The Silver Shambles

I dropped a coin in the wishing well
But did not wish at all

And so it began
The exodus of my existence:
At night I painted
The black skies
On white bed sheets
Spilling ink
Spilling tar
Spilling ashes sent back from war
I painted
Night after night
From dusk till dawn
But the stars never showed
Neither the moon manifested
Nor the auroras appeared
The only light I saw
Was from the white of my eyes

Rubies line my lips
I bury diamond in the dark
Deep in my throat
Foams a rabid, rabid bark
But I do not dare
For the censure is too strong
Lashes even if you are right
Why wonder when you are wrong
So I paint
And I paint
A monk
And some saint
Both parts of same hypocrisy
Part blotch and part a taint

This endless evolution
Is just revision of the rot
Mirages made images
And themes turned to thought
For we begin our blasphemies
By begging to be left
Away from the trials
While accepting the act of theft
For then the onus lies
On those ailing institutions
Who accepts blood and bile
To darken words of the constitutions
Oh how I wither in this weather
Where all claim the right to rest
Whilst walking naked through the fire
Hoping for the best

So, my bed sheet it is dark
My bed sheet; it is wet,
And my menstruating mind
Loves to water hate
And grow flowers that are golden
And encased in a thousand thorn
A beauty to be envied
Not to be woven and worn
Thus I sleep
In the shadows
Aware at my loss
Dreaming of the silver disc
Falling at the toss

I dropped a coin in the wishing well
But did not wish at all

Oh why did I not wish at all

The Pyramid of Poetry

The poet in me, wants to write of pain,
And the child inside is euphoric
At the nigh nakedness
At the bare it all bluntness
For once, it won’t be alone
Like a lotus left
In the middle of the forest
For once, it would be a dandelion
Seeding away the agony
In search of answers

Pain, I write,
Willing for it to appear
To bloom out
Like wave, like lava
Inescapable, obliterating
And free me
And my own Christ on the cross;
Those wounds on my memory,
So that I may get paralysed
From the things heretofore unrealised,
But all I found
Were the dust motes
Blowing from my breath

Pain, I thought
As I smiled in the dark
At the death of my spark
In the hollow of my heart
Was it empty from the start?
It takes all my willpower
To ignore the whispers from the wall
And breathe in the ground
So while floating I do not fall

Nobody knows a poet, you see
For he is a never was
And thus never will be;
A saint, a servant, a shadow of the soul,
All but the devil’s advocate
And someone who stole
Each morsel of truth
From those immortal minds
Who lived their lives
Beyond the hives

Ashes in my ink
I am the fire from the far
A hope never igniting
But guiding like a star
An untouched absolution
A dye that does not dissolve
A rhythm sans rhyme
An equation that does not solve
But remains like a constant
A fulcrum on the edge
All the weight of the world
Against the end of my page



Nights Like Tonight

Breathe baby
Nights like tonight
(When cold clothes the bones
And flesh is just fistful of snow;
Numb and delicate)
Are rare

The stars wheel
Don’t they?
Like an umbrella on our head
Once I knew Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Ursa Major
But now when I look up
The stars tremble
Beneath the tears upon the rim of my eyes
Dear lord, am I drowning?
While reaching for the sky beneath my feet
Like ink in water

A long while ago
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry that I could not travel both
I turned back
Away from the scintillating offerings
From oft repeated quotes
And ever appearing jargon
I turned back from literature
From Shakespeare’s sweet sonnets
From Orwell’s orphic auguries
From the cold contours of Plato’s caves
From the new nothingness of Nietzsche
I turned back
To the primitive mind of mirages
Of breathing seas
And singing trees
But if I were to begin my philosophy
It would end with this sentence; The whole world is a theory
Words using words to make sense of the words
So I write with chalk on the paper
And with pen on the blackboard
To see if the meaning
Is lost in the act of asking (It is)

So, breathe baby
Nights like tonight
(When the cold clothes the bones
And flesh is just fistful of snow;
Numb and delicate)
Are rare
And in the end here
I have
No melancholy to spare

Glitter And Sand

Hold me
And let go
Of the world
Like a child’s hand
Getting lost in the fair

This partial and minuscule mould
Of slow moods and slower murders
Is not for us
We of souls made of cotton candy
And sandpaper
We of transparent flesh and silver bones
We suffer from the sulphur,
Sold by this world
An ounce for a pound
So much glitter in my hand
This velvet turned sand

Most nights I watch the stars go dim and die
Most days I sit and hear people birth a lie
Thus, I and this world
Are not for each other
But You and I
Are made for one another
Like a spiral chiral
Part dust, Part DNA

Beneath my fingernails
I find
Dreams that I once wrote on the wall
A wall now painted over
White and light blue
To hang a new
Modern art of some kind
Ah, the delusion of time
What river gets lost in search of the sea?
Would a dying tree wish for lesser roots to be free?

