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