Friday 29 May 2015

Reading

I never could read digital books,
I need to touch the words,
Feel the bark of an old forest
Slip through the cardamom
Of hot mugs over cerulean rains,
My fingers find empty corners
Filled with more promises than
I have known men to keep,
In ink fermented with my years
Spent within and without covers
Leather-bound corsets eager to be
Undressed with difficult patience,
Your bone-white flesh will be
the bookmarks to my smiles
On dank monsoon days;
My dear, I could read you
All night long.


Image Source: Ignat Bednarik

The Fear of a Lover

There is raw fear in your eyes, beloved,
I will not leave you, I promise,
Believe me when I tell you,
My hands are cold iron without your kisses,
Yes, I know the coldness you dread,
You lit me up in argent flames
And I do not know what it means
To be extinguished
I closed my eyes and imagined
Laughter without you
And my voice scared me;
I am still afraid,
The honey we suckled off old nights
Has us stuck in amber dreams
But I am yours!
The world keeps trying to remind us
Of mornings and their withering,
But we will drown
until the world
stops trying.


Image Source: Agnes Cecile

Sublimation

You will open metal levers,
Air will be water,
You will not breathe,
in deep prayer,
The steam will accept
everything solid in you,
Render it void,
Sublime,
Your sacrifice to the only God
that bargains with gnarled bones
and grants peace,
You will leave half-empty,
Your buoyancy will have you floating
full, complete,
Your smile will be the kiss
That advertises burning
dross
from
desire.


Image Source: Alyssa Monks

Pretending to go to War

I set up the bivouacs
And decided that I was busy,
My hourglasses set besides camp-fires,
Overlooking oiled armour and picket-lines,
My footsteps parked by every totem,
My labour bunched in muscles
Awaiting hot water baths.
Did I look away
when I found your fingers
Kindling pits that threatened
To froth with ash?
I do not remember your gaunt memories
Tempering the steel of my weapons
Stealing the sin they earned,
Making of them gentle playthings,
I should have heard your whispers
Woven into sentry reports
Painting my horizons with dull colours,
My scouts found farmsteads
stocked with grain to ground empires
But I saw mundane trophies
That I couldn't bother to prise
From hands filled with life
Distinctly more musical than mine.
Was your name always on these fetishes?
I spend my whole day in bathtubs.

Image Source: Corneliu Baba

Wednesday 27 May 2015

A Forgetful Heart

A forgetful heart is a sorry thing,
that falls in love and
forgets to fall out;
It will invest futures
and never collect the sum,
set all days afire
until only ash remains;
You will find it taking trains
to places that no longer exist,
it will recruit dreams
until bursting
and forget not to burst;
Its absent-minded songs
will be spun long after
their purpose is moot;
The gusts in your blood
will be misplaced promises
that will knock your walls
and keep you guessing;
A forgetful heart will
search for happiness
and discover
Melancholy.


Image Source: Edvard Munch

Thursday 21 May 2015

Lessons of Regret


There is longing in my eyes
That searches a cluttered past
Every time it sought to trespass.
But remembers falling fast
Do you see the smoke in my smiles
Or the musty perfumes I hide
Behind the seasons I chose to ride
Without the secrets I now confide.
Hear me then, gentle reader,
Open the palms of my prayer:
Melancholy wafts from odd layers
Into landscapes without surveyors.
Find the innocent laughters,
Their purple is in these stares,
I wove their sweet into my snares,
To make smiles of fire-flares.
Fall into my eyes, adventurer,
I have lost more than I could bind
With the craft of a young mind,
Discovering all reasons to be kind.
Carry my music to newer shores,
It will fall on untouched sand,
My echoes will sear their brand
And make of innocence new land.
I will be the reason for new life,
Relish my poetry like fruit wine,
Draw my relics into undrawn lines,
Make of me a warning sign.


Image Source: Magic The Gathering

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Wasted Potential

There is anguish in not becoming,
Seconds pitter-patter on my forehead
Make a dented shell of my mind,
Every vista undresses its secrets and
Reveals the clock-chimes I can steal before night strikes,
Eager to have its meanings swallowed,
But I will be statue admist clay,
My hands will not kiss shapes into opportunity
And make of it legacy,
I threw promises on morning clouds
Before the Sun knew the dead in my face,
Is it any wonder that their dismay
Is so violent in its receipt?
I will be statue and watch rain
Carve pits in my plaster,
I am regret in making,
Gather around and
watch me do
nothing.