I wish I could breathe in your nuances
Those pigments of your pain
Your open skin
Your bottled sin
Your morning blues
And your rain
And on my lips lie vestiges
Of our time spent together
Like a coin in a wishing well
Alas, not all wishes can come true
Alas, nothing was and will ever come through
So like you now I too
Stand by and blow
Dandelions on a dying breeze
And fire on falling snow



The Marquis of Metaphors

Somewhere in between 
Our footsteps turned to music

I had a tendency to blink back tears
To stitch myself beforehand
Like a social vaccine so to say
To stay rooted
And choose no way
For then the balance; it would break
And I would have something at stake
And I was afraid of being left broken
Someone’s memory
Another’s token
So here was how I spent my hours
With cold heart
And long hot showers
Making promises on blank, blind papers
I wrote of stones that floated on vapours;
Those dreams that were ruins from the start
Still left so for they were born torn apart
And the people they came to claim
That all I could say was my own name
Unaware, that all I had was my own mind
That was seldom, if ever kind
Thus melancholy is my poison of choice
And sad smiles my go to guise
For then I can claim to be
Everything that isn’t me

Now the colours of life have dried
And I feel like the fog of midwinter
Spread across sleeping fields
And quiet rivers running
Like a toddler on a trail
Without wisdom or any worry
And no notion where to sail
But as I look back at the way I have treaded
I know it’s the same where now I am headed
To my beginning
To the end
I am nosediving so I can ascend
Through the little hells I have clawed in my bones
From the promises I made to the unknowns
Like those flowers I grew around my grave
Knowing the wreaths won’t be there to save
Me, from the parody called pain
Watching my headstone go dry in the rain

Somewhere in between
Our footsteps turned to silence


Last Card of the Castle

It’s a terrible tragedy you see
To be away from you
The farther you are
The fainter I get
The harder you hold
The longer I wait
Tonight the edges of my soul are clear
And I can see my heartbeats through my chest
They come and disappear
They pulse and fade
Alive and dead
Red over red

I can hear the wall clock
Can hear the teeter tatter of the seconds
Turn into the silent hour
An hour without you
Then one and half, then two
I am mesmerised in the act of missing you
Part proud, part desperate
Juggling memories and dreams
Promises and themes
Like Picasso and his paint
Rhyming his story and history
Balancing the devil and the saint

I close my eyes now and then
And hold you to my chest
Close enough to collapse
Onto myself
First in tears, followed by laughter
Then silence much after
Dents in my denial
Rust on my reins
I falter like a colt
And stand still until it pains
Deep enough for my marrow
To call out your name
Madly enough for my mind
To believe that you indeed came

The night is falling fast
And I am writing against the flow
To reach the side of your shore
Where you await in your pink bow;
That tiara of innocence
Which broke me
Slowly apart
Till I lost all of my aces
To the hand of the queen of heart

The Myth of Silence


I wrote on paper
And was called a poet
I wrote on walls
And was asked to wait
On a chair nailed to the floor
In a cold, cold white room
Where the only sound was of my breath;
No different from a writer’s womb
So I sat in the pleated emptiness
With a glass of water left to precipitate
Watching the walls seduce me to sadness
When the pendulum peeled an eight
And in came this ladybug green
Glasses carved on the tip of her nose
She had grey pad and a bald blue pen
And a red ring in the shape of rose
‘Ahem, ahem’ She said ‘Ahem, ahem’
And I coughed and cleared my throat
She looked at me for a second
Then this is what she wrote:
‘The subject is kind of rude
He has no manners so to speak
He sits like a beggar on his throne
A man of power sold in sale to the weak’
It made no sense, nonsense, I tell you
For she was no poet for god’s own sake
She was too tidy to have chaos inside
And that is how I knew she was fake
‘The subject now seems annoyed
He is watching me with furrowed brows
As if I have stolen something of his
And now pretending that everyone knows’
Ah the audacity of this usurper
Who claims my kingdom as her own
I have pieces of paper in my pocket
And a dozen verses to loan
‘The subject is trying to smile
And I am feeling all sick and ill
There is wrong with his mind
He says naught but I can feel’
She knows nothing of my madness
Of how it hurts to sit and smile
For only writing on the wall
I pretend to die once in a while
‘The subject has tears in his eyes
Maybe my saying something will change
But what should I say at this point
That will not make him seek revenge’
The fool, the fool is writing
And what a caricature does she draw
Looking from behind a pair of glasses
She writes what she thinks she saw
‘The subject does not comply
To any form of my treatment
So must be treated in harsher terms
Or in an asylum must be sent’
Oh I did snatch her pen and pad
And wrote down my own choice
Before you judge what others have said
First make sure if they even have a voice…