Losing at Poker

Sometimes, when thoughts settle,
I imagine dropping through city air,
Waves buckle inside my chest,
I fall into falling careers of cars,
Sometimes when thoughts stay,
I imagine myself imagining death,
And it makes me sad to know myself,
I pity the pity in me as if to
leave my weight on the fast winds
that lift others into solid mediocrity,
I am a character in a musty book
and happier readers air my sadness,
Swirl it in cold glass to deepen flavours,
Speak of sacrifices made into chasms
with the abyss looking into me,
Confused with what it was expected to do,
Reminding me of the lawlessness
That governs the heaven as we string it
on numbers, to prophesy inert whims,
I am failed prophecies and gambling,
Poker games with a sleeping universe,
I am the space between decimal digits
That causes stars to collapse.

Carnal Knowledge

Your lower lip needs to be a book-cover,
Dog-eared, pink-papered, full with knowing,
My fingers will never stop with the preface,
They will grab your jaw where it falls away,
Pull your flesh down its slow cherry path,
Fetch your eyes from their cloudy heights
into cupped hands that wander your hair
like lost snakes of Eden feeling their way
into Paradise, one soft truth at a time,
break the tresses where night undresses;
Bend the stem of your neck into me,
I shall wait for your hitched breath
to learn your body in unfocused eyes
and mark your skin with knowledge.

Balancing Act

Did you count how many kisses I gave,
planted like clumsy hands in wet mud,
eager to shape them before rains leave?
How many did I hold behind my lips,
inside the chest tongue calls home,
afraid to spend the night over your ear,
as if swallowing the cheer in your eye
before it reaves the soft between us,
tears everything into fluid forgetting,
before we discover the taste for blood,
and call carnivores to roam our flesh.

Waking Up At Night

I breathe in the night and fall awake
the way I fell into half-shut eyes that
demand godless oceans into becoming,
My lips play your wrists like flutes,
woodwind songs race up your spine
and spill hotly into your recesses,
All of you is waiting, blind curiosity,
My teeth mark the places you forgot
to breathe like a cave of twilight stars,
Your eyelids fold oceans to leave
their angry weight on my breath --
I am dry throat and slow industry.

Knowing Myself

I know myself in the after-noon morning,
Curtains over windows to forget light,
I woke up half a conversation ago,
My hair is a sexy mess of whirls,
My voice is all throat, no sound,
I haven't spoken a word but I talk,
Somewhere between turning in bed
and staring at a cosmological ceiling,
I know myself in the after-noon morning.

The Sound of my Breath

The sound of my breath is louder
than the silence of the walls,
I am lost between sighs that
tell me I have no control,
This is what free will looks like,
My chest heaves without gaps
between the black of my eyes
where I held all my maps,
The sweat on my nose
is the past in my rest,
where I trickle down my spine
and dwell on my best,
There is no tomorrow then
inside these forgotten deaths
but I remember my blood only
in the sound of my breaths.
The sound of my breath is louder
than the silence of the walls,
I am lost between sighs that
tell me I have no control.

Pretty, Little Stones

I sat in the library until closing time,
Penning the sharp-edged rime
Of pretty, little stones that shone,
Pretty, little stones dull as bone,
Igneous stones so light they float,
Little clouds caught in a mote,
I remember collecting the chips,
Pressing their lines to my lips,
Their names were all it took to seize
the mineral design with solid ease,
I always wrote things I couldn't hold
Promises that keep growing cold.

Fires That Spread

There exists a fire born to spread,
Find home in embers long dead,
Pull apart the weight of dreams,
Shake the hopes on hollow beams,
There are walks in the park
That you must take in the dark
To see the full wonder of your face,
Faintly lounging on the empty space,
Make the threshold of night
The balcony to relentless light,
Find your rapture in new bones,
See them breathe life into stones.

Confession Poem

If I wrote you a poem,
Soft, but grand in expectation,
You'd tell me I dream too much,
You'd tell me I know you not,
What scheme do I draw you on?
What remains of "you" in me
when there has not been "we"?
This is the irony of poems-that-make,
Of songs that bear themselves
like a universe summoned into being
out of nothing broken, nothing spent.

This is why it will not have roses,
Roses are gentle and thorny,
Any rough hand can take them
with fingers careful to feel,
No.
I'd tell you of the sunflower instead,
The blind seed grows to the Sun
when it does not know what moves it,
The ripe stalk bends backwards
as if it heard the rapture of being
inside the passing sunbeam,
stroking its petals with the glow
of fires that it does not see,
of fires that it cannot see.

This, then, is a confession poem,
I am blind and burning,
I know nothing of you,
But that is hardly the point,
And you know it.

There are softer things than love confessions

There are softer things than love confessions
stoppered in wine bottles left on stone,
Drier promises feel crisp between palms
and stay quiet across telephones.

Open my diary and run through the bark,
You will find truth flickering upon liars,
The territory knows the map's unbecoming,
All of my cartography is forest fires.

There are softer things than love confessions,
I wear their crooning beneath cold skin,
There are promises I have never kept
and my breaking is slow burning.

Loving Truth

There once was a man who loved the Truth,
He had gold-nibbed pens in pearly inkwells
and a sky-blue collection of recycled paper
upon which every night he would labour
to spill his research of the day's working
so that tomorrow made more sense than today.
One day, he swung his inventory on a shoulder
and set out to survey where the day pooled,
because the jagged shorelines held old names,
and the streetside music was inherited secrets,
These were names and secrets he needed to write down,
you could see him sitting against a dropping sun,
after a long day of hot bazaars and cold companies
and wonder at the arcana inside harbor air,
Every morning he would clean two squares of cloth,
write the Truth on its uneven fabric,
and paste them over his eyes as holy ritual
Thus he wandered the world with blind justice in day;
At night he would wax into his memoir
that the world was strung of a single thread
and that there is beauty to be found in its discovery.

Display Picture

I compliment your display picture
and become a superficial spider
strung on the world wide web,
I don't tell you I want to trace you
in my words like I know your lacework,
like I know your baroque and grotesque,
I know the cipher to the divine in them,
I don't tell you I don't know you anymore,
The furrow beneath your lip hides lies,
I am not qualified to know them now,
I skirt your inside with patchwork smiles
and pretend that the gold was in your skin,
that my temples were made to your beauty
and all your divine was always in hiding.

Holding Lanterns

If I don't find you in another decade
I will leave my heart on my bedside table,
You are dynamite in a forest-fire,
I need to knock into you sooner than later,
or watch you burn the world without me,
No, I will leave my heart at home.