Image Source: Saeed Tavakkol

Saturday 16 May 2015

Unravelling Goodness


I am done trying to find peace
Between the wrinkles of rosary beads,
Of combing silences between thunderclaps
For hints of Spring,
I refuse to stand on towers, hold my heart as fire
and call myself a lighthouse,
Waiting for kindness to pay for my services.
Look at me throwing away this bucket
I have used to carry all the water
For when I was lava and brimstone
Because quenching is for tempers,
I am volcano.
I have decided that I will not discover
Happiness lodged in the teeth of crooked smiles
Smiles that hand me patience like reins
To a runaway carriage that cannot not
Cut the forest path eventually
But I do not think civilization ever got the chance
To clear the surface growth that thrives
from every pore and makes
of all human landscapes
Jungles.
I will default on all chivalry and wear curses
Like a membership badge,
See if I find loans easily now.


Image Source: Delawer Omar

Wednesday 13 May 2015

Greedy Rain

The rain was not always beautiful,
It was a procession of water-drops and nothing else.
It fed on your paper boats
and whispered its secrets to the winds,
licked your cheeks when you walked back
home from places that wouldn't take you in,
until the taste of your loneliness salted the cheer of your childhood screams
deposited in broken skies.
The water is greedy to learn your fears,
to linger on your windowpane 
when the trees cast phantom murders on the bedroom glass
in which you left music to mix with humidity
last Friday evening; you were too busy to notice
when the showers left your searing escapes
because it had to rush to potholes in your street,
come morning you would not find 
the stone that marked the route to her home,
Your anguish would be photographed by sly mirrors
because the tissue-paper laughter tears when retrieved,
the heads of your sorrows look comical
perched on spears crashing onto dry earth,
The army plans to leave no survivors,
it plans to scorch every temple in your memory,
cut the throats of the babes,
force traders to see the rubble and find opportunities to reinvent
a civilization in you,
and the descendants will call their history beautiful.


Image Source: Zachary Johnson

Sunday 10 May 2015

Momma's Boy

There is an ode that sings
Of my bravery and virtues,
And I have it memorized
From days when I had none.

"Momma's Boy" --
I'd shy away from the name,
As if it revealed some secret of mine,
That wasn't meant to exist.

Since then I have walked and scarred and suffered,
And seen and closed my eyes in disgust;
My shoulders straighter, my gait meaner,
My eyes wider and my smiles broader,
Only to crumble in her opened arms,
For they always are open, aren't they?
God, I hate those arms,
No man should drink of such peace so deeply,
That life otherwise becomes
A waking death.

God, I hate those arms.

And yet I indulge.
For in her eyes I see the pride
That blossoms before mine can capture,
The million successes her son brings
To her books,
And she writes on.

For in her smiles, I see life,
The vicarious life she now lives
With the inevitable enthusiasm of
An investment made too dearly.

I'd settle debts with her if I could,
And remain Stoic throughout,
But what metrics will capture
The barter of Love and Time?

For now all I can do is chide her,
As if to tell her I care deeply enough
To be upsetted when she doesn't
Live half the life she wants for me.

She remains an island of certain good,
Amidst the tempests of motives and schemes;
The Scientific Method ruined all for me,
Except her ungodly convictions.

Certainty that belongs to the arrogant,
Shaped me with each passing day,
The self-fulfilling prophecies
Of a blind and mad oracle!

The gulfs that separate us are huge,
The colours of my mind are monochromatic to her,
But I'd cross that chasm every time,
For I stole her breaths that I
May fly farther,
Reach promised lands
Of which she had but an inkling
A vague dream to guide me away
From the mediocrity she wears
So poignantly.

It is funny that a philosopher,
Divorced of self and a sense of good,
Should find sanity in the illusions
Of a mother's addled heart,
And its many Odes.


