Tuesday 14 October 2014

The Drowning



I close the door
The voices outside have drowned
It’s time I must sleep
A deep, trembling sleep
For the sun was getting too loud.

Words are never far
From where you are.

But I bid farewell to
The smiling, squinting eyes
That stray from me
The face of yesterdays
That called out in the breeze
Forsaken and lost,
Just a fever dream.

Do you lay down your armour
Or do you simmer and burn?
But tonight you recede sans waves
Silence fits you like a glove.

Don’t you know I’ve been counting
All the suns and moons left in my days
The wealth of past is never abounding
You can be the light, or
You can be the shade.

What shall I do to seek your shadows
Though your reflections are oft’ in my view
Evening moon and the midnight flower
Twixt both, and I have you.

And so, I close the door as,
The song is done
And though adrift
I stand before you
Naked to the bone.

Maybe we’re all stuck in silent motion
And maybe the rock
That sinks in the ocean
Is just a stone.

Thursday 21 August 2014

Morsel




Little girl
You don’t have to cut or heal
As the waves along the shore
Erode my feet.

Time is a passing thing
You don’t have to crack
Every mirror
As you stare at wishes
For an open window.

Don’t be a culprit
They always leave a mark
Of things to come.
Or whisper gently in my ears
“Find me when you wake.”

Change is just a yellow leaf
Falling to the ground.
And I, too, turn into you
As the summer sun
Brings back colour
To both your eyes.

Your body is but a burning flame
Why don’t you just
Keep dancing
As you put on your clothes
However
Do it slow.

Monday 7 July 2014

I



Here I am
Dressed in the sleeve of a gifted shirt
Muttering words, too fast, in a language you cannot fathom
Hair tousled in the wind, hands waving
Wearing a smile borrowed from an old photograph
Legs thinner than before.

There you lie
Never too far but always at a distance
Forever moving a little bit too quick
And yet, slowing down time
Whispering through a half smile
Like the sun about to rise
From my window
Almost a perfect circle,
She dances.

Here I stand
Building a wall
With each brick, a memory of
No one.
Stealing the night from her eyes
Spinning in the circle
Of perennial dress rehearsal
Adorned with tatters of yesterday
This circus grows vile.

And behind the empty canvas of every mask
Your eyes are open cages
With singing birds
Your words are roads going nowhere
Your mouth, a lake with depths unknown
Even though your tongue is still
But your hands are doors that never open
As you watch me
Watching you
Dangle the world
From your keychain.

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Anything/Anyone

It was one of those nights where anything would do.

'Anything'. He repeated to himself in his head. He lied. He meant 'anyone'.

But there he was. Watching amovie with an imdb rating of 6.6 instead of his usual 7+ douchey unexplaining hard to pronounce titles that'd usually turn out to be lame and leave him more confused than sad. However, sweating profusely fighting sleep to stay awake whilst watching this flick that had seemingly slipped by time itself, itsubtly inflated his own ego to challenge his ocd-like temperament with mundane things.

Like not stepping on stone tile boundaries while walking on a pavement and not checking if the door is locked for the fourth time before masturbating, it subtly pleased him.

26. That number shouldn't matter. But it had been drilling a tiny hole, nay a tunnel from deep inside of him like a pesky woodpecker trapped within the confines of his frail body. He wished it would never come out. He hated that motherfucking woodpecker.

Tuesday 3 June 2014

Crooked



Her teeth are crooked skylines of a forgotten city,
Against the summer sun
That goes down and doused in shadows,
All is quiet.

In my mind, there are only mirrors.
And every photo is black and white.
When she smiles,
The colours return.

I put the lamp away and put myself on fire
Things that burn are hard to reach
That is why her eyes stray
Seeking cold shades and warm shelters
Unlike my arms, charred and red
From holding you.

All my paper crowns are ashes
And the empty banks are flooded
With tales of the old.
So by the sleeve of an old sweater,
By the base of a broken tower,
By the loom of this forgotten craft,
By the by
I make myself anew
Out of the cities of you.