You probably hold lanterns to faces today,
drench flesh with the amber inside you
and check for starched love-letters
between a creased spine and chequered smile,
(some people hold them in their teeth)
You're learning to shake hands with them,
because the only time they will open lips
is when they read their broken to you,
These are friends that will make me jealous one day,
I want you to hurry up with the discovering;
I sweep sunsets like dust on my window,
I cannot afford the colours of pining today,
I need to prepare myself for your amber --
pluck the freedoms of men with my tongue,
stroll unvisited alleys and spill hot poetry,
work the shapes of wonder into my words,
I need to become the storybook you will read,
I know the way I need to make you laugh,
I won't paste sweetness over your wounds,
You hate it, I know,
I will kiss the bells in your eyes,
and I know how you will stare at me
when you hear yourself ring in my hall,
You will place the worn lantern on my doorstep,
I will open the window and let the colors dry;
When I tell you I have waited for you,
you will not understand how I love,
but that is precisely what you were looking for,
I have waited for you since forever,
I hold you with hands that know emptiness,
you are the only song I will allow inside.

Image Source: Charles E. Waltensperger

Receiving Mother at Airport

The second thing my mother did when we met
was tell me that my t-shirt looked unclean and unironed,
that I should clean my clothes myself --
I couldn't stop smiling;
We would spend ten minutes in the cab talking about my face,
how a new weather has dented my face with unsightly holes,
She measured me like a stone-mason reviewing damage,
she always seemed to know what I should look like
as if she carried a photo-album inside her purse
and was in the habit of obsessively checking it,
My mother isn't fond of her smartphone yet.
Oddly enough, her litanies make me feel better,
which is weird because it was always me falling short
but that is better than falling without direction,
better to have her definition to rebel against 
than to grasp at meaninglessness every time I start sleeping,
When I returned from the market I knocked on the door,
After months I knew what is to wait for someone inside,
after months I did not spent a minute opening my lock,
and I realized that I'd much rather be impatient
than know that nobody is home,
The first thing my mother did when we met
was hug me tight enough
to compensate for forgetting love,
tight enough to know 
I would sleep without nightmares tonight.

Good Mood

I am in a good mood today,
I wear it like a birthday cap,
a little tight around my chin,
I will clap my hands a little harder,
Sing my grocery list a little softer,
Today, I will turn on music
and it will not speak of art,
it will not speak of auroras,
It will have no words, actually,
I will move my head like ribbons,
but my smile will not tell you of lies,
I will give you some chocolate,
No, don't ask me why,
I have enough lemonade today
to give out glasses to everyone,
I must be kind more often,
the glass is completely empty sometimes,
My head is not an orchestra today,
Sit besides me,
why don't you now?
We will talk of your temple roofs,
of olive oil salads and lazy winters,
Ignore the confetti on my shoulder,
I have had a crazy day,
I am in a good mood today,
and I feast on it like my last meal,
That is why you know of my sadness,
Thank you for not mentioning it.


Image Source: Daniel Perkowski

First Times

The first time we held each other's hands,
I was counting infinity backwards,
making sure my brain doesn't explode,
Your hands were so much cooler than I expected,
but that's okay,
my hands must have been warm to you;

The first time I bought a rose for you,
I asked myself "Now what?"
as if the train ride between the florist and a bent-knee proposal
was too unromantic to exist,
I hoped I saved the rose
from being squished enough to say "I love you",
You didn't look like they do in movies,
I was disappointed,
You were just being yourself;

The first time I wasn't single on Valentine's,
I expected us to monopolise the day,
Apparently, it is the most suspicious day to leave home
and my parents still aren't sure about us,
I guess cartoons on Valentine's don't hurt either.

The first time we bought corner-seat tickets,
I realized that I am pretty good at being unabashed
I realized that courtesy comes easy when guilty,
I realized that corner seats are not good ergonomics,
but we did watch that movie twice
and I still don't know what it was about;

The first time you settled onto my lap,
you looked at me as if I had a degree in this,
I was surprised at how we pulled the stars into sparking,
I bit more than I could chew,
You looked like fruit-salad after,
custard and papaya,
You own a lot of scarves now;

The first time I wrote a poem for you,
I spent an hour trying to mix words into beakers,
distilling, filtering, titrating, refilling,
Your beauty was impossible to find,
but it kept laughing from behind non-smiles,
I revisited those evening walks like a homicide detective

and found nothing,
You were the one that got away.


Image Source: Tender Moments by Kim Roberti

Muse

It is August,
I was supposed to have forgotten you by now,
People tell me to leave you
like rice grains outside my threshold,
I tell them that you are my Muse now,
See, nobody questions an artist's sanity,
They are supposed to be bad for themselves,
When I trace your laughter on paper for the ninth time,
it is poetry, not an obsession,
My sleep-cycles resemble an owl on coffee
because the moon is my lampshade,
It is not my darkness looking for company,
It is not the chips of your bracelet on my ceiling
It is not the ridges of your neck under my sheets,
Poetry-writing is a montage of creative masterstrokes,
it is not slumping into pillows until I remember I need to breathe,
No, my metaphors were borrowed from the robins
that learnt Shakespeare over thatched roofs,
I did not brew these words between my teeth like a meth lab gone wrong,
I am definitely not addicted to you,
My smiles are poignant reminders of love,
they are not crumpled tissue-papers around my room,
It is all good art,
Thanks for staying, Muse,
I now know that art doesn't need to be pretty
to be beautiful.


Image Source: Kazuya Akimoto

Selfishness

 There is something immensely selfish

about loving someone that doesn't exist
except inside me as a humming prophecy,
a song my fingers do not know yet,
but I have strum the strings for long,
I want to breathe life into these dreams,
fill them with my lessons and repairs
until the laughter in my house is innocence,
Innocence that falls and breaks in chips,
Innocence that reminds me of wonder
and invites me to intervene but I will not,
because she must know discovery,
know falling to run with lighter feet,
learn that grief can be the weight of wings,
I will teach him to see himself with my eyes
when mirrors show the lies others repeat,
I will teach her to argue with herself
until what remains is indomitable,
and then I shall call her a diamond.
See, I learnt to dance with strangers
until I had lost thousands in the crowd
but my children will know how to find stars,
pin them to their hearts without burning,
She will know the charm within desert dunes,
and weather them like motes of sand,
He will know my summer-dream hide-outs,
those found when winters were meaner,
thus he will remember my nightmares with fondness
and tie long, satin ribbons to the gates I unlocked.

