numb in its holder: The roof is blank A grey slate False sky Absent mind White chessboard And the omniscient blind
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.
I see yet know nothing I know but can see nothing Perhaps because I close my eyes during the day And in night I keep them open Or perhaps the day dawns when I close my eyes And night falls when I do open Thus, I am riven, cleaved clean And both parts of me are lost to the void Where they each calls for one another And each fails to answer the other So that the half words spilling through the corner of cold blue lips Become eddies; Wind painting on water And the colourless quiet Is divided equally to all drowning men
This darkness of thought Tunnels connecting the passage of time Yawn endlessly For who would turn and fall asleep When all answers of today are again questioned tomorrow
We come and go, we come and go With what desire of knowing We may never know
Splashes of white and black Stars streaked with paint brushes On the decaying horizon Universe diluted and powdered into pills To be taken twice with warm water Before the self-hypnosis servings: ‘Ode to me, ode to me The orphan child of galaxy’ A child who sees, who see: Spiders crying upon the wall And ants dying without a funeral With the human belief of being surreal Something more than Picasso’s parody of each man watered down into the same shape As mercury, slithering inside our throats, We paint the dreamland agony on our own A martyr decapitated by needle Love loaded with gunpowder kiss Lucky draw for cursory chemotherapy Armchair dissection; with thoughts clinging to the end of the scalpel Manufactured magnanimity with expired life lessons Vending machines for vison; a dime’s dream for a day Granite gods, chiselled, chewing on sand and white vapor of wisdom And we the people, popcorn patrons, watching this apocalypse through donated eyes In a fostered future where, famished children pose before the camera For takeaway Pulitzer And the humanitarian prize.
Walls with wombs Gestating hatred Watch us, the metallic vultures, as we hover With our telescope tuned for hypocrisy Our heavy hearts, aching with empathy, from behind the Kevlar vests
If only the bombs being dropped were bread There would be no war left to win
Two mirrors Broken Thousand miles apart Watch each other and weep
There is a shell of silence about us And all those who can see cannot show And all those who cannot see would not know How the world is a fish tank Submerged in an ocean And our giant leaps Reaching for stars Are paralyzed thoughts Trapped in an endless motion
So, take me to the quiet room With windows overlooking green fields And empty blackboard, Where blank books of history Are taught by children; I shall be a student of lifelong happenstance Waiting for the recess bell to ring And sunlight to flood out Into the playground And make Ghosts out of living men
The texture of wind Is not felt by the fingers Nor the weight of the shadow By the ground The time is not seen On the skin of the sky Nor is the source heard Within the sound
THE HUMAN ANVIL 