damned

what does it take to be a saviour?

a moment of anger borne of
self pity,a cruel disregard of
the cry for love.a language
of compassion lost in abuses
muttered under cowardly breath,
the fear of gaping holes left from
necessary letting go,ingratitude
smirking from its misplaced pedestal,
as gentleness falls by autumnal grass,
crackling under feet that must climb,
higher,to ever rising pinnacles of
vainglorious ambition. an ominous sense
of ending lies in wait,ready for ambush.
redemption demanded, hardly deserved,
will come by nightfall, and drift away
in dreams of futile successess that hollow
mornings promise. gashes of self absorption
will run down eyes blinded by oncoming
traffic, wiped away to see what lies ahead,
without the foresight to see exactly what
lies ahead, thoughtlessly drowned out
in the music of soulless repetition.


What does it take to be a saviour?
The answer is simple.
Simpler than you would acknowledge,
And more urgent than you realise.

karma

the room rang with laughter,
full bellied, visceral,
side splitting, aching laughter
that snorted and guffawed,
roared like an old engine
gushing with renewed life,
the prodigal return from
years of banishment whose cause
even history had forgotten.

somewhere in the middle
of this fearless fit of freedom
the spine shivered, this time,
with the thought of he who
keeps count, and the night
will lie awake in anticipation
of the tears that must fall tomorrow.
For that is the law of the land.

The inevitability of certain exiles
will hit as warmly as the first rays
of the autumn sun,and the butterfly
that flitted with charming uncertainty
over the windscreen this morning in
the unsuspectingly routine drive to work
will be the memory of the day,
worth remembering but lost
in the traffic of expected misery.

windows

Silences pervade conversations
invade the intimacy of loss
the flesh bloats with fear and
expected questions have learnt
not to wait for answers
to define themselves,
and feel complete.
Slipping between the last word
and its utterance
the tedium of breath watches
time fall off its hinges,
stretching itself to go back
to less modest beginnings.

some say it is time to look ahead,
that a kind of positive future awaits.
outside the broken window,
a flock of pigeons flies
(in a seamless order that
can but be borne of chaos)
over a field of dying grass
bloodied by red cotton silk flowers.

festive

A ball of pain sits
knotted up
at the base of your throat
unmoved by all that
coughing and wheezing,
as desperate as futile.

in the goodness of their heart
they recommend doctors and meds
(not knowing where it comes from).

To their credit, yes, it is probably
the winters.
The season when all your losses
well up in your eyes and
nestle in the pit of your stomach,
wrestle with half-forgotten memories
that leave you shivering
in the middle of the night
under layers of the kind of warmth
solitude can muster.
The bitterness of coffee fails
to sweeten the resident taste
of self pity.

It is that time of the year
when the festive spirit finds you
seeking empty houses
that were home once.
The carols of silence echo
across the halls of your heart
and a room of one's own
seems more spacious
than you would have liked.

this is us part2

You send me poems with flavoured laughter,
and i long for autumn shadows where poetry
is more than graffiti on social media walls,
where its ferocity colours me faster than i can
name the hues, more vibrant than my vocabulary.

I sit down to write you a letter, the envelope ready,
To contain the breathlessness that needs must be
(Like those long nights blanketing our winter reverie)
trapping it in salival good old days-ery. but i get lost
in the history of the stain on my notepad, and the
feeling of home that is my fountain pen. By the time
i decide to forego salutations, always so formal, always
so empty, another sunrise taps at my window. i watch
distilled rays fall on the sheet, hitherto blank. Ink leaks.

when you get the post, would you know that i sent you
the best of me - a drop of sunshine, a smudge of home.
Will you hold it against me that my new poem is an ode
to silence, whose words have dug six feet trenches in my
heart, and found something there. i know that. for after all
these years, there is a new pattern in the way it beats.

Would you notice the stamp of a nonexistent post office,
in a country farther away than you are in my dreams.
I haven’t given a return address this time, though we
are closer than this skin to flesh, and maybe i will smell
the decay of poems that languish in your notes and spill over
into unsent letters,lying in the corner drawer of the guestroom.
Perhaps the pattern will change again. The heart will beat,
beat down on words, whose ghosts will find succour in frail
memories of you, going frailer by the season, and the blot
on my notepad will grow bigger, darker, murkier.

Then again, perhaps none of this will be our fate. And
the exotic essences of your delicious verses will settle
At the base of my tongue, and keep bringing me back
From the obstinacy of my frosty solitude. Inkless.
May your will be stronger than my fear. Amen.

about us

they leave it all behind.
your words,my scars,
(and the other way)
your hopes,my failures
(these remain exclusive)

My forgetfulness is only
the overwhelming memory
of all thats lost without ever
having been played.

it will not be long before
this house becomes dust
not long after we retreat
into impossible silences
and the whispers i hear
from across the walls
will be buried in textures
of pain and acrylic.

But when they write us
in their version, we will
be the stuff of happiness,
not perfection, but delusion
nevertheless.all that they
leave out, all the rest, that
is where you and i will lie
in the glistening truth of
anonymous resentment.

a place for silence

i know where this silence turns
for solace and even respite. To
conversations with those
who are not yet our friends
(who may never be)
and for that we shall always
owe them. sometimes one
needs that stranger, to play
a walk on part, not ask too
many questions, keep us in fear
of our reputations, or other
insecurities, that we admit
with surprising nonchalance
to be tastelessly clichéd.

Friends tend to understand.
And sometimes, thats exactly
what we dont need. Let there
be distance, judgment, roleplay,
illusion, and the magic of deep
shallows possible only in a non-friend.
here is to you, then. may there be words.
And may silences bury themselves
between the lines. For nobody to read.