Tag: writing

  • Raiment

    Image by Francesca Zama @unsplash

    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

  • The Man Asleep


    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…

  • The Shadow Of Absent Things


    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

  • Deadbeat

    I beg…
    To differ
    From all those who earn
    At the cost of letting their freedom burn
    Away…

  • Orison

    Image by Bahador @Unsplash

    Life has always been one dream
    Dreamt together by many
    And those Awakened will find
    No single mind
    Keeping count of any blasphemy

  • Death, Dear Friend

    Image by Dave Hoefler @ Unsplash

    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

  • Ambit


    Outside my window
    A caterpillar crawls
    And I watch as it gains
    Inch by inch
    An eternity
    On me

  • Erosion


    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 Wheel

    Forget the world
    Forget it ever existed for you
    And then watch one morning
    As the red sky slowly turns to blue
    For then you would know
    How true is the world
    And old her everyday design
    That began one day
    And remembered to stay
    Without you keeping the time

  • Her Fire and Her Flesh

    Her eyes were on the fire
    Her fingers in the dough
    The smoke; it left her breathless
    Like the kerosene she poured into the stove
    The sweat dipped her lashes
    To her tears were all blind
    She was only a shadow on the wall
    Though being a woman one of a kind

    She had trapped Ganges in her hair
    And Pharaohs praised her lotus feet
    Her’s was Mumtaz’s Taj
    And to her belonged the Papal Seat
    But all that was her she had given
    In dowry for her father’s name,
    With the hope she would be treasured
    And not burnt alive for the same

    But soon a time shall come
    When a Sita will not walk
    A false Ordeal of Fire
    So blind people would not talk
    And soon a time shall come
    When a Draupadi will not accept
    The men and their game of dice
    Weighted against her self-respect
    And no longer any Eve shall answer
    For Adam’s own intent
    And let a Mother be always a Martyr
    And Father always a Saint