Sometimes I worry that I stock paint
but will never have the time to fill colors,
small fingers will close on large ones
until they are too large to fit inbetween
but I do not mind the winds in my chest
passing through foreign treetops,
to sing different songs to cliffsides,
I will bequeath the poems I wrote inside caves,
and when they sail to make new mistakes
my lodestones will point to the North Star
Their nights will coax their sweet fruit
into wines I will never drink, never taste,
and I will be the artist that left the world
work that changes with eyes and names.

Image Source: Dorian Florez

Loud Music

There are times when I turn up the music
loud enough to not hear myself think,
The bed is filled with knots of cotton
and they push against my aching back
like guns through faded bedsheets
but I cannot get myself to buy a new one,
I cannot get myself to leave this room,
to force the slow career of my thoughts
into changing its golem-face that smiles,
sad grimaces of my forgetful making,
I have created monsters and skeletons
and they sleep on my bedroom floor,
ambush my dreams before they find hope,
My midnights are an album of memories
that make no sense when opened
but haunt the mind long after closing,
I forget how to find blankness again
and wear faces that I will leave in a box
when morning comes, it always comes,
although I haven't seen it in weeks,
Mornings are too full of opportunity,
they light my door and mock my inertia,
throw challenges on eyelids as if to say,
"These are not smoke and mirrors,
All of you is broken; your loneliness is."
I pretend I do not know what peace looks like,
that happy is a puzzle I am still solving,
my pieces are missing and I am not whole,
all of me is not a pile of cardboard pieces
I hid under my blanket ages ago.

I do not leave my room but listen to music,
loud enough to fill the empty in me,
until I forget the sound of my name,
I am not,
I am not.

"Yes, you are."

Image Source: htt548172585866315768/ps://www.pinterest.com/pin/

Forgetting Nothingness

I tasted the joy between your fingers
until oriental philosophies made sense,
until the nothingness of a Monday evening
was the highlight of my week,
the longest page in my diary,
the most difficult memory I ever wore.
The funny thing about our breakup was
that I went into it with such confidence,
as if you had left instructions on how to forget you
on the same tissue-paper where you scribbled my name
against a monster that looked lovelier
with every note of laughter it stole from you.
I spent my nights becoming that monster,
pinching my "Hello"s and laughing louder
so that I looked a little less like the me you left,
a little less like the me you fell out of love with.
Apparently, there is a rule that says
you may only bleed out your darkness in ink
and that is not really a rule
but a lie poets tell themselves
so that their art is not emptiness made beauty,
You are not poetry, in form or spirit,
You are not melancholy, you never were,
You are the nothingness that makes Mondays last forever,
and I am not empty, I am too full of words,
too full of pretty lies I tell myself
because talking is better than the silence
that reminds me of oriental philosophies
and everything just is,
but I remember what nothingness feels like.

Broken People

It is effort, I know,

But cast honest eyes around
And you will find broken people everywhere.
These are sunflowers that turned too much and broke;
They carry their own Suns now.
They carry a jar of honey with them
Because wounds and infections are too common,
And sugar is useless.
Their hands and brows are knit
with lines they did not have when they wrote their first love-letters;
The graffiti on their skin
Cannot be contracted into creation.
Look away, then,
They are too much effort, I know,
Their covers are leather you cannot afford,
And their stories will have you looking for references you clearly don't have.
Walk up to them and become friends,
But they are not pure scripture,
Do not expect your deeds to sit alongside theirs
You will breathe their air and your body will be revolution,
Their colours will find friends in your shadows
And paint murals inside your chest,
Until you cannot piece apart their thunder from the quiet of your flesh.
Taste their unbecoming and
You will yearn to shatter into nightmares
That you may become the master of your dreams.


Image Source: http://alicexz.deviantart.com/art/Airplanes-200997113

Blood Sacrifice

Words have too much power,
I carve their altars and find myself
worshipping them in mornings,
Who made these marigold nosegays?
I want to write poems until I see
the quiet inbetween monsoon days,
the pepper on a lover's lips,
but I am an impatient priest today,
I know to run before my Gods awaken
to the bells I string between borders,
before they claim my fractured soul,
fill the valleys with my silences,
possess my bones to voice melancholy,
my books are religion I will not preach,
my Muse is beauty I will not teach.


Image Source: The Dance of Good and Evil by Curtis Verdun

What I Learnt Outside School

Value Education lectures never taught me
what to do when mirrors become horror stories,
there is blood in my teeth sometimes,
Was I supposed to check into hotels 
and wait for the piano music to stop
every time my house was haunted with music-boxes?
I try to hum in time with the plinks and plonks,
I carry the haunting with me like a bell,
Do not wonder why I am always on my toes,
I step around creases with practiced skill,
I fall a little less often these days,
Sometimes I wonder if that is fear or courage.
I know the number of steps to my bottle of antiseptic,
but forget where I kept the bag of balloons,
I run longer distances without colours,
I collect scars and scabs like spiky seeds,
and it seems a good enough currency.
Sometimes I come across chessboards in the forest
and it took my years before I could look past
the first row of chequered graves,
I win more times than not these days
and cry more promptly every time I lose a pawn.
There was a time when my home would walk away
and I would wait until morning swept under my garden-stones,
I am used to chasing my chimney-smoke these days,
but running is no less painful on tired soles.
I still remember the first time I became religious,
I left my hopes outside the temple-gates
as if only proper beggarhood deserved faith,
my emptiness was the first and last offering,
I will never be able to pray again
and I am no lesser for it.
I am less than the dreams of a future I made
on the riverside of a lonely glade,
I roam bazaars and barter help like coins,
my words are worn with the employ of several people,
this is my wealth and it has the warmth of many hands,
This is my wealth, it multiplies,
and my days are not without strife,
but my mirrors are history books now
and all the blood is fact and preparation.

Image Sources: http://cyanparade.tumblr.com, http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Scrambled-Portrait/308858/199347/view/

Foolish Geniuses

There is clarity in distance

That makes geniuses of lovers
Every priority snaps into focus:
Your hand must spend more time on her wrist,
The coffee was an excuse.
There are strangers to be offended
With the sheer force of your fingertips
On her lips,
They are strangers for a reason.
There are meetings you need to be late for
Dressed in her smoldering kisses
Bedraggled dreams and smoking kisses,
Hot, searing kisses that brand you
Leave you electrostatic.
There are conversations to start and finish after midnight,
Over kitchentop counters while baking cake
Your autobiographies being spent
Over chocolate-chip aromas.
The weekends will be roadtrips to hills
Where clouds do not spy on black skies
where grass swallows the two
until nebulae and stars are magic
you will drink second-hand from her eyes.
Everything needs to be second-hand.
Distance makes fools of lovers.