Image Source: Katie M. Berggren

Too Much Poetry

The problem with writing too much poetry
is that you will fly to blank pages,
your hands warm with some new spectacle,
your eyes alive with fresh theatre,
your heart throwing irrational numbers in uneven heartbeats,
All of your body will conspire to
build a jigsaw of your seconds
rub sandalwood paste on hot stones
to freeze the design of your blizzards,
to achieve the impossible
and cage the Sun in a snow-globe of your verses.
But your words will have been loaned to some poem you wrote yesterday
on an emotion that seems too cheap for the loss.
How many times can a poet talk of fire, laughter and moonlight
before the gallery of his work becomes a dictionary of permutations?
before the prism of his soul becomes a vomited rainbow on broken bones?
before the clockwork of his chest becomes noise?
No poet can suffer to hear
disinterested audiences grow uninterested,
No poet can suffer to see
his experiences being called a rag-doll of clichés.


Image Source: Eve Co

Saturday 9 May 2015

To Heartbroken Poets


They will marvel at your fingertips
which drum gold onto paper
like auroras on a dead sky,
You will become the nomenclature of their heartbreak
and the lexicon of their frauds,
the vernacular with which they purchase peace ,
the passwords to their sleep;
You will smile to see your pain
wear gorgeous dresses and kiss strangers
in places they learnt to hide with time,
There will be moonlight on broken concrete
but their eyes will not chase meteors,
their eyes will not be hope soaked in shadows
because they were busy touching the fissures in your soul
where your heart became full and fell from its nine-fold height
but forgot to shatter,
forgot to evaporate into memories,
It sang on abandoned harmonicas
in alleys you thought collapsed
and if not for the haunting
of a breaking not-broken heart,
you couldn't steal the silver in its dirges,
couldn't burn it into stars that dot this sky,
even as gold explodes into the black waters
and stops the world into looking upward.


Image Source: http://figuraarto.deviantart.com/art/Despair-Attends-552391784

Tuesday 5 May 2015

Flat Poetry

I would not wish poetry upon you,
The world has plenty already,
and your pages are filled with clichés,
Fires in your heart, eyes and chest,
As if your body was a godown of kerosene.
How many baskets have been woven with raw heartstrings,
To smuggle doves and songbirds into impregnable fortresses,
As if only the animals ever learnt to sing of love?
These verses are lips and tongues, smiles and teeth,
Do dentists sponsor your calligraphy?
The moon waxes with love and wanes with desolation,
The poor thing has been contracted into so many narratives
That it seeks a psychiatrist for Personality Disorders.
You are blood in your hands, wounds and tears,
Do you seek to seduce vampires?
You keep smelling flowers, drink the perfumes in her wake,
Are you a dog in a man's skin?
There are drunk nights, the wine on her bosom is the right kind of sweet,
The alcohol of the separation burns into fizzy songs --
Prostitute poetry into a tavern for your weaknesses, why don't you?
And why is every single princess bred with such poor taste
So as to become the ache in the bones of an artist who is clearly devoid of imagination?
Yes, her touch is electricity, her fingers are ionized ropes,
And her kiss makes a lightning rod of your spine,
No wonder you became Frankenstein's monster,
A collage of dead metaphors and collapsed heartbeats.
Go home and write something fresh.


Image Source: http://purpletartan.deviantart.com/art/Patterns-93566436

Monday 4 May 2015

Know Your Father

You think you know your father,
Three missed calls,
Lamenting your afternoon breakfasts,
Hushed post-party conferences,
Advice on hiding two left feet,
Crazy concern on how Google Maps
Is why your East is West,
His face the bulletin of your flaws,
His love the ointment that stings.

And then you overhear bedroom whispers,
Emotion holding your trophies,
His pragmatism suddenly romantic,
Awe at your fierce curiosities,
Trumpeting your humility,
His eyes are fire, you know,
His hands are veined hyperboles,
Stitching deeds with your name,
Banners he will hide clumsily,
As you stumble in,
Now aware of unkempt hair,
Your two left feet,
And his half-sarcastic smile.


Image Source: Vicky Wade

Sunday 3 May 2015

Knowing You


I do not know what you are now,
Fresh grass has grown over the trails we used to walk down,
Your feet smell of new conversations.
You wear clothes my photographs do not recognize
And use words I did not teach you.
Why do you speak in tongues now?
Why are you fires I did not light?
I remember chewing your skin and spitting it out the color of my blood.
Your body is blank paper now,
I expected you to be papier-mâché.
Trickle down my veins a little slower then,
My body doesn't know the shape of your smiles now,
And might send antibodies to evacuate the strangers,
I am all sneezes and tears.


Image Source: Delawer Omar