And the tired sun rises and settles
In her eyes of fire
Eyes of gold
But inside me, there are only
Mirrors upon
Mirrors
With no reflection.

Letter to a ghost - II

I will put on my serious face for now.*serious face on* (stop laughing, no seriously!) 

Hello there. Being the geek that he is, a friend once told me (without me asking, of course) about how things work within a nuclear reactor. A chain reaction is caused solely by an occurrence of a matter influencing the other - leading to an overwhelming interaction that threatens to take over. And the worst thing about this whole thing is, the more you try to control these occurrences from colliding with each other, the more they insist that they must continue to do so until they go critical.

Cut to the present day. I will bother you for the millionth time, sending stupid chat messages or whatsapp memes and usually you'd reply with a short and sweet 'haha'. Like a silly house cat excited by its conquests, I want to bring everything Ive learnt, gained and won and lay it at your feet for some sort of response. I think I declared blitzkrieg and got myself bombed to stone age right at the start of knowing you.

And now. Now I'll be sitting in a house or a temporary abode belonging to a friend like any other day, laughing at some stupid joke whilst having a few beers and suddenly you'll run across my mind, prancing about as you do with a large, crazy smile on your face. And suddenly, my thoughts aren't mine anymore, they've run out of control like speedy gazelles in haphazard directions. And I'll stop laughing randomly, which leads to moments of awkward silence and everyone staring at me because I look like I'm having a stroke.

Everything is always moving way too fast. Everything often seems too rapid and frantic to catch up with. Everyone, including me - the proverbial snail racing with the bullet train of the present, is out of time. Always. But in my mind you move in slow motion. In the quick, unforgiving world of now that strikes swiftly like the sharpest blade of a ninja before receding into the shadows, I cannot seem to grasp how you slow down time when you smile. As always, the fires of my frustration are fuelled by my inability to tell you just how much you mean to me. But i stay silent, ticking away like a clock. I dont want to suck the life out of you like a wretched vine sapping the life out of a tree, wrapped around its trunk like murderous hands around someone's throat.

I miss you like a retard misses the point. Every time I look at you, I feel like writing a new poem. I want to be your friend. Sometimes more. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, as Neruda says. I don't want to be a bridge you cross once and forget. I want to be the ferryman oaring you through troubled waters, piercing the furious waves. Like a flowery vine coiling around a tree, I want our stories to intertwine.

I want you to call me at odd hours and have me cure you of your panic attacks, when you can't seem to breathe, when you're losing your mind over your mother (who I'd like to meet very much). I want to be that constant. I want to be that anomaly. I want you with all your fears, all your scars and all your faults that made you who you are. I want you to show me your seemingly strange face in the morning so I can kiss it. I want to hold you when you feel like crying so that you can bury your head in my bony chest and do so without fear of judgement or what others might think.

I want to meet the skeletons in your closet, if there are any, and give them a bone crushing handshake. You can meet mine as well, though they are quite lame, and crush their brittle bones with a hug. I want to be your living, breathing, screaming invitation to believe in better things. Because you make me believe in good things too, just by being there and being yourself. You said the meaning of life is to give it a meaning. And you give me joy like never before. And its too vast, like the ocean that regularly swallows us. But I'd rather linger in these chambers of the sea, riding the waves. I'd rather be submerged in this blue dream than traverse through the killing desert of my life like I do.