Introducing Myself

I am the guy who claps the loudest for good rhetoric
but believes that Truth cannot be found in sophistry,
I leaf monsoons as if there are memories I cannot afford to lose
but only invite them as strangers on dreary afternoons,
I will sing and dance as if I were inventing  rhythm for the first time,
but will find no problem in picking apart your routines with panache,
Hypocrisy is not basis for rejecting the Truth
and I am still learning how to be the best I can
without being dishonest to the conclusions I drew
inbetween my lunch hours and long walks home,
I am a walking tower of contradictions
but they all have a point
and they want to be resolved,
how can I throw them away?
I am an album of emotions, really,
Flat and precise in the framing of my words,
swimming with dimensions of wonderlands,
I have more paradoxes on the tip of my tongue
than the hem of my bookmarks in musty volumes,
I don't write my poems on paper
but type away in bathroom stalls and
colorful museums and empty meeting rooms,
unstable train coaches and the trees outside malls,
I still love the smell of the fungi in old books,
No, the microorganisms do not take away the romance,
my romances are quite unromantic,
I am in a one-sided relationship with Existence,
sometimes I wonder if she gets my letters,
sometimes I wonder if she is a dream,
sometimes I decide that Truth exists,
and that often means I serenade about not serenading,
repeat the prayers of atheistic inquiry,
There is no God under my fingertips
but I feel Holy all over,
I am eyes that are always empty enough
to fill with wonder, drink possibilities
as if my life can fit any tale written well-enough,
I am an artist, you see,
my roses are filled with columns of light
and my violinists don't know how to hold a violin,
but my portfolio is childhood in formaldehyde,
I carry it inside my sleeves like a poker cheat,
my face will never lose at losing itself
in the whirlpools of whims and drama,
My brain is not rational but endorses it
like a secret that needs to be spilled all over,
forgive me if I think some skies are better sung of than studied,
I will not tell you that I have already studied them,
See, I am obsessive compulsive about knowing things,
I ran out of subjects and decided to know about knowing,
There are levels of meta-cognition that deserve mention in Dante's Hell,
I feel like Lucifer sometimes,
Morality doesn't make a lot of sense to me
except as convenience to make things work,
a broken society doesn't seem important to me
but my friends tell me I forgot how to be selfish,
I tell them I am the heliocentric model inside Earth,
I will never learn to pivot the planets around me,
their ballads make no sense to me then,
I need things to make sense,
Beauty and sense, yes,
that is all I am inside my words,
I hope you find the time to talk to me,
I love honest conversations.

Fake It Till You Make It

I practice happiness like piano music,
it plays like a song I have heard too many times --
although these notes make no sense to me.
Apparently, hi-fis do not conduct joy through stretched arms like telegraph poles,
and the only contagious aspect of laughter is the giggles,
it is the opium I carry in folded napkins,
I wear experiments like a second skin,
my face is a psychology textbook filled with problems
raised to the nth degree of complexity
because synthesis of thesis and antithesis was supposed to be catharsis,
my native skin is caked with the lies I tell myself,
Ignore the cracks my smile makes on my lips,
my charades are not for you, believe me,
I am just trying to be honest to myself.
They tell me to fake it till I make it
as if the space between my ribs is waiting for instructions,
No, I am not broken,
but that is because I was broken long enough
to know how to make sunshine into butterscotch-tape,
I will never break again
but, you see, I am always breaking,
You take my palms and wonder at the sweetness in them,
you know nothing of the flowers I clutch onto when it rains outside,
My garden is a bed of trauma victims waiting to happen,
it turns out that anointing dead stones will not breathe life into them,
but I will keep stenciling my dark against walls
until my graffiti is everything bright,
There are winds in my bedroom I did not breathe,
paper-planes on my window-sill I have never flown,
See, emptiness taught me to search for beauty,
search for rosebuds over strange teeth,
find the lemongrass in unwashed laundry,
walk, no, run towards the churchyard balloons,
and I am convinced I have all that I need,
I need to find myself somewhere in my arts,
I am supposed to fake it till I make it,
Fake it till I make it,
Fake it till I make it,
There are holes you cannot fill with illusions,
It is not faith that moves me to paint lies anymore,
it is the weight of not having done anything,
I want to tell myself I did everything I could,
I cannot shoulder the weight of regrets,
my shoulders are busy with identities I carry,
bandages around my face as if I were waking from plastic surgery,
I have no face anymore,
this is as real as it gets,
I have become everything I was supposed to be,
I throw myself at blank pages and
push my ennui into ivory and silk
as if metaphors were what I needed all along,
I grow beautiful with every verse I become,
my hands are works of art that cannot make anything useful,
I do, however, make fires under rain without thinking,
Wet wood isn't supposed to burn but it does if you try hard enough,
all of me is smoke and mirrors,
I am dragging shadows inside the Sun --
my trips are supposed to kill them
but they come back stronger, sharper,
I am the silver cloud with a black lining,
I am dreams waiting to disperse,
I will never break again
but I am always breaking,
and sometimes I wonder which is worse.

Image Source: Delawer Omar

Answering in Graphic Detail

You ask me what do I want from you,

I want you to count the number of unfoldings it takes
the next time you wear a saree,
and half-consider my request to stand under the shower
before smirking and calling yourself silly.
I want to trace poems in the small of your back
and have my fingers make you sing them,
have your fingers shout into my back
when words are too embarrassed to carry your messages.
I want you to wear dupattas like tarpaulins
until they hide all evidence of my exploits,
their pomegranate shades peek from the hem of your dress,
Will you remember falling above me
and call it reason enough to bruise?
I want you to open emails at work
and remember my tongue on your thighs,
your warmth will have nothing to do
with an overheating laptop,
I want you to know the elastic of your underwear,
how it stretches and folds when half-removed at your shins
and all its pillars are trembling masses,
You will not remember the trembling, no,
I want you to budget for clothes every time you visit me --
anticipate a torn kurti every now and then,
I want you to tell me that you did not know
that French Kisses were not meant for lips,
my breath will light your way into darkness,
that moment when the universe was born,
you will find God in my ministrations,
I want your salvation,
I want you to want it all like the three seconds
that purchased my flesh with murderous intent,
I carry those scars as an instruction manual
and I know that you don't need it.
That's what I want.
I want you to write on me
like I am the last thing that will be ever written,
the last thing to be read,
the last thing to be touched,
the only thing that will be remembered.

Glit and Glee

Prompt: "tomorrows are filled with glit and glee"

I layer sand to the skies
and chatter bowls with lies
they tell young ones that don't agree
that tomorrows are filled with glit and glee.

Watch me round the skeptics in rows,
their lies are made from scarecrows,
and when I burn their ranks today,
I will teach you not to fib with hay.

