THE HUMAN ANVIL

Tag: writing

  • The Men Behind Monuments

    Image by Jiyad Nassar @unsplash


    In this sudden stillness
    A final silence grows
    From beneath the dead branches
    Enveloping ants and Angels alike

    The dry mist of purpose
    That once haunted men
    Now haunts their monuments
    The mindless mortar
    Made and remade
    For each thought
    And every contour
    Which seeks in itself
    The forever form
    That everlasting aspiration
    Of becoming a being

    But the Promethean promises
    Are but promises
    Just as the silhouette stems from the shape
    So does the shape is rooted in the silhouette
    Like a circle trapped
    Within its own circumference
    Sans a seen beginning
    Sans any unseen end

    There is a witness
    For every arrival
    Till no one arrives anymore
    And then the fishes are left alone in the desert
    To drown in the mirage of memories
    The breathing carcass
    Reminiscent of living
    In an abandoned womb
    Never to awake
    Never to walk
    Like ages unspent
    Upon the faces of the rock

  • In the Light of the Darkness

    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…

  • Remains of the Rain

    Image by Mehrsad Rajabi@unsplash


    I saw my children standing in the rain
    Their faces lined with age and late reason
    Watched the abandoned bicycles
    And broken seesaws
    Being pulled down by the weight of raindrops
    Their hands, long and thin, like dead seaweed in the summer wind
    Their legs green and gold, like new leaves suddenly old
    Seemed painted
    In the moist color of quiet
    The abandoned delight
    Having dissolved
    In the lament of the rain
    They turn; the motion a sad song
    An unfinished lullaby
    To look at me with eyes
    Half awake but never asleep
    As if I with my window earned wisdom
    Would know
    Why all things grow
    Only to die
    If life in the very virtue of living
    Is a lie
    But they know the answer
    As well as me
    It is better to forget than to believe what we see
    In the everyday aftermath
    Of the daily demise
    Of choices left to chances
    And promises made before goodbyes
    For in the end all paths
    Shall return where they began
    Even the oceans with all their eternity
    Are but remains of the rain…

  • Sleepwalker

    All I can think about is dust and dusk
    And drowning in a shattered sea
    Made of glass
    Like a photograph of a falling man
    Who is never truly falling
    But eternally trapped
    With a suspended scream
    In an endless dream
    Like a dreamless wraith;
    Weightless and wordless
    As an orphan in death

    But sometimes the night is too strong for me to sleep
    And the dreams I have are too dark for me to keep
    So I become a cobweb on the far wall
    Or a three pin plug lost in a socket
    Some crumpled paper on the floor
    Or a faded face in an old heart shaped locket
    A catharsis of cause
    Building prisons to be free
    An empty ship sailing
    An emptier sea

    Where there is fog in the air
    And yet I stare
    Like a blind man blinking
    Without thinking at the sky
    Wondering in my own vacuum
    About the mute purpose of ‘Why’
    With voices at the edge of my vision
    And footsteps at the back of my mind
    I am dreaming of being asleep
    And afraid of losing what I cannot find

    Thus, in this black and white world
    In this sharp and smooth world
    In this loud and quiet world
    In this bitter and sweet world
    In this dull and fragrant world
    I shall remain awake
    Till a different tomorrow

  • Incandescent

    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…

  • Hubris

    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

  • The Ash Blanket

    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…

  • Akin

    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…

  • Nescience

    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

  • Marmalade

    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…