However here is the truth in its most non poetic form: sometimes your thoughts aren't enough to sustain me or my mind. Sometimes I need to see you for I'm a wreck without you. I know this may not be enough or sufficient enough for anything. For these are just mere words on a screen, no matter how truthful they may be. This too may just be, just another letter I wrote. I once almost gave up on writing poetry and everything else with it because I thought words are useless and they don't change anything. Our actions or what we do define us, not our words. But ive been losing my mind over you and words are the only recourse i have to brave the winds of future that blow hard as ever. I just hope these don't go in vain. But they probably will. If 'one of the most beautiful letters written in the history of words' didn't impress you, i fear this certainly wont. I sometimes feel like I'm very unimpressive by default. Like all my creativity and wordplay skills are just devoid of charm or whatever it is that attracts people. Like a flame around which no moths dance, I dont think the things i say or do haunt anyone. As Nietzsche says, I don't believe in my own ghost. However, devoid of logic, I still rage with hope everyday. There's a reason why I didn't change all the 'wants' in this letter to 'wanted'. So bid adieu to silence (haven't we had enough of the same in our lives?) Talk to me. Meet me. Here. There. Or halfway in between. If I've caused hurt with my words, i hope it heals with time. The reasons can be found and named later. The negativity can be eventually hung, drawn and quartered. I apologise I became so rabid about taking up a space in your life where you seem to have forgotten you can put someone. Perhaps even someone like me. If you absolutely don't see a reason to, you can continue to be silent and I'd understand. Otherwise, I'm still here. Same old, same old.

*serious face off*

Letter to a ghost - I

‘Tacenda’ - are you familiar with this word? It’s funny how the most interesting words (such as Kalopsia – look it up!) never get used regularly. One would think that in the entire history of the English language, people would be tired of using the same old run of the mill words to express themselves or their state of being. Yet we go on, never tampering with the evidence that suggests just how uninspired we can be when it comes to expressing ourselves with flavour or joy. Anyway, apologies, I tend to digress (quite often) – ‘tacenda’ means ‘things better left unsaid; or matters to be passed over in silence’.

Now I am not a user of the same, but I believe silence is the overrated enemy. I hate silence. Don’t get me wrong, silence of the mountains can be serene and silence of the ocean, blissful, but then again to be completely quiet as a person signifies silently dying to me. Man may not always be a social animal but in my opinion, one should never become a silent beast. Death of words, of beautiful, lovely, joyous, emotional, burning, awe-inspiring words and non-existence of the same in language is a death like no other. I believe silence, like inaction, is perhaps the most violent thing we can express as humans.

I’ve also never believed in the concept of the one. Because to me, the whole theory of ‘the one’ or just the plain idea of it is evil and demeaning to us as a person –basically telling us that we are not complete and won’t be until we find a special person for ourselves. Even though a companionship like that (or anything close to it) is a beautiful thing and we must never let it go if we are lucky enough to chance upon such an occurrence. But if we’re not, it’s certainly not the end of the world. People make these huge promises to themselves and build up an image of a person that doesn’t exist anywhere but in their own head. And then when someone normal or regular does happen to wander into their life like any other person, he or she just gets side-lined.

I’ve felt like that person for a long time. That I wander off in people’s lives, like an extra character that mistakenly walks into the wrong set, apologises for his awkward behaviour, waves and leaves. 

However, these days I find myself thinking about how it would be to kiss your forehead. I imagine you laughing in my head (with your head bowed down, convulsing like you’ve been administered shock therapy) and think it would be so nice to hold your small, thin hands. Sometimes I imagine holding the tender frame of your body and immediately being to feel warm inside (and sometimes I get goose bumps). I feel all eloquent words and ways of expressing myself fall short of the craziness that ensues when we sit down to talk, and I often wish you were more than mere messages on my phone or laptop screen (even though it is enough to put a large smile on my silly face on cold nights).

I felt stupid about coming up to you for the first time. You dissolved into the room so effortlessly, I could still feel eyes on you, for you looked beautiful that night and in all the other moments henceforth. And how easy it’s all been since then, to make insane plans, to walk around roads that lead to happiness. To talk about serious issues – about life and love and death and things we cannot untie. How I think I fell for you a little bit more when you told me you took your mother out for shopping and when you sent me her smiling pictures. And how I felt so happy when you texted and told me that you missed talking to me (I think I did a little dance).

