Pick up a pen

Pick up a pen
When your hands are too shaky to hold it still
Because to yourself you have not been true
When damp layers of your soul scrape off and fall on the floor
And you hear the sound of it too

When you've watched the sundown of free thought
Into the obnoxious sea of social obligations
And the burden of time crushes your ambitions
When you realize how powerful the word ambition is
And yet so commonly mistaken
How easy it is to shatter and yet be shattered again
Into smaller pieces

By all means
Pick up a pen
When you are ripe enough to bleed
Or let it lie inside the leather case
For worthier shakier versions of your hands

November 21, 2012

Far far away
where the sun does not set
and the sea meets the desert
to create a metaphor
- sun, sand and sea
- a mirage of a place
you would wish to
sunbathe at,

There, 
on that island of oxymorons,
drenched in salt water
write me poetry
harsh, honest, cruel.
Sunburn me.

Love and Hope

Only love has given us this thread
that we so proudly tie around us


All places, all ages have tangled and untangled
in the unhappiness and joy that we know

Only hope has brought us this cup
that we drink so joyously from

All sadness, all loss, we swallow
in this elixir of unknowing

We are made of crystal cups
strewn together with silken threads

Fragile. Beautiful.

Silence

An ocean of silence within my soul
Words, like pebbles on the shore
Unnecessary, extraneous.
The ebbing questions all this while
Now I know, silence is the answer.

Unnamed

I am here.
Between night and day
Between the domain of slumber and wakefulness
The day slowly and subtly dilutes, casting on my face
an innocent beam of sunlight
A beam that started a million years ago..
to fall on me the way it does now
from the opposite window of the bus
and to turn my eyes and hair
a reddish hue of brown
Me, an unknown face, wandering 
through nameless roads and fields
Why do some of these people
look straight into my eyes while the others
just pass through me
Perhaps life, being an undefined, unquantified force
is capable of causing flickers
and ripples by mere presence 
or absence, for that matter
The rays weigh my eyes down
and my ears are clouded with the whispers
of the trees
They speak of weather and color
and words that sound to me like
Patience

China Glass

On the verge of breaking apart
Fragile figure of China glass
Too much glue and too much tape
Too much effort to keep a face
Shabby layers of Persian paint
Covering up a shallow dent
Polka patterns in pretty pink
Peeping from an ugly chink
A crystal of a sand-like thing
Escaped the fusing in the kiln
And a certain handle of sorts
Twists and curiously contorts
It rumbles, rings and also rolls
All in very clumsy control
And had you not seen its tiny mounds
You'd think it almost round


Quite a tricky object I see
No shape, no color, no certainty
Peculiarly odd for a glass thing
To be no vase, no goblet, nothing


Its almost like it aims to be
just a random oddity.

Confessions

Sometimes, I turn around on my heels
in a public place
Just to feel small again
and rejoice when I find no one paying attention.


Sometimes, I cook with just a little oil and very little salt
to let all the vegetables have their natural flavour
comparing them, in my mind, to people
young, impressionable and wishing them the freedom
to be.


Sometimes, I read multiple books
one after the other
alternating identities, between Hermione and Jane
David and Celie, Gandhi and Gulzar
My version of a literary peek-a-boo


Sometimes, I cover my face
with all my hair
and open my eyes only a little
to watch ordinary sunlight
transform into marvelous shiny fractals
- hexagonal boxes with mystical secrets
cut by the magician's sword
but still intact
like stubborn, residual, unyielding hope


Sometimes, I still
talk to myself and write self-addressed letters
in order to discover
things I forgot to tell myself.

No Questions

I listened then
to the sound of life
resonating with my own breath
under the green waters
I floated
for an eternity
amazed
touched
silenced
A golden fish
slid between my toes perhaps
And I wept
a little salt water
into the sea
I had
no questions anymore

Sometimes

Sometimes
I float above us
and watch
tangled fingers
lazy afternoons
filtered sunlight
and tiny fractions
of hopefulness
warming
our entwined
bohemian souls
finding home
in each other


Sometimes
I float above us
when we sleep
and just watch
figments of you and I
strewn together
into the total
of a 'we'
and
I weep
softly
so as not to
wake us up

Refugees

Do not worry
for the generations
to come
for they shall forget
the loss and blood;
for history
is selective
and is written
by conquerors.

Lets just hold a fistful
of soil
and weep
just a little
as we leave behind
childhoods and love songs
marriages and separations
tears and laments
of our half-lives,
while we turn overnight
into something
distant and unknown
that they call 
refugees.

