The tip of the grass was yellow The root of the grass was green They waved at me like water in winter And I waved back just glad at being seen The words rolled back Dyeing my tongue Like a dry river
Rocks and pebbles Fishbones and silt Traced my thorax Grinding my guilt So I could swallow and wallow The echo of oars Belonging to those ancient mariners before me Who sought loneliness And found it One step before horizon
II
In my dream I pool out from the fissure of earth After a midlife rebirth Gleaming, polished, welted and wet Watching the woman holding my fate Nestled like a flower Asleep in my rubicon arms Dreaming of fragrance At once tender and torn; Oh to be born beautiful And in all beauties, a unicorn, In my mythical ache I keep this universe at stake For it’s brutal to awake When I am so brittle to break.
It is night But the dark shines A soft black Such perceptible blindness Such untouchable familiarity Should I succumb to the magic touch? Drawn like a dying man to the nectar of her neck Should I summarise eons of my afterthoughts in an afternoon with her? And let her reciprocate the same On a kohl claimed evening So my ashtray mind Can drift And ignite My field of dreams A purple blue; That colour of a newfound forgetfulness Unnoticed to the irises of her eyes.
I dim and she shimmers As we dance in the glass case She; of velvet toes And I; of rubber gloves With her hand in my hand Like time through sand Passing, and staying This melting portrait Of our memories And I am aware, suddenly, At the soft sweetness of everything That percolates into the inchoate perfection Wavering and waiting to crystallise in our kiss; I lean in And the world holds still Till another breath finds me And it feels what I feel
I found her seashells burning Sand soaked Scented with cardamom They shone; as white stars neath violent waves As fading scars Of a fallen sky
I touched the constellations on her skin Like a morse code of our memories: The soft bed, warm blanket, cold window and quiet tea Mornings melting into afternoons so the nights could be free
But those dreams kept us awake With heartbeats hiding behind the hour hand A little early, a little late Others plans against our fate
And I know my reminiscence Does not remind one of anything In its vague wordings Of my own ossuary But I rather turn back time, than tiptoe, Into the arms of my love And watch our world burn around us So people could find a path To solace To sanity To self
Burning seashells Can fire keep the water alive? Like the past that feeds on and into the future Fostering the festering Those needlework lies That sewed together the sewers of my soul From overflowing into my eyes To break the view, and the vision The same as that of flies
Man overboard There is mermaid on his mind: Holding his private pearl Made of pieces one of a kind, His heart has no anchor But his toes are touching the shore Waiting to become a fin So he does not drown anymore And be one with that blue She promised with her lips Of how ocean would taste sweet In sharing of their sips
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?”
I want to see you in the midnight’s dress Alabaster elbows and satin shoulders Open for my interpretation; To gaze and wonder at the sea green veins Charting their course From your heart to mine.
I slept early last night Holding onto this thought; The effervescence of time, Of how our memories drag on Centuries before we met Like a trail Running through the forever forests Of passing people and people passing Like shadows on a summer road.
You belong to my mind At the beginning of my dreams And the end of it An epiphany born of my eyelashes An immortal thirst A fleeting fulfilment That loves to tear me apart Only to make me whole My design is your destiny And your smile, my soul.
You look like an ocean in disguise Laughing somewhere between My heart and the horizon With a storm in your chest And sunset around your waist Wherefore I set sail Alone with an oar Parting bubbles and blossoms To touch your darkening depths Beneath white waves, And now I am drowning In your purple pulse Safe under The midnight’s dress And my hands they are coloured bright In the light of your enraptured face
I wonder if being truly lost Is the same as never being found Would I know I am able to speak If I never did hear any sound There, I have spoken A pencil pushing philosopher Watching the sunset out of the window And sunrise in my bed My years passed like traffic on tarmac But I am still a kid in my head
Before you I was an afterthought A sunflower shy of the sun Walking the slow shades beneath lost footpaths Afraid of every turn So I searched for radio-silence And grew deserts in my yard Thus no one came to claim me I was both bastard and a bard
I open my eyes and your face evaporates, In thin threads of memories From the diaphanous diary Of our love that is losing Its scent by the mile So I smile and you smile And wait for time to take its toll When our flesh turns to foliage And two souls are made whole
I know that my name For you is a blessing and a curse And I am holding still your world And trying to reverse Your agony and your pain And instances insane Like catching your falling tears In the middle of the rain And I have lost some And the rest I am losing Neither by choice nor by choosing The best for us both Promising a broken oath To heal and to mend Nightmares that never end But goes on like this poem With an intent to ascend The fate of a dying flower; Which has no beauty left to lend
