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.