Hold on to the soil and weep
for our kind, they say
are forgetful
but the land
the land
shall remember all

Take me

Take me from me
like you'd take 
a poem
and make it your own
with sighs and pauses
under your lukewarm breath

Take me on face value
like a promise
of bright springs 
and sunny mornings
of soft, slow, dry kisses
and of the less than ordinary things
that would make us 
a little more
than ordinary

Take me 
like an opinion
and read me between my silences
Contradict me, shape me
nurture me, mould me
grow on me
till 
I cease to be

Divide by zero

Lets place our dreams in expressions
as a sum total of all unknowns
Let them scatter 
into bits of nothingness
And watch them be
infinite

Tonight.

Tonight, love me not
for the luster of my locks
or the softness of my eyes
Do not compare
to velvet, my voice
or to music, my laughter
Tonight,
take off my pretense
and watch me
naked with my sorrows
Kiss the disillusions on my eyelids
and touch on my trembling lips
the laments of a life
not entirely mine
Find in me the night
that has stagnated in some corner
as an endless wait
and the darkness that smells
of unfulfilled promises
and unfinished songs
Tonight,
drink from the cup
of my regrets
and soak in my solitude
Tonight, lets be solitary
together

Dawn

You fell on me
gently, like a wistful drop of dew
on my million lonely dawns
when sleepy eyed
I had watched the sun rise
and closed my eyes again
to dream of the dusk in your porch
You fell on me
warmly, like the whimsical figment
of morning light that makes its way
through the crevices of our joined bodies
and weighs down my eyes
as I watch you
breathing, sleeping, dreaming

Ambient Light

[I often narrate in first person, but I am just a story teller. Almost everything I write here is fiction. This poem is from the perspective of a man remembering his wife.]


The light escaping from the screens
falls on our photograph on the side table
You and me, dim shadows
warm candle light
You were high on champagne
and laughed that hearty laugh
and my heart glowed a little brighter
than the ambient light
I had held you by the waist
and you were laughing loud
facing the ceiling
when the camera clicked


"You will have to move on"
you had said, teary eyed
as I had hushed you
and told you about the advances in science
I lived in denial, you said
and showed me the statistics
You saw the seventy percent
I tried desperately for the thirty
That was uncharacteristic of us both


I was painting the porch
for the imminent summer
and watching the butterflies
in the garden
when the doctor had called
He had the reports
Its all too distinct now
the smell of paint
the warm breeze
the exact brightness of the afternoon
All the months that followed are blurry
syringes and wards
disinfectants and phone calls
Identical days of urgent rush
and my solitary tears at night
I often watched that picture of us
to remember your laughter
and the long golden tresses
that chemo took away from you
You still looked beautiful though
Nothing could take away the twinkle
of your hazel eyes


I often sat by the bed
wondering
in what precise moment
the white cells in your blood
decided to mutate
and tip the beginning of our journey
into a cruel terminal
Your pale skin
smelled of lilies that night
when the moon was full
and you had shown me
how the diamond on your finger
glittered
"Preserve me in your poetry
when I am gone"
I have kept that part of the promise
But it feels unnecessary to move on
anywhere away
from your pervasive smell
that dwells in the house
and from our togetherness
that comes alive
in perfect tenses
on full moon nights


Shared with Poets United.

May be

May be we shall meet

only after the moon

has been half asleep

and the heart, sleepless, 

awakes to solitary dreams

May be you will keep searching me

touching me and exploring me

through your words

on such long breezy nights

and go about your life

the next morning

May be that is how we will stay 

in what we call love

deeply, dreamily




Shared with Poets United.

Journey

Let me see you once

against the sunset and the sea

Blue, yellow and then orange

Your silhouette will be

Fill again your palette

and paint me once again

with hues of skies and waters

till only blue remains

Come climb the deck with me

and breathe the salty breeze 

Lets gaze together the horizon

until the shore is reached

Faith

They push and fight

for a single sight

of the sacred stone

I turn my eyes

and think

 of someone who died
in the hope to unite
them all in his love

Oblivion

Toothless smile

oblivious

of the still silence

in the room

She will never know

what its like

to lose a mother

Last night

You came last night

dressed in your best suit 

My heart fluttered 

as you smiled

that familiar, disarming smile 

That gold wrapped box 

you held 

glistened

in the light of the moon 

that looked almost

like a halo behind you 

But it was blurred 

by the mist in my eyes 

as you placed 

under my feet

those beautiful ballerina shoes

And I lost myself to the music 

and to you

for what seems like an eternity 

It still smells of you 

all around me 

almost as if 

you were really here last night 

Just you 

and me

No accident 

No wheelchair

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