And now, now the world doesn’t feel colder, chaotic or fucked up. I think you bring about that change in people, whoever it is whose life you’ve touched has been the better for it. And meeting you doesn’t feel like a consequence. Season often don’t make sense but meeting someone as lovely and special as you certainly does. I find myself walking a road from work or around my colony running an errand and before I know it, you’ve raided my mind and I’m traversing through time and space with a large, stupid smile that I cannot hide. The little that I’ve gotten to know you, I feel like I knew it all along, that I knew you all along, all my life, to be precise. And I don’t want to just let go and lose you in an oblivion of people and the relentless crowd that occupied our city – that shall surely massacre this bond. It’s never been this relaxed, non-painful and devoid of any sarcasm or drama as it is with you.

I’ve tossed and turned and have been stripped and burned in relationships that have for most part, made me a better person (I think) and given me quite a good ability to detect bullshit (though I still often buy it!) and sometimes I don’t know what to do with all this knowledge, it seems to be a waste of time as I often thought I’d never get to apply it anywhere and just accepted for the longest time that I’m going to be alone and made my peace with it too. Since you walked in, I always wish to spend every waking moment with you. I know sometimes I can be overbearing with messages and phonecalls and constantly wanting to stay in touch but this is just who I am, although I apologise for any irritation I may have caused. I keep checking my phone thinking you might have messaged, and it fills me with happiness to see the tiny whatsapp logo in the upper left hand corner of the screen like never before. I’ve stopped dreaming about perfect endings or the ‘one’. I don’t want to live life as a dream, I’d rather take it with all its imperfections and heartbreaks – they make us appreciate the good things like never before. I’d rather walk with you holding hands through busy and crowded streets and laugh like I never do with others and to make you laugh the same way.

To borrow from Walt Whitman’s words, we are here so we may contribute a verse. And the one you bring about in my life is full of joy. I'm tired of writing, listening to as well as living sad songs. I'd rather take your happy eyes and smiling lips, your youthful laughter, your spinning, curling fingers and shiny, small, pointy teeth and carry them with me wherever I go than hum through the images of the past as if they define me and make me who I am. I have been a wall too long and you're the biggest open window with the brightest, greenest view I’ve ever seen. There is nothing I wouldn't want to do with you, there is nothing that you can say to me that'd be too weird and there's nothing that you can ask of me that I shall not partake in.

To be honest, all this sounds quite selfish, I don’t know if you have time in your life for another person. Specially someone like me (a mass of neurotic nerves and crazy behaviour coupled with hyperactivity). I don’t know if you want to give a part of yourself away when you have your mother, sister, aunt and uncle as well as many cousins all scattered across our crazy country. However, I can promise you – and this I know – that I’d never let you down and disappoint you or willingly cause hurt – I’d rather walk away from that than indulge in any of the above. This may all seem and sound shocking and way too soon, but I didn’t want to wait any longer. I want to be with you and get to know you, all your failures and your many, many successes; things you have gained and those you’ve lost. Things that touch you and go and things that stay. What makes you bug eyed and what makes you mellow. If you laugh under the sheets and if you hide behind the curtains. Do you close your eyes tightly when you eat something spicy? Do you sing to yourself when you walk alone? I want to know it all and like a mountain, climb to the top with you and revel in the view.

So to sum it up, I’m mental about you. If I could, I’d spend some time with you every day because I miss you when you’re not around and its strange how that is happening already, when I haven’t even met you all that much or for too long. I’ve been going quite insane in the last few days and I just have to know if there’s just a slight chance you would want to spend your days with me. I didn’t want to let any of my thoughts about you to ‘pass over in silence or go unsaid’. Hence the extremely long letter. I just hope my confession doesn’t freak you out or anger you in any way. Its just the plain old simple truth.

(Apologies for the length, like I said in the first paragraph – I tend to digress!)

Monday 21 April 2014

Trickle



I have no recourse for the winds of future
Where the embrace of arms
Is closer than France.
Where doused, like leaves in a pond,
we swim freely over voices of youth
that can’t explain love
like knots they can’t untie, undo.