See, ransoms are sought in gold,
and I see no reason to be old
in calling our seasons so grown
that we may not steal a loan.

'Tis the emblem of rich lands
to ride to horizons behind sands,
and the point isn't whether you agree
that tomorrows are filled with glit and glee.

Image Source: http://rikreimert.com/2012/02/21/homeless-man-2/

Fifth Dimension

Some people read books angrily,
Do you know these people?
They will tear open titles as if to say,
"I couldn't find anyone interesting enough
to have a fertile conversation with".
These are sailors that swim into puzzles
written nine hundred years ago and
compliment its inventor with an invitation to tea,
These are dreamers that look at diagrams
of the moon falling onto Earth and nod their heads
as if Shakespeare could learn something from gravity,
These bookworms know seven different household items
to bookmark a chapter with annotations
and a catalog system that could sort the Alexandrian Library,
These are reptiles that know a lost traveller
better than the starched faces of a neighbourhood
where nobody dies in interesting ways,
These tacticians have staged more battles
than could be contained on the porcelain
of a boring candlelight dinner,
No, they do not wonder why they are single,
These are klutzes that wear their heads backward,
they will look at you funny for staring at them
when their rabbit-hole does not make sense,
You are narrative made time and space,
They are the fifth dimension,
They are wormholes that taste the universe
with the greedy fingers of a child,
and had you known their fury,
you would stop to worship
the temples these spirits play at.

Image Source: Book of Poems by Dan Beck

Rains Are Philosophy, Not Poetry

Rains are philosophy, not poetry,
It is a mistake easy enough to make
but the clouds are questions of identity,
The waterdrops begin to end with Sun
and break into beginnings with rain,
Tell me, then, which drop came to which shore?
How many Ships have been sundered
and rebuilt with new names on dry pages?

The mist begins where the ground smells sweet,
but where does the rain begin?
Is there a map for the skies with lightning bolts
to mark the borders of that country?
Or is the whole of world a cloud of water
that wanders and showers without knowing?

When the gutters swell and dogs lap at them,
do the grey skies grow gold and divine?
What colour is cast when the flood snuffs out
seeds laid with bony, then living, hands?
What court will condemn the procession?
Are moral ambiguities "Acts of Nature"?
Am I not an Act of Nature too?
Watch me tear hearts and their miseries,
my crying will be less ostentatious, I promise.

Is man greater than rain for watermills
or are the waters why man is greater?
Do rains, thereby, achieve greatness supreme?
Do dams owe their existence to tempers
of mothers that seek their children
from rills and streams and brooks,
Does man therefore achieve fatherhood?
What does it mean to conceive?
Are all effects proof of cause?

When you show rainbows to your children,
are you pointing at things that cannot be?
They will reach the promised Pot of Gold
and call you a liar that sows dreams,
and you will laugh and tell them of light
that breaks within the eye only on days
when the Sun is against invisible water,
but it is all within the eye of the beholder
and they will ask you if that is cheating,
Do you tell them beauty outside truth exists?
Is all of life a canvas for poets to paint upon?
Or will you tell them that their heartbeats lie,
all of the thunder and downpour is suspect
to the content of your fantasies?
Does truth exclude fantasy at all?
Do you exist?

Image Source: Seascape Study with Rain Cloud by John Constable

Tender Heart

Prompt: "A tender heart is full of grief"

A tender heart is full of grief,

because it never learnt to not open
when strangers come
knocking on the door.

A tender heart is full of grief
because its threshold is mistletoe,
and steeled hearts know to steal
a kiss or two inbetween winters.

The tender heart is full of grief
because it prefers the sleeve to its rib cage,
and knows that courage wears fear first
in its campaigns to conquer dreams.

Image Source: http://www.missplunkett.tv/gallery-shop/paintings/love-heart-colourful-03-2/

I Was A Dream

I held you in my arms because I was your dream,
your waking would be my unbecoming --
the weight of your knuckles tethered me,
my laughter was the hibiscus in your hair,
and I waited for you to tie me in knots beneath.
The winds threatened to pull me away
every time your fingers left mine,
Do you remember my eyes?
You saw the fear in them and called it love,
Did you know your softness kept me solid?
That I carried your jokes in a diary as if
forgetting your spirits would erase me,
I wonder if you could have carried peace
if you saw me fade inbetween the space
where sleep meets reality and unravels,
I am unravelled, untethered today,
people hear me croon to myself
and wonder if I dream of you.

Image Source: Spooning Couples in Love by Carolyn Weltman

Firestone

I remember the first time I wrote you a poem,

You thanked me as if I had given you a bouquet
to be placed by your bedside for two days
until it wasn't impolite to throw it away.

I remember being hurt as an artist and not a lover,
because your eyes held proof of our love on days
when my words weren't tender enough
to coax you out of your hiding places.

I remember your messenger-pigeons
and everything you said touched me without warmth,
I wondered whether your heart held flame
that lost itself on the long way to your lips.

I remember showing you all I never became,
I was the foolish bird that plucked stars
and while I lamented not having the Sun,
you taught me to search in darkness.

I remember telling myself with pride,
"This woman is fire that survives storms,
I must carry her like a Moon,
and if the skies refuse to give her room,
there is space enough in my chest."

I remember how I fell in love with you --
it was when I stopped writing couplets
of a fair maiden who stole my heart,
See, you are sorrow that teaches strength,
you are the stone that ignites hearts
until they stop sighing for home,
they lick the sky with fondness
enough to burn all the cold in their blood.

I fell in love with a firestone.
Gods above, I fell in love with a firestone!
and there is nothing left to burn,
I am an effigy that roams the world
with phoenix songs of long lost sparks,
I die, I live, I die.

Image Source: Delawer Omar

Cold Amidst Light

Your silences ask "Why do you bother?",
We talk about the fire in black skies
that steal your peace on open eyes,
I weave long lost memories in jokes,
open bottled laughter, vintage and musty,
and invite you to break bread with me,
I tell you how silly your misery is,
that problems are made of sterner stuff,
I drown your excuses in my darkness,
show them my demons, let you touch them
until all my sharp edges prickle you again,
your fingers are blushing with my living,
Do you remember descending into me,
your softness brushing all my dead,
all my forgetting, all my unforgetting?
You were the promise of beauty
that made grief out of emptiness,
My dear, you are blackness and you fill voids
like you were born to possess them,
dress everything in meaning,
teach the broken heart the fear of losing again
when everything is lost,
"because nothing is ever lost,
nothing will ever be lost",
you told me that when I couldn't see
the price of my peace was paid in dreams,
you walked over them and made black clouds,
it rained all night and all morning
and even as I drowned, you told me to swim,
told me to find strength that defies storms,
you told me to befriend demons.

