Birthday Blues

A quarter century ago
I came to this world
Crying and kicking
Maybe it was wisdom
Mistaken
Maybe it was warning
Unheeded
That with every anniversary
The World will love you
A little less
That with every year gone
Life will slip away
A little more
But still, it is a milestone
And I mark mine
With my words.

Lone Wolves

Man is no social animal.

It is a myth perpetuated 

By the weak among Men.

Man was made to be lonely.

Alone in wombs and graves;

And the most solitary 

In the years between.

Society is a farce.

Like the shadow that

Surfaces only when everything’s 

Bright and sunny.

We are all lone wolves.

Truly alone, and 

Infinitely vulnerable.

Truth

What good is an open book?

The cat out of the bag?

The un-clenched fist;

The revealed secret…

Divulged, truth dies

A hasty death…

Often with no meaning

And always without love.

Phoenix

Each day was begun with a death
Of flimsy paper,
Ripped violently from
A kitschy calendar

The hours tumbled down
An unforgiving clock
The hands shoved and heaped
The minutes away
And another day ended
Dying

Everything in the world
A phoenix of no magic
Everything died unto itself
And was born unto itself
There is no myth
For we empty it out
Everyday

Order

There is little that survives Time
Long enough to see another day
But with the World so full
The little multiply into fake multitudes
And we believe the order’s never been disturbed

Maybe this was the order- that
Those that die, should die unnoticed
And those that get born
Should never know when to exit with grace
It’s a delusional Time
A morbid World

The cliff

I still walk alone
But now there’s a shadow
Beside mine
I think it’s you, but
There’s no need to
Turn around

I’ve reached a cliff
With a final decision
To make:
To take a step forward
And feel the air
Compress my existence
Or,

To sit down at
The very edge and see
The world for both
Of us;
Live my life knowing
Your shadow
Is a delusional burden
I carry willingly

Seven lives

I promised to pay all my dues

In my seventh life

And now that I am living

A seventh time,

I find my head empty of

A past promise

 

Each dawn brings a new day;

A free gift of misery

Sent with a celestial receipt

That I must sign

In my ancestral blood

 

My bloodied signature fades

As I move my hand

Nobody has to know, says the Sun

My woe messenger

Whose rays penetrate everything

 

This way I bid farewell

To my six other pasts

But I had not a clue

And stood fearing the dawn

Even on the day I died

One last time

A Jasmine death

A canvas in blue chiffon,
My saree bore marks
In the ink blue
Of ancient hands; the
Aquamarine of the Arabian Sea;
And, the cerulean of
High skies.

Blackly shimmering, my hair
Conflicted the pasty pale
Of the jasmine strand
I coiled through, without pins
Like my mother,
Incensing the air with
A woman’s promise

Around the now empty house
I lit wicks buried in fragrant wax
And doused tungsten within glass.
I refused the comfort of
Moving air, and let the sweat
And jasmine commingle
Like chaos before peace

But you let the Sun out;
Helped it find a way around
The dark ropes of night
I bound it with…
The half moon I used to
Pin it down, lay forgotten
Behind bottomless clouds.

My Wilting jasmine wailed,
‘You hadn’t come, then’
The wicks lay wasted
Smoking like pyres
Where each fantasy
Burnt unrealised.

In this polluted silence,
I stood blue like death.

Despicable naivete

The lights refused to blink with life

The fan reluctant to move air

The floor forgot its grimy face

The walls bore silent assaults of graffiti

The ceiling hung low, cobwebs weighing it down

The doors stayed jammed,  slippery with oil

The window sills mobbed and elbowed the wind

Keeping it out

*

And you entered unawares

 This carnivorous cave

Like an insect on a spider’s web

You were asking to be punished

With death

For your naivete.

Undecided end

It was a bad dream.
Disrupted stasis,
A whirlwind tousling hair;
And underneath a neon glare
She cast shadows around.
Yet they weren’t hers…

Then, the nooses slithered unto her,
Tying knots so intimate.
She prayed for power;
For deliverance.
And heeded, her prayers bestowed
Gargantuan scissors
In place of her feeble hands.

They ate away at the folds
Each knot followed,
Famishing her; satiating the
Hands so giant.
Lighter than ever, she felt
Lesser knots tying her down
To this earthly presence
Of undecided end.

To the remaining knots
She screamed,
‘You shall be undone too…
I shall taste freedom,
I shall die’