I’ve no remorse for the loss of time
I set sail with my paper boats each day
Into the corners of her mind
Hanging to the corners of her lips
And swinging from the corners of her chin
Till I, myself, am cornered.

But she runs and lies

Between words and whispers
Between timing and silence
And I exist in the space
Between her eyes
Between her lips as they part
To utter fiery words
Or I lie in dried shades with dust of time
Finally, I find her.

Like the winding road inside of me
That leads to laughter and madness
Madness of a holiday where you forget age
One day I’ll forsake you
Like the stolen moon
In a sparrow’s eye
And carry your laughter
Buried deep in the forest of me.

Take me like the pages of a book
You read when you were young
See me as a door
If you don’t know me yet as a
Wall left bare
With an open window.

Thursday 27 February 2014

Half baked



Dripping from my rain cloud
Are ungentle words
Walking without an umbrella
I am soaked in curses and things
I wrote at the back of my high school notebooks
I am scratching my past on a green blackboard
Wishing it'd spell some truth.

Words weigh heavy on the mind

I was a font in lower case and you, a case of missing letters I tried to find
I gave her a needle and became a thread
That went through and she
Pushed and pulled and pushed and pulled
And in that
Pushing and pulling, of my knots and stitches,
I sometimes forgot to see myself as an old sweater coming undone
And turned into an old shoe box to put your memories into
She said I saved too much.


Now words weigh heavy on the mind

And love bears a resemblance to everything unkind
With her mouth poised but closed
She always used her fingers to speak
Her fists to write and her eyes to sing.

Now there is only silence that sleeps besides me in my bed

The grassy park of romance is now a parking lot
And I’m known to vanish or only fire blanks
Like giant tanks without ammunition
I stand here wishing the wall could punch me back.

But words weigh heavy on the mind

And love bears a resemblance to everything I wanted to find
With her face closed she lay with silent eyes
On the bed I made
With weapons drawn she said"You must be unkind"
"Unkind?" I asked
Yes, unkind. To be and survive.

I turned away like a grain of sand

And slept with a dream of the sea.

And rose above the tides to say,Give me an ocean of waves

Not a dead sea where I float lifeless
For I am a mellow ghost haunting no one
Be true to the wind and trust the shores I've been
Tossing and turning with your tides

Let me swim within you
Don’t be calm
Speak like a storm
Sing like a swarm of birds
Gathered above the rolling waves
And know you will find me washed
But unchanged.

Wednesday 26 February 2014

Fires




I'm words for hire
But my eyes are tired
And my voice is gone.
I've burned bridges
But I don't set fires
Just to see how
High the flames would go.

Monday 20 January 2014

May



May you be the season
That autumn loves to loathe.
May you be the reason
For clouds to part and pour.

May you be the answer
For all minds to wander free.
May you be the river
That quenches every tree.

May you be the tale
Of a thousand gleeful faces
May you be a poem
Found in hidden, tender places.

May you have wings
That teach you how to soar
May you win all fights with peace
And never keep a score.

May you be the eternal flame
That burns from within
May you find an ocean inside
May you learn to swim.

Saturday 4 January 2014

Maps



Stay where you are
I've no maps for your eyes
No directions whatsoever for your body
And while our waves intertwine
I only wish to caress the sand
Of your skin

But stay where you are
Sometimes I think
You're better from a distance
For distance
Doesn't let me see
You going smoother with time
Washed like rocks by the sea
And I walk through your silence to say,
“The night is but a river,
Flowing from your eyes.”

Stay where you are
Tangled in the morning
Like your hair at noon
In the unruly wind
Where you trudge closer
On haunted rides
Through razor sharp tales
Hiding from thirsty beaks of crows

And as your neck becomes the road
That lays out shining before me
Where I go dancing in circles,
Let my whispers treat you well
Stay where you are
Or be here now