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.
Half the time, I just exist—like husks of wheat. I move along with the wind, without a thought, a care, or ambition. I do what I have been told. I pray, I preach, I learn, and I teach. I exist for the benefit of others, like a common condiment.
The thing is—I could be much more. Much, much more. Like saffron or vanilla.
But there is a sadness inside me that pulls me close, a sadness that makes melancholia look adorable—romantic in ways that rejoices my being. I wonder if there are pieces of plastic latched to my soul, making me incomplete.
Outside my window, the rain speaks. I hear the conversation between the trees, the pathway, the creaking seesaw, the blades of grass, and the drowning ants.
Should I, too, put in a word about my world?About how I have surrendered to my surroundings? How my ego has mounted a paper boat and is now heading towards the eternal eddies of societal suicide?
There is a knock.
The floor feels soft without my slippers. Numb feet makes quite a carpet. The latch has brown patches on it—rust, spread out like a map of Europe.
I remember first hearing about Turkish Delight in Narnia—how the girl opens the door of a cupboard and is transported to a land of enchantment. Well, mine takes me face-to-face with a plethora of files: red, blue, and green.
I wish I were colourblind.
But that thought is for another time. Presently, I am enamoured with my own incompetence. The door closes and the stench of garbage wafts in, with a peculiar rhythm to it—an echoing arrhythmia. It takes me four rapid blinks to come to terms with the fact that it is indeed my heart, fluttering like a stapled butterfly.
God is muted silence. For silence can be heard. But God? He cannot be. He has left the pastures to the wolves, and the forests to the sheep.
Rejoice, children! (I dared to laugh)
Is this not what every heart desires in the end? To change? To be something other than what one is born with?
Yes—the first act of violence that any man commits is against himself.
First, he desires to shed. Next, he desires to show. And finally, he desires to be sold.
We are slaves, one and all—slaves to life and love, to vision and division, to season and decision, to thought, to carelessness, to songs, to books, to faces, to sex, to laughter, to text, to limelight, to corners, to whiskey, to cigarettes, to auguries, to cabarets, to sugar, to fantasies, to all things other than reality—
I opened the bathroom door And in the dim and damning septic light Of the months old lightbulb My face, blurred and bludgeoned, By night’s nihilistic apparatus Smiled back through the broken mirror Hanging above the dripping, dead sink And I think, that is how it feels To wake up, in the middle of the night Hours after having a fight
I cupped the cold water Felt my fingers sting where the ring Has cut in my flesh Had I punched too hard at the bouquet? Were the petals bruised and bloodied? As if freshly plucked on a dewy morning By a miner’s hand Oh the anger in my throat Blue Eve around my Red Adam’s apple I knew if I let loose the bile of my belly And roar the bull’s breeding call My landlord will knock And the door would open A sliver, then a centimetre Till I am naked in the flooding light Of the gallery Absolutely awake And utterly ashamed To mutter an excuse And retire in solace
I cannot shave without tasting something of the foam It’s bitter This taste on my lips Like a thirst long not satiated Lips, last kissed Perhaps a decade ago In an alley behind an alley Where a beautiful nymph in rotten rags Had found my face handsome than those walls Closing in around us “You look much better than the bricks” She said I smiled, hiding the mortar in my molars As the rain pattered down like tar Peeling away rust from the pipes Drenching us Head to toes Like a wet painting
It has been three hours But my beard still showed Dancing around my face like a Rorschach’s blot I felt my fingers feel my skin Smooth it was Like warm pages of a new novel A novel about this modern day Don Quixote Who spent hours shaving the black spot left on the mirror My blade had blood on it And the sink sprouted red roots I watched as they dissolved And slipped down the drain It was only when the last drop was gone That I did felt the pain
I stood still till the sunlight streamed in From the half open window Like an intruder Creeping along the floor Till the corner of the door Illumined And left me cold Years old So I turned, back to my bed Where nightmares awaited Under the blanket In a dark sequin gown For dark was my friend For dark is the end And beyond that I feel nothing And nothing I comprehend
Blue lines on my face Teardrops on my dress She said, she said There is no one at my place But he wasn’t standing far The man in violent garb Pining compliments Like flowers on the barb
His brutal hands were red From all life, playing dead And like a rose to the cactus She wed, she wed Merry was the man Like cherry blossomed lies The kiss was murder weapon Aided by garter and bow ties
And so years were spent Part in bruises, part as prize With smoke in the lungs With mirror in the eyes While the violent man he waltzed Alone on the floor With a corpse in his arms To a music playing no more
“I dream of dying daffodils On a wave of my broken, favourite hills Where I as child had once laid claim When I knew myself by my name”
“But these ages have not been kind to me I was fettered but asked to spell as free Promised monuments; I was given a moment To count salt that slept in the bed of sea”
“Oh, how I wept and leapt like Sisyphus’s stone Known to all just by being unknown I was placed all high but without a head I survived it all by playing dead”
“And thus now we come to an end This poem breaks where all stories bend As no more of life will come my way I give away that, for which I pray”
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?
A poet knows The name of all places And directions to none - Not a Poet
I write because it hurts And if I scream they will know my pain I don’t want to scream Don’t want to shatter the serene mirror That holds together All false reflections The world holds dear For the blame of it Would lie on me And I have enough confessions to pardon In my soliloquy
I slept late yesterday There was a tempest inside me And my mind was anchored loose I was swayed, buffeted And at once painted still As if my soul Was the albatross From the Rime of the Ancient Mariner And I thought: Every murder is a suicide in a way Isn’t it? To surrender the right of your life to someone else Without a fight There are many types of murders Of trust, flesh and mind Common massacres Gruesome One of a kind… It’s getting dark
I should have had dinner But the lights were too bright And candles too dim The plate felt soft And the spoon too thin Or was it me Who felt brittle and blind With so many dreams to dream And so few days to do (Now that was a lie For I cherish my own incompetence Like a child does it’s once favourite but now broken toy)
I am afraid I have found The edge of my reason And the world beyond (And would you believe it?) Is a mirror… It seems me and this mirror We are obsessed with each other In finding faults In pointing out to one another Our own shrinking horizons Until one of us agrees The threshold of our limitations
I slept late yesterday (No, I already said that Pardon, it’s the mirror reflecting my memories God I am tired)
And the world It is falling And there are no secrets Left to share I am found Someone’s calling And all I need is To be there So it’s a goodbye Everyone And I shall see you When the summer’s sun Is finally won
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 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