Before you I was an afterthought With you I breathe and burn I now have sun on my left shoulder And towards you, my sunflower, I turn
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
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 draw myself With a red charcoal Still breathing and burning In afterlife
The shape of my head is a shade Made of thousands of fingerprints Left by all the people I met Some I remember But mostly I forget Those with their teeth Sunk in my throat As if ripping me apart For the words that I wrote
Wind takes my torso and I am turning into a tide Flowing with flayed limbs; Deeper into the drawing Past pulp of the paper Into the girth of the ground Like roots and fruits I am sold by the pound Sold to wishes and worship Sold to order and obedience Sold to answers and acceptance Sold to nothing and negligence
Transparent flesh I design my thoughts so they can please Eyes of the beholder And as I grow older I intend to paint myself as a mosaic man And many see in me What I may see in many: Eyes coming closer Merging on the bridge of my nose A single center For my dissolving circumference And it is odd to fall inwards For the implosion leaves no leftover Other than the suspended emptiness In the middle of the throat That neither screams nor stays silent But echoes; this pencil stroke pain Rising, apprising my churning nerves Like nails dragged upon my spine
The shadow beneath my feet Portends a prerequisite that light must be nearby So I shade, the lines of my face The folds in my dress Gifting myself my gratitude In a bow made of shoelace For I am poor man Who breaks one pencil in two halves And loses both in no time For I am poor man Who when his world is being coloured Pretends it is a crime
Most nights I sleep Sitting and looking at a blank canvas As if it is the canvas which is painting me In colours kept secret by mirrors and mirages It is sad though that feelings cannot be reflected Only inflicted and affected Feelings by their virtue of being A past participle and present continuous Is man’s eternal tense A void with wisdom Aware that the sum of all it’s infinities Is simply a zero
There are times when I rhyme My gestating philosophy With archaic words So that when I speak There is rebirth And I am assured That my thoughts Those infinitesimal, dust motes Will live on In the veins of mortals Addicted to immortality
So perhaps I draw myself In a way I shouldn’t be drawn For who has seen one using charcoal To colour the perfect swan But I am not a swan, you see, I am crow beaten black and blue In an attempt to create something new Out of desolate frequencies And distilled time A still life portrait Dead by design
I heard There are things Out in the woollen nights Mosaics of happenstances And matchstick quick delights A life of unbuttoned jeans and restless jazz And lipstick stained tissue papers Left on countertops Under empty whiskey glasses and beer mugs filled with vapour Proof of a life at once loud and empty Like a vacant microphone Filled with dreams of hunger Like a dog with a buried bone O how the mind meanders In the test tube alleyways A ghetto full of false fire Spreading shadow for many days
I heard There are people Who count the twelve strokes of midnight Yawn at the break of dawn And search for moon in the twilight And gather molten menagerie In the effervescence of aftershave Wherein the limbs are nests of Nirvana And love a motion to enslave Till the flame of faces; it withers, And only wax is left to blame Those shivering shadows differ Like every lover with a new name
I heard There are places Where mortal wounds entwine And life is bet on races Which has no finish line Here the dyslexic dystopia Begins beneath one’s roof And the mythical myopia Does not end without a proof Dying under disco lights I lay colour blind to the pain Needles upon my tongue And yet I am singing in the rain
Evenings; splashed like red wine on canvas Now turn dark Eyelash by falling eyelash As I meditate upon the traffic sounds Upon the streetlights And the indistinguishable net of voices Falling over me Like a little rain, this brittle pain Should I see now Should I share The weight of those fingers Which rested upon my iliac crest Like a promise of an afterlife? Maybe my heart is not a heart afterall Maybe it’s a spade; A leaf leftover from the fall Black and decaying Prone to praying Lost and afraid Saying what’s been said Over and over Slower and slower Till its heartbeat’s no more Than a pulse on my wrist Which l bartered for love And ceased to exist
We should have been born in oyster shells Our lives a lunar cycle Circling the moon within our womb For this warm darkness I guzzle This phantom of my lies Lies like a lotus on my lips A rootless need sans a seed That divides and conquers All my desires which anchors The ships of my souls On your face with four moles And I know that the distance Has kept us apart And the time has been ending Right from the start And now and then again Our words have gone sparse Drowned by those voices Who called ours a farce But the ocean is changing There are waves which find home In shaping sandcastles Where they no longer roam
I wish I could dance And drown in my sorrow I wish I could regret My mistakes of tomorrow I wish I could be Someone you see Knowing what I am And what you want me to be So I try to separate My dream from the reason And hold back my love In my arms; this prison Inherited over years From those before me Who searched for freedom And found it’s not free
