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

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/

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

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

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

I Shall Always Remain

The silence consumes and I fall,

On my knees, my spine withdrawn,
My eyes lead-plated with broken lights,
And the tears erase the lines I had drawn.

I keep losing the sight of the shore I knew once,
The resonance of the river the only sound,
That keeps me awake when the sun has set,
And my destination is nebulously profound.

I trust those who scintillate like gems,
Those who can pierce my shattered eyes,
Those who preach a purpose multi-folded,
And for that blind belief I forever rise.

A morbid vulture perch’d upon a morbid tree,
Is ever so kind, for he keeps me alive,
His composed gaze awaits my corpse,
And that’s heavenly incentive to strive!

All around me the world is waiting,
Ever so, with a transcendent poise,
Patience is a virtue of Gods and heroes alone,
I am not patient, I am without any choice.

But I am uncomplaining, enduring,
Even in the most chiding thunderclaps,
For the river I left behind still gurgles,
Its crystal song lifts me when I collapse.

The sky was never black, only abstained,
From the spontaneity of Helios’ fine sunshine,
The clouds were never tufts of metallic rage,
They are the same cotton giants redefined.

For every water droplet that adorns sky’s brooch,
Is a drop borrowed from the watery expanse,
Every loan tethered to its unconquered realm,
Is a debt that will flow in smooth romance.

It’s a tale too well engraved within my soul,
And it’s a moral that shall abide its own law,
Many a tempest my bared chest has witnessed,
And every unforgiving frost must thaw.

These times do not melt to caricatures of God,
And they don’t soften to Love’s noble larks,
Integrity alone can salvage me from this tempest,
For the ghouls shall vanish when Time barks!

And I can only wait, for I have Hope,
Hidden in some beautiful leaf of my tome,
The cover dilapidates, the essence grows musty,
And the pain froths into chronicles like foam.

My today leaks into my veins and condenses,
And my eyes slowly dull and grow cold,
I am the very Oracle that writes my Fate,
And to write on, I grow old.

Image Source: Ilir Pojani

Chance Kings

You're not a flower that opens with rain,

nor a grand scar tissue over old wounds,

Strength will not populate the empty in you

like angry waves in the holes of a cliff.

Stop growing and start building 

the kingdom you would have call you king,

Its arches will need hard stonemasons,

its wine will drink decades to flavour,

Or do you hope to steal castles from dreams?

Trust to stumble onto the lucky mistakes?

Gamble your name to the winds

and success will taste foreign,

failure all too comfortable,

Stop growing and start building.

Image Source: The Astronomer by Johannes Vermeer

Pain

Pain is your only incentive
to keep broken bones straight,
to watch them heal while walls
invite you to stand atop and
taste the gold of undissolved suns,
nevermind the copse of corpses
at its unbroken unconquered base;
You will bite your wrist when
you hop for copper vessels --
food will cost agony and
you will know economy of breath,
husband the coiling ambition
and remember each mistake
in your flesh -- to err is inhumane;
You will reach dark cities
and captain naïve feet
to stowaway crannies beyond bends
where they may see honey in old skies
on stone floors of a mountain;
You will touch your leg,
remember the price of knowing
the paths you must not tread
and smile at the walls behind you.

Image Source: http://www.flickriver.com/photos/tags/synesthesiaart/interesting/

Desert Moon

Do not fuss over onyx moonlight
and carve nights with soft fingers,
You will anoint her with jasmine oils,
but her fealty cannot outpace her heart,
a heart that knows your cold winds,
hands that find the sand in your oasis,
but her tongue will not cluck as she
collects your sweat like shadows
in her purse, smuggled to loud bazaars
where the splintered din cuts into her
like potsherds on colored sandstone,
she will uncork the liquid of your name,
drop her wispy storehouse of black
splash the walls with the quiet of your breath,
until all is taut and fragile and poetry,
she will scream your white songs into the sky,
you will be the desert moon and
wonder if you want to give her the Sun.

Image Source: Allison Haley

God

This mortal man will not accept Godhood,
Throw totems and coins on his grave,
Until you make of his bones a temple,
But he will not rise into answered prayers,
And that was never the point anyway,
His burdens were never lowered onto riverbanks,
Nor did he slake summers with rain,
His marble was veined with misery
But you will find thread in these ruins,
Your children will knit His name
With the same patience that makes mediocrity
Raw stone against glacial winds,
His tears will be agony he chose to feed
The unbroken earth when he could have
Spilled blood and become champion,
Ascend into songs for bonfire nights,
But your children will memorize the hymn
Of his unbeaten beating heart,
Plant trees on deep soil,
Swallow winters with holy duty,
To find their quiet in his iced over bells,
They will know peace under their eyes,
Breathe pain in plain sacrifice,
And you will etch His name on skies,
But he will not accept Godhood.

Image Source: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/blind-faith-alfredo-coelho.html

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

Surviving Is Not Enough

You will pull the yoke on clay until your shoulderblades fuse
and your feet swell pregnant with pain.
You will shed skin until crystal grows over your eyes
and the bridge of your nose is stronger
than the dreams you netted in a forgotten summer trance.
Your breath will summon hope on desert winds,
And you will say:
"I will survive this just yet;
What does not kill me
makes me stronger."
And you will walk straighter,
Your spine suddenly an iron rod,
Under a face that melts into mercurial grins,
While your heart is glum with your commitment to metallurgy.
Will you notice your shoulders cracking,
Your bones surprised with the spirit that calls your body home?
You will bury your smiles under wet shores,
Waiting to finish the season;
Do you hope to rub fermented laughter into your soles
Hoping that the bitterness they inherited from the seas will have dried away?
Will you lick your wounds and taste wickedness?
You know you will find it there;
It grows on destitute fields under forced motion,
And you love to harvest.
Oh, you love to harvest.

© “The Blue Man” painting by Ava Kauffman is Copyright protected. All Rights reserved by Donna Friend, Founder/CEO of Ava’s Corner, Inc. Please do not use this or other artwork, photos or materials without specific written permission obtainable by request on http://avas-corner.org.

Battle-Dress

You wore her skin like battle-dress
and her kisses left you bullet-proof;
Do you remember laughing as you raced into swords?
How her blood knit your wounds,
How the holes in your heart left rubies on the earth?
Your stories decorate fairy-tales and prayer-dreams now.
You conquered haunted forts,
and sang serenades on their terraces,
Do you remember the ghosts?
Do you remember the bivouac she built inside her chest?
Her ribcage was steel tempered beyond breaking
and you were secret nightmares let loose.
She anointed you with her tongue,
cracked your wishbones and declared you the maker of your destiny.
Do you remember the silence of her chambers?
She burnt your fingers like incense-sticks;
Others see the ash you wear and flee;
The brave hurry to draft praise and become your statues.
But do you remember screaming against her arms
when her bosom was the only church that would take you in?
You learnt that tears don't oil armors well enough,
that wars cannot be fought with fire in your hands --
Your passions had burnt your laughter into greedy poetry
and you raged against her embrace
Even as she blinked away your explosions,
Even as she whispered balm into your soul.
She borrowed the stars and punctured the death in your eyes
with their jagged, searing edges.
Do you remember the joy that flooded out then?
She beamed at you with the satisfaction of a sculptor --
You were the Sun for months!
and she the ether that held you.
Does that make her touch cold metal?
Does she offer silence when you yearn for war-drums?
Is her altar too austere a station for your chariot?
Tell me, 

do you remember her now?


Image Source: Extract from Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli

Blunt

Yes, I am blunt;
I will forget your name,
With impunity that belongs,
To kings and lunatics alone.

Yes, I am blunt;
I will call a spade a spade,
And a heart a heart,
And leave you wondering:
What just happened?

You wish I cared enough,
To ruffle the feathers one at a time,
Unlike a Colossus amidst a forest
That has grown over centuries.

You wish I cared enough,
To keep to myself the volley of questions,
To not disturb the flows of thought
That have grown laminar with much patience.

But you forget, my dear Sirs and Dames,
That I walk barren myself,
And wish upon you the very same:
The unattached ease with which
Lunatics become kings.

For the forest breeds darkness,
And the darkness breeds the lies
That keep us from becoming
Everything that we can be,
But are not.

For History was written amidst
The most outrageous turbulence,
And the liberated were those,
To whom anchors were of no consequence,
Whose identities were not rewritten
When the waters washed away
The inks of illusion.

I do not exist as a fixed point in time,
And it kills me to see hearts tear and attach
To ideas and biases and hymns and speeches,
And beauties and families and sciences,
The rationalities amongst irrationalities,
And histories and stories and her stories,
And their stories and the worst of the lot:

Your stories.

I bite and spar and tear and rejuvenate,
With a promise that I see in you,
Nothing more than what the circumstances,
Have made of you.

Yes, I am blunt;
I wear my heart on the sleeve,
And seek to see it destroyed,
For I rise with the tenacity,
A thousand suns couldn't afford,
With all their fuel.

Yes, I am blunt;
I tire of the slimes and machinations,
That keep the machine running;
My dear Sirs and Dames,
Art is long and Time is fleeting;
I am busy running;
What about you?

Image Source: Joseph Ducreux (Yes, of the memetic fame)