I know the fire in the sky scares you
but that is the color of hope, my pretty,
and I will teach you to look at it
until you laugh the way you used to,
You will hold my hand,
and we will be cold amidst light,
Our cold will be the color of the night,
Our cold will be the color of moonlight.

Source: http://carts.deviantart.com/art/Depression-60274662

Evening Skies

I look at you the way I look at evening skies,
Awestruck at the beauty that never wanes,
with a violent urge to hold everything still,
press thick paper against liquid purples --
the darkness comes too early every time,
and every time I stand out in the open,
until the night closes itself around me,
That is how I learnt vulnerability,
when I did not understand Time well enough
to wait for mornings and their soft reds.

Reignition

No red-lettered date marks
the national holiday on which I will step outside my house of cards
built with razor-sharp memories,
But I trust that day to come.
And then I will not think twice of its random collapsing on my flesh,
Of being buried under metal edges,
Of losing old skin.

I will have sewn myself together
And made a backpack of every patch you kissed,
I will stuff all doubts in it, carry it without choice,
and search for broken people that have reconstructed themselves.
I will scout for love so hot
that it burns your hands just once
I worry that the scar-tissue on my fingers refuses to understand warmth again.
I will look for brazen gamblers
Who can cajole me into investing my life's savings into untapped opportunities
after having slept on streets
through cold nights.
I worry I have become a miser.
I will dig their backyards with tired hands and find skeletons we can bond over,
Ignoring the smell of your gardens beneath my fingernails.
I will trust the pepper in their lies
The way I did yours
when all your footsteps were the correct direction.
I will crush the chalk in their bones and draw on their living-room walls
Until the misery of our experiments with other people
Become the preface to better stories,
I will add your name to a blank page
And be grateful for being the flint
That taught me ignition.

Image Source: Delawer Omar

Innocence

I see my unbroken self in children,

their eyes are forever tied to the world
and they will look at the sky with glory
they allot to the ground in the same breath,
their freedom hasn't learnt the biases
that instruction carries in its structures,
But the brain of a child is a fickle thing,
it knows to err without reproach,
the face does not know to fear itself
and therefore does not wear masks,
it will be years until its learning in sighs
and delicate praise and copper smiles,
and then many years to earn the right
to wear the nakedness that challenges
the world and its artifices to find God
in its innocence worn with deep cuts.

Schoolday Morning

Waking up to Mondays was cold feet
on the marble floors of an old home,
my eyes locked as if morning would burn
the innocence I wrapped in my blanket last night,
my eyes locked until cold feet were warm
under hot water amenable to philosophy
best suited to the space of an empty mind.

Dressing up was an exercise in lassitude,
my red shirt was hypnosis made cloth,
and the steam over my tea was poetry unrealized
in the rush of a monsoon schoolday --
my mother's voice has turned sweeter
since the years she drove my punctuality.

The weight of geography dug into my shoulders
and if I would've known Atlas, I would've smiled,
but I simply stared up at the Ashoka trees
and the blotches of indigo fading behind,
I knew only to look upward in those days
and would let the sharp chirps seize me,
until every broken façade felt right where it was,
every bicycle trundled at the speed of my waking,
my waking would come, I knew, in minutes,
but all of the world was a hallowed portrait until then,
the black road shone with uneven cuts
while the vendors opened their stalls
but the aroma of chaat and dabelis was to come,
the old lady by the tiled cross was to come,
the confusion of noonday industry was to come,
and with it would come the many lives
that made me smaller and less defined,
but I wore the morning like a blanket,
wrapped it about me until evening came,
and I was nobody but for the Ashoka trees,
the aroma of chaat and dabelis,
the chirps of retiring birds in their eaves,
rains now claim all my memories
except for the one cup of tea
that still looks like poetry.

Image Source: http://animescenery.tumblr.com/

The Fifth Night of June

Philosophy cannot survive a woman's touch,
This I knew on the fifth night of June
when bruised elbows held us on a wall,
we held our breath like a canary agitated
while the white horses trotted beneath,
long metal slurps on the treacherous land,
Our cheeks grew closer by degrees,
touched,
and if the moon weren't bright in the rain,
my eyes wouldn't feign to trace silver lines
where rain met our pursuers and blanched away,
I would've given to the blush that stole me,
but we redoubled to the churchyard behind,
I winced as she stepped over gravestones,
her muddied cloak was the ink over marble
that stole me from my sleep to shadow her,
find the unworthiness behind her charm,
her casks of French liquor were stowed
beneath the apple tree of a cousin's field,
I tailed her and knew her tainted with dubloons,
but her eyes had a softness her fingers did not,
I whispered protest but she was stone
like the potter's wheel beneath warm clay,
she was the spruce fever that visits ambition,
The ethics of my sermons could not stay her,
she was the spray on livid cliffstones,
her waves did not pass custom-houses!
The crown hunted for smugglers' coves,
but did they know to hunt such beauty?
would they know sin garbed in silk?
The books had nothing to say for this:
when the good that heavens wrought in her smile
frames the quick strokes of her trade,
what survives for expostulation?
what law was writ to judge paradoxes?
what do I love in her when she is unbecome
into sundry threads of baser means,
but the flax in her dress is perfumed
with the summers she left in her wake
and I do not know which must prevail.

I strike the stone beneath the roots,
and sure as the sun there is the loot
that will fill goblets of pastors' homes
and the policemen call them hallowed,
but my sweetheart is slow poison to coffers
that are born to violence and usury,
but I will survive her hunger just yet,
Come dawn, the sun will colour her cheek
but it will not have the same honesty
my lady wore under that waxing moon
when my philosophies were torn asunder.

Image Source: Delawer Omar

Give Me Your Fingers

Give me your fingers,
see how I tap your knuckles softly
with the grooves on my fingertips,
You are lost to the silence inside you
but I will talk to you,
I will talk to you of the rolling in my days,
the cracks in my shoes, the film on my eyes,
I will tell you of circuses and expect fake smiles,
but I will keep visiting your darkness,
tell your fingers to telegraph my starlight to your ribcage
until your heart cannot ignore
the fact that there is crimson in the sky after sunset,
there are flowers that grow so far away
that the eye does not know they color the world,
The dead in you tells me something lives in you,
you are where things grow and kiss winds
until everything around is in bloom,
You are allowed to shrivel and fall down,
that is what struggle looks like,
you push against shadows like you were born to do it,
You are the ocean the night doesn't leave,
I will tear the sky open until it rains its auroras unto you,
You were made to shine, rise into mornings,
become the rustle of autumn leaves,
I will drown you with my waters
until you become the whisper of old rivers,
Talk to your sadness until it becomes poetry you wear on latenight balconies,
and the moon will call you beautiful
and you will not believe it because the moon is unfaithful and changes faces,
Look into my face and tell me you're not beautiful,
I will tax those words until your lips cannot afford them,
You will become the smile you wear today,
give me your fingers,
I will remember you until you remember yourself.


