The fear of change

I do not ask time for more or less

my palms enclose the present defensively

but my fingers bind my fragments

as the shore binds the sea

A Debate

You don't understand, I said,
But neither do I.

Don't you see?
We're in the same boat,
you and I,
surrounded by the same expanse of sea
and handspan width -
the distance in between my eyes -
of sky.

My argument?
It was lost in words long ago.
Only two things I still know:
the seawater made me
even thirstier
and the sky is
infinitely wider than
a handspan.

Faith

Because it holds more water
than the sieve of science -
That was my thought
as I felt each
question
emotion
trickling
steadily
through
the pores
of my heart that
I only suspected
but never saw
and suddenly
I looked at the sky and
felt neither big or small
but a part of it all
because it was in me -
we were stitched
from the same thread
that went around the
world and wove it together
through the eye of
the needle that saw
and into eyes
that did not see.

Wild fire

What is this feeling -
A wild fire raging,
Consuming both heat and light -
That not even tears could dampen,
Could still with their flow.

But it is a desert,
The scorching sun on barren land -
The hardened heart of which, inside,
All that was has dried and died.

And it serves to choke
The thirsty throat
That could never speak the words she wrote.

On The Train

The train travels soundlessly.

People stand like figurines -
Glazed, untouchable -
Positioned in perfect balance
So that inertia barely moves them.

So many eyes,
With black holes for centers
Filled with - nothing;
Absorbing - nothing;
One vastness penetrating another,
They hold no emotion.

Stranger, what is your story?
Traveller, where are you heading?
Maybe we could weave a net
Of understanding deep enough
To draw emotion from this sea of people.

Even a smile could breathe warmth into this stillness -
Even the air is unmoved.

If I Could

You make me want to write, you know -
Crawl out of my skin and
Wear myself inside out
It's the wrong way, people say
But it feels right,
In that way wrong things do.

Vocabulary is stifling -
If I could show instead of tell,
I would show you the world,
Show you how the world looks
From here, where words fail,
From the center - core - heart - of
My soul - being -
The axis on which
My world - larger than earth, which only
Appears as the size of a coin in my mind
Amidst the backdrop of a vast darkness -
Rotates.

But there is no showing to be done -
Our hands could never construct
Such a language,
For hands can be touched and seen -
They are shown, they do not show -
And yes, here, where words fail
Is where we find ourselves.

This Tragedy

I have nothing to give
To the ground
But ashes
And the ground has
Nothing to give
To me
But the trees
Barely feel the wind
Unmoved
By this tragedy

I want to pretend

Swallow the pain
And swallow my pride
Maybe these could
Fill me inside

Voices in a Vacuum

If I opened my mouth to speak
Would it scream like blood
Or whisper, like tears?

What could it say?
The world is a vacuum,
It eats sound,
Swallows it whole,
And after it digests
The air and the ashes,
It is empty.

We mouth syllables
As if breathing,
Inhaling and
Exhaling silence,
And maybe one day,
When our lips turn dry,
And the lip-readers turn away,
We will finally have the leisure
To listen.

Tonight

This is where it ends.

The violins are playing slow tonight,
With their trembling bows dipped low - a dying dance -
Grasped in closed fists - do they want peace now? -
And poised under chins held high
There is nowhere to go
But down.

There are cries for help, for
A buoy, a plank, a splinter;
Something,
Anything,
To hold onto -

As the silver anchor
The legs thought to chain to themselves
Turns into stone, dull as ash
Under the night sky,
And they begin to sink into the water,
The same water,
That feet once walked on.

What a sight -
The flailing arms, wild like fire,
Soon grow slow, limp from the cold,
And then they are still,
Raised in surrender.
The half-empty boats leave -
why should they turn back? -
Carrying only bodies,
Ones like those that they are
Leaving behind;
Those that lie,
Drifting with the current,
Over the sea
Tonight.

How Poetry Should Be

Maybe this is how poetry should be -
Plain and patient,
Filtered of those translucent words
That leave blanks in your mind
You cannot fill -
Nothing to digest,
Just to swallow - slowly -
Like gulps of clear water,
Smooth and slippery
And clean -
Maybe.

Shadows On The Stage

Have we all become the antagonists?

The ones who cry wolf
And smile with teeth
Like polished daggers.

What are heroes but the ones
With their best side
Against the spotlight?

Because when the curtain falls
And the stage lights dim,
There is a darkness
No darker than any other
Spreading, consuming,
Like an infection.

We belong to our shadows -
We are not the masks we wear,
We are beneath them.

We are of a certain kind -
Perhaps not the beholders
We believe ourselves to be,
And the beauty we see
Only surrounds us.

Beneath the skin we are bone.
When we decompose,
Who knows
How we will be known?

Give Me Words

Give me words
To plug my ears, my mouth
And keep my sanity,
My sense and what clarity I have left
Inside my head.

Speak, speak before you
Lose your voice
Screaming for help.
Speak softly, in a language I