Mornings

the restless birth of a new day

surrounds me

as I swim through a sea of lives

the chaos is contagious

its howls drown the roar of time

which ticks away

so inconveniently

and interrupted so

with a voice that sings of infinite love

a fable from forgotten times

no one remembers the lovers

or their ambitious love

the speakers fall silent

and chaos returns

to swallow the echoes

of their presence.

#101DaysofPoetry Day 9

Happenings

What happens when the heart no longer craves
For what was lost
Doesn't look up at the sky
Thinking if this would be the same shade of blue
Twinkling in his eyes
Doesn't catch words from conversations
And conjure stray stories
Doesn't look back with a silent sigh of longing
Through closed doors
Betting a lifetime on what-ifs

What it does instead, is unclench itself
As it looks away from the dark silent doors and into the light
Blinded and unable to see two-feet ahead
It takes a thousand and one swift steps
Leaving behind a smile for old time's sake
As memories rip it open one last time

What happens when a heart finds itself in a free fall again
I tell you, it decides to beat again.





Note: This song explains the mood. My latest obsession - Leonard Cohen.

Linger

whiffs of rogue raindrops
in black dreams
the strings of the night
plucked again
and they whisper no names
but the outstretched lips
touch a smile
it tastes like morning
the shadows linger
like old friends
and make awkward conversations
with a distracted dawn
the heart is yet to curl back
maybe after another whiff
another taste
of your lips
will you linger long enough?

Derail

Soap bubbles
For unwritten words
Connecting the dots
They pop open
These pretty little voids
Rainbows and lost stories
Who knew how pungent
day-dreams can be

Unwashed memories
Are out in the sun to dry
Washed and weary

I feared they would shrivel up
And die
These unlettered histories

Soft to touch
With a tinge of blush
Forgetting the times I have worn them
On my sleeves
In my heart

A derailed set of eyes
Focus momentarily
On reappearing faces
They never change
And are never the same

With every pop
The eyes derail some more
And the heart follows

Cure

here I stand
a self-made  clown of sorts
with a quid pro quo, I make the world laugh
but nothing caresses my ears
and my heart
better
than her side-long twitches of lips

bursting forth with a primordial joy
that somehow, nobody else can feel
I stare at the softness of my accomplishment
as she sorts through my mind
crawling through all the cavities
that hide behind the clown's smile

I might just have caught the love bug
I don't know
but I hope it is contagious
and I hope she doesn't find a cure

Desperado

You wonder how love works

At what tick of the clock, the paperweights slide 

And invisible sounds wake you up in the dead of the night

You wonder how love works

And try to wish away the scars that heal but not completely

They don't hurt, they don't bleed, at least not visibly

You wonder how love works

The tangled roots and branches bowed down with need

A dry well that somehow, still waters every tree

You wonder how lovers work

They don't. Not often enough.

Fairy tales are made of that crazy stuff

It's a bluff, they say. A complete bluff.

You don't miss the lovers, but the love

And you wonder how love works

That, my friend, is the question.

Forgetting

The final nail in my Trojan horse

As I enter the womb of the world

Drowning in empty words

And cut-throat conversations

Oh, it is a bloodbath!

All my warrior ideas fallen flat on the ground

Flattened under the weight

Of small talk

And smaller lives

The mediocre claws against my metaphor

And I cringe at words

That mean less and less

And you know

Less is not always more

Empty, so empty, to the core

You caught me right in my Achilles' foot

While I swooned over you

And your alluring absurdity

A better pick than this vacuity

And your thoughts, ablaze

Drugged with forbidden knowledge

Of your entire being

It is you

You that I want to know

And not forget

But I can no longer put together

My pixelated dreams

Failed Memories by David Szauder

"But I don't want small talk. Text me, and without saying hello, tell me why you got so angry at your sister this morning. Tell me why you have a scar shaped liked Europe on the left side of your neck. Send me paragraphs about the time you spent at your grandmothers house that one summer. Call me when I'm half asleep and tell me why you believe in god. Tell me about the first time you saw your dad cry. Go on for hours about things that may not seem important because I promise that I'll be hanging on every word you say. Tell me everything. I do not want someone who just talks about the weather"   - Source Unknown

In Good Time

All in good time, dear. All in good time.

For it tugs relentlessly at our heels

Settling scores for every moment lost

Amid those crumpled sheets we leave behind

All in good time, dear. All in good time.

I'll catch up with our two-dimensional dreams

Be more than a silhouette for you to love

Be what you hide in your whispered rhymes

All in good time, dear. All in good time.

I'll taste the cravings of your naked soul

Scarring the infinities that say "it can't be so".

While I wait for the next-in-line.

Photograph by Robert Doisneau

Linked to: Magpie Tales

Note:

Writing a crudely structured rhyming piece after a very long time. I hope the last line caught you off-guard. And I also hope you cannot decide who the actual speaker is.

Love can be as glorious as it can be fickle, right? :)

Onlookers

let's look at the stars tonight

and not wish for the quiet sunrises

as part-time lovers

maybe as explorers

standing on the verge of an iceberg

toppling over

tip-toes - frozen and numb

and a heart sunburnt

let's look at the stars tonight

and feign that we still do love

in corrected measured cups

of insolence and indolence

let us spill and slip upon our secrets

our misadventures

tracing the bloodline from the head to the toe

yours and mine and no more

Note:

This is the first draft of the poem that I wrote with eyes half-closed with sleep. It is incredible how I wait for days on end for inspiration to strike hard on my brain and it comes into action only when i'm crawling into my bed. Oh, well. 

Please do let me know what you think of it and what it made you think of and if anything does/does not make sense (it probably won't make much sense to me either, to be honest).

Thank you. :)

Identities

Identities hidden
In textured paraphrases
Stalked by all those words
Unsaid, Unheard
And crimson verses
Of him, For him
Throbbing with every heartbeat out of sync
And refusing to ever die
Constantly asking
(in between the lines)
Who are you?
Who am I?
In rusted confessions
Of my blind obsessions
Searching amid the silent validity
Of a love with no takers
And it wasn't him
It was all me.

Artist: Ken Wong

Note:
This poem marks a breakthrough in more than one way. Firstly, I have accepted how I will always be writing about love and it will, more often than not, be borderline sad unrequited-love poetry. Secondly, (the breakthrough part), most of my previous verses have me (or the speaker, definitely the speaker) reaching out in the dark for a presence, for answers, for something to gain a kind of closure and look beyond the immediate circumstances of my life. But in this poem (and hopefully, in all the future ones), I'm going to turn all this pondering and searching inward, to find that answer and that closure within my own self.

Daily Epiphany: We really are stronger than we think, once we give the continuous process of underestimation a long, deserved rest. :)

Seamless

I loved him

In seamless breaths

And beyond repair,

The distortions, now

Hang heavy 'round him

On close call,

We ran after shadows,

But he - 

Never to return.

I love him

In seamless breaths

For I am beyond repair

Till I love him

Less and less.

Author's Note:

I read T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' a couple of minutes ago and I realized how much I have loved that poem ever since I first read it in class (under the much-needed tutelage of my professor). I'm not sure if my piece really connects with Eliot's poem, but the poem was there in the back of my mind while writing this.

And if you are anything like me, you would feel baffled to know that Eliot also wrote incredible verses for kids - full of wit, humour and tight poetic structure. I expected him to be a no-fun kind of guy but then, I guess, we writers don way too many roles and voices and personas.

Click here to read T. S. Eliot's Iconic Vintage Verses on Cats