Image Source: Antoine de Villiers

Talk To Me, Please

We don't talk anymore and I don't know why,

Silence would be difficult if I had reasons
This is rollercoasters in pitch blackness,
This is impossible!
I cannot see what goes on behind your sad eyes
and I do not know if I am supposed to wait,
I wait behind closed doors with warm palms
but every twist of the doorknob is ice
I do not know if I am supposed to keep feeling
Tell me to be numb and I will do it
Talk to me, God damn it, my legs ache,
Remember all those days
when I whispered through closed doors,
you spoke to me then in breaking anguish,
I told you how to find stars in the darkness,
I was a blind man but I knew the stars  existed
because you were beautiful and you existed,
and the universe knew beauty in that moment,
I knew it in my bones because you made my heavens,
you made the rhythm I carried all day long
and please, I know you don't have time now,
but talk to me for five minutes,
you promised that you would always talk,
I counted on your words to reach me
I do not care for what empty shore they come from
but I counted on the air of your breath
to feel familiar when everything else isn't,
I need to be brave today and I need you,
I need to know that someone cares I exist,
I need to matter in your eyes,
Tell me your silence remembers my hums
and I promise to bend you into songs,
Tell me your ice remembers my warmth
and I promise to set both of us on fire.

Image Source: http://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-close-up-Catherine-tear/298693/2111616/view

Mischief in Rain

There is mischief in the ancient rains
that strands friends across concrete plains,
makes blankets toasty-fire tent-cloths,
and of men makes nostalgic fire-moths.

Prop an old book the third time over teak,
pretend bedraggled pigeons don't seek
the fractal of your emotions worn too soon
like ornaments to define the rainy noon.

These winds have travelled over fountains,
and snow-rimed hunching grey mountains
to quench the stove-fire beneath pots of tea,
to render romantic breakfasts an impossibility.

Watch washed towels fly into certain doom,

force mothers to pin bright layers in dark rooms,
draw them taut like prisoners of war,
torture out the water from slow showers.

But 'tis a season for nostalgia and gloom,
I spill some Iron and Wine over my room,
and when the dreambugs come again,
I will tell them I found my Muse in the rain.

Image Source: http://florpurpura.deviantart.com/art/Coffee-rain-338518813

Drawing Blood

The third night she sucked my nape

and tied sleep beyond my bedpost,
I decided I was not kind enough to give
and receive nothing but long welts,
fading scars that prickle without her,
when nights do not hum with her vim,
audible whispers that make me turn,
guard my nakedness with quick hands,
throw frenzied shadows on ceiling fans,
to sweep her down before she flies into
a night that will sweat with anticipation,
I will capture her with sticky palms,
squeeze out everything alive in her,
feel my labour make her ruddy and soft,
see her blush between my fingertips,
nothing but blood where she once was.


Image Source: https://www.colourbox.com/image/abstract-background-watercolor-beautiful-hand-painted-on-a-paper-pink-red-orange-violet-yellow-image-3028930

At The Foot of My Bed

She sat herself at the foot of my bed
where my eyes could wane with distance
and hit her chatoyant pools softer than
my ratpacking gaze would hit otherwise
even as she tried to balance a smile
on unsteady lips, her hands pursed away,
as if their opening would flood my home
and I would bloat with ancient waves
that travelled a thousand dreary miles
to break at my shores of sand and shell,
break me into seas within small conches.

I parted a curtain and pointed through
at an old tree I would consult in rain,
let a smile daub my face with melancholy
even as she pretended to not witness
the calling of free songs in empty days,
songs that visit shores of sand and shell,
and become polite smiles across beds,
their storms hidden in closed hands.

Image Source: Fanny Nuska Moreaux

The Girl Who Came For Poetry

She was the fury of midnights noone sees,

I saw her waft through my marshes
(a drying stain on her blue sundress)
to taste the words that fell off my lips
every time my room reeked of poetry,
she came with shoeflower perfume
and sat across with eyes large enough
to be filled with my words, let them leak
into unmoving water with twisting colors,
like a rainbow that forgot to stretch taut
under the leaking beams of a lost home
where memories come to forget humility,
sit on paper like stubborn black forts,
raised letters to read with closed eyes,
she kissed them until the edges confessed
all their umbrage, all their fierce yearning,
and something broke in her then
with a sound she wore between fingers --
she knew the riots I lost old dreams to
but needed to hear them in my voice,
close her fingers around my messengers
and shake their nightmares over my rug,
and something broke in her then,
her eyes suddenly on marble elephants
in the darkness above the sooty hearth
as if to wrest away all rhythm from me,
from the ankles of inexorable tragedy,
and recede to the world beyond my window,
slow winds in the vacuums behind her feet,
She was the unspoken word,
ice-crusted trinkets left to thaw
and she will not come again.

Image Source: http://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2011/11/agnes-cecile-1991-roma-italy.html

Rejection

Rejection feels like forgetting

everything that made you solid,
you were dangerous, rugged icebergs,
only smooth floes swim in you now,
There is no tragedy in rejection,
you will not bawl into soft pillows,
but lie half-awake and wonder
if all those glories were a dream
spun on wheels faster than Time,
Your mornings will carry promises
but you do not know how to trust,
how to leap into dances for eyes
that might not remember you,
all of you is wispy, hollow smoke
and you are afraid of winds
as if they know your emptiness,
a secret you did not know you had.

Image Source: http://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2011/11/agnes-cecile-1991-roma-italy.html

Flooding Forges

Your lips feel like pulling leather
when I kiss you and bite down
into the scented pulp behind them,
your breath is mist behind waterfalls,
the calm washes over my face
but I will not stop to stare in awe,
my fingers are quicksilver in darkness,
feel them slip between your bends,
become iron that stokes your furnaces,
while I drink your defeated smiles,
quiver with your mouth on my ear,
feel hammers fall on red-hot steel
as my body shudders and every wave
reaches your shores, meets your fires
and extinguishes with loud hisses
and long sighs.

