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…
Naked pictures painted on the world map, a global ache this systematic subjugation, arraigned with signatures and rubber stamps and blue and black ink with red smeared hands from…
Ants committing suicide for sugar cubes, mountains sundered for a grain of sand, weighing a ton by common belief of a wishful world running in a race without an end around a toilet flush I hear music in the smoking firmament, the guttural snort and fart of the engine like Mozart’s Requiem for Modern Times; graveyards filled with scraps, dusty medals pinned upon pigeon chests, chest with springs and cogs inside, all mechanisms of a meager mind,
Breathed upon by gunpowder gods never crucified, but kept alive, unchained unlike Prometheus or castrated unlike Cronus, with 9mm eyes watching over the supposed universe, Lives televised, a miniscule mime renting life per hour, human carcass threaded, talking puppets mimicking everyday shambles with double exclamation and undying opinions; graffiti upon bathroom walls, the enlightenment of our age; our Bible, our Koran, our Commandments, our Veda,
An ocean of umbilical madness, Medusas of mind, writhing in the depths of drowned time, left helpless at the bottom, garbage cans, lobster traps, Ahab’s ambition, little mermaid’s fin, all part of the abyss, woven tales of Atlantis
Beggars upon sidewalk, watching the neon lights blink at the mannequins dressed and fed better than them, breathing in glass case while the Caesar supine on steps as flat piece of bread looks on: Et tu, Et tu, until a coin clatters in the bowl and Rome falls, democracy dissolved under the acid rain of paint thinner,
Red sky running, blind horse racing against the rider till the tollbooth where hands on hips the old man walks the zebra crossing, unmindful of the airplanes lined at the red light, waiting one and all to fly away, without passengers or Blackbox, to a land where runways end
Phantoms fasting upon a fingernail, the sound of anarchy, electric guitar with strings of lightning, rainbow flooding the floor, and the people waving, a mingled marsh undecipherable, a canvas coated with paint, avant-garde asylum overflowing with stone heads
Rows of velvet cushion upon glass, red carpet laid upon mud, hyenas laughing in the hallway in high heels and mothball tuxedos from pawn shop, faceless fornication behind the screen, lips locked together in war, breathes dying with alcohol,
And outside the Ghost of Christmas Past selling mint in the rain, poets pass him and politicians, all made of papers full of question marks and Venn diagram that depicts everything said and done, the saying it has the bigger circle and the deeds it had none,
The Van Gogh World waking, rivers of gas flowing under matchstick houses waiting for madmen, toothpick buildings dancing for children playing whack-a-mole, Las Vegas without lights like teeth of a key; all cards of the fleeting reality playing pinochle with constant uncertainty,
Dismal days these, age of enlightenment, recoilless Renaissance, people paying people to understand people paying people, round around the circumference of Drachma with Copernicus we fly, we fly, taking one day kryptonian crash course, and pretend to die with cries towards the sky; O father thou art in heaven, look down now and weep, for seven days you worked, and on the eighth it all went to dust, you knew it and yet you left it so, now weeds gather in your garden, and even Lucifer stays away and pray free from this drama; Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama
Life, look out This man asleep Is walking a dream His pulse, afraid of inimical things, dance At the incoherent din of the cattle bell, For he knows only the time of tommorow Prophesied by blind sages Sages left by the world to marinate in old age And he carries it; the cattle bell, it’s dead weight, it’s rue weight, like a talisman Through the thick fog of promises To the other side, where the light, yet unseen, seems to shine differently For the sages who have looked on the winter From far, would know something of the snow Or so he hoped, with his face coddled within the blinkers And crowned with a horseshoe
Life, look out The man asleep Knows not that he is sleeping And so as waves he worship the shore Unaware that he stands with men Too afraid to blink at the sea And soon he too would be watching the waters Shiver with each breath of the seagull Till his own wings wither and rot away Leaving him; this epileptic Icarus A common man among the common men Left to watch each sunrise And every sunset From the shade of a dry sacamore The hinterland of heart That burned in winter Knows both fire and ice is the same; Perhaps, in the slow dance of the dying fire He seeks the heat some more Perhaps, his dreams are dreams of a dream He dreamt he has dreamt before…
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
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
I keep awake Watching the parched lightbulb (And the lightbulb perhaps watching me) With my hand on the warm doorknob; Leading halfway to hell, Till the caterpillar thoughts crawl out into the silence And cocoons of dreamless desires Flood the floor As dark pools of velvet; With skin like ash and skin like glue. Fingers of fire And butterfly blood Seals the sound of the oboe In the roots of time So the seeds of silk may flower And the fountainhead of pulse Breathe in the open every night To let the swan song of love; Traced on the tips of arched spine Leave the lips And take hold of the walls To make the voice of world Like beads of sweat; evaporate, And the colours of a carnal mind collapse Into nothingness Of everyday afterlife
THE HUMAN ANVIL 