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/

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

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

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