Image Source: Antoine de Villiers

Forgetting Our Anniversary

I try to forget the date but I know

you remember its rain just as coolly
as I do and your eyes are better
at lying than mine will ever be, better
at denying the hour I waited outside
the railway station facing our college gates
with the first rose I had ever purchased,
the easiest ten-rupee investment of my life,
and how you looked at me with guilt and
wicked amusement at making me squirm;
I would not let you hold this rose,
this rose was not yours just yet.

I remember the kilometer we walked
beneath your neighbourhood trees,
and although we spoke of everything
our eyes were filled with confessions
of love made the previous night
but our hands were not brave enough
to find each other's fingers yet.

I remember not wanting to look ahead
but into your eyes, eyes full of secrets
of life and poetry and easy promises,
O, those easy promises!
but I held my neck stiff so you couldn't see
my disbelief at calling you my own,
so you couldn't find the unworthiness
hidden in my nervous smiles;
I wanted to ask: "Are you sure about this?",
"Will you teach me to love you so that
I don't break you when I hold you too tight?",
"Can I teach our children how to measure
our planet with the shadow of a stick?
To ask questions that have no answers?",
but all I asked you that day was,
"So, what do you want to do next?"
and you found us the right kind of silence
around a park we loved to loiter about
and we spoke of everything, everything,
but all I remember is how beautiful you looked
when I forbade you to ever wear make-up,
and how you complained with a pout that
I was exaggerating your beauty, as if
the mirror of my soul was too much,
too soon, the mirror of my soul
is still too much for you, I know.

I remember you predicting rain and
how I half-worshipped you when the sky
surrendered its water and forced us
to run beneath the window-roof of
the old building next to our favourite café,
I remember broken stone against knuckles,
my faded jeans staining with brown
when I dropped on one knee and
tried to ignore the lump in my throat
as I asked you to be mine, formally,
the way they do it in movies I've never watched ,
and your body looked so small, so
precious as you stood overwhelmed,
even though there was no surprise,
both of us knew how the scene ended,
but the rose was now yours, I was yours,
and my fingers suddenly found courage
to find the spaces between yours.

I remember, I remember,  I remember.

Image Source: René Magritte

Death of a Star

In a soft, hidden niche of heavens,
you levitate in infinity’s embrace,
burning with your fiery tunic
with the astral winds on your face!

Within the crimson and the vermillion
lies your throbbing heart, your cyclone,
A sweetheart’s blood rushes in your veins,
molten gold sings in decibels unknown.

How many flights your messengers take!
and how their legs run deep!
Yet with every other journey they embark,
their feet keep losing their keep!

Two immense invisible fountains,
one which consumes another,
that are like arms outstretched,
and any metal core do brother.

Your captivating charm has allured
so many sycophants around your dance,
whirling and dancing along like tops,
pulled by the string of your glance!

They say I am the vestige of a star,
your brother perchance, who still shines,
and I live not for a proton’s worth,
my time is infinitesimal to your primes!

Your reddish flush of weak health,
in the sky of mine scintillates white,
your adamantine dignity in the sphere,
keeps shifting in my black nights.

Slowly your color has deepened
and your heart grown weaker,
but your build has grown larger,
and my eyes are now meeker.

Expanding your inferno to legions undecided,
you explode like imagination may never recite,
into trillions of diamonds and pearls
and a wizened dwarf is your sight.

Every speck of your reach is a grave,
you contain within your ashes lights which last
for times long in my unworthy character,
and those invisible to my unworthy cast.

Tombstones furnaced, that shall roam the cosmos,
forever shall tell of your beauty and law,
It is the way your kind is resurrected,
for mortals of flesh to be in awe.

Image source: http://facundodiaz.deviantart.com/art/Canis-Mayoris-106714461

Spilling Freshwater

I spilled you all over my life,
the way I spill water sometimes,
clumsy hands knocking glasses
or happy feet splashing puddles,
because water always evaporates;
See, caution is just a bother with water --
water always leaves before dawn,
like a welcome guest too polite to
trespass your tolerance for strangeness,
It will be thrown on flowerbeds until
the concrete outside weeps excess
but the sun remembers to carry it all
like a matron chiding spoilt children
back into some nursery above earth.

There is no sun where I spilled you
every time you knocked your head
against mine with liquid smiles,
where your words cleaved broken soil
and disappeared and men dug me up
but could not find you, like a God lost
in prayers to a wind that cannot be
plucked out except for the wetness
in all my corners, my body is a cave
that cannot stop dripping, cold always,
I did not anticipate so much darkness,
did not plan my gambols and gambles
to account for waterproofed nightmares,
so when I call you rain the next time,
my dear, know that I am blaming you
for making me rich enough
to purchase debts I can never repay,
know that I am desperate to
see anything in rainwater but melancholy
and all of you is freshwater
but under your summer lakes, love,
See how I decay!

Image Source: Andrew Salgado

Love Songs

The problem with poetry is that
heartbreak sounds like a love-song
and if I strung it to a harpsichord,
it would be dedicated on radios
to new sweethearts on Valentine's
before the roses could be shared,
as if the cold lacquer of my words
was polishing delicate musicboxes
made of ancient oakwood forests
where the sun never stops shining,
My darkness accosts these hearts
but they hold hands and await dawn,
while I distribute a litany of sunsets
with ink borrowed from long nights.


Image Source: Phoenix Decor

Nostalgia

Words are poor messengers for emotions,
for what I am when I sit on the marble
of my bedroom window in late June,
as rain needles through cool air,
makes dark spots on my trousers;
I am in a lost childhood dream,
the last ten years never happened
but this is just a really long déjà vu,
I simply forgot not to grow up,
to keep building castles in games
and none outside;
I sip tea from a mug with painted roses,
and have just returned four hours late
from a school-library filled with fairy-tales
and new-smelling encyclopedias
with DNA helixes and blue-white comets
and my mother chides my forgetfulness,
How do I lose track of time, she asks,
I fall on the freshly-washed bedsheets
of a bed I no longer fit in and ask myself
How do I lose track of time?

Grey Skies

Grey skies are grand ivory cloths spread
above us like an uncoloured ceiling,
but that is not what makes them beautiful.
It is the light that descends softly
onto mundane, decrepit buildings
and lonely trees, otherwise lit
by a bored Sun or a miserly Moon,
How all colors seem sharper, brand new
in the pearliness of air that remembers
rain, but forgets everything else.
How the birds do not time their songs,
how the winds will beat the leaves
into paranoid dances without notice,
forcing you to anticipate wild rains,
angry, lashing, cold rains,
Everything has a voice with which to cry
in joy or fear or downright despair
and it doesn't take a poet philosopher
to read a world in motion.

Image Source: http://www.simonsgallery.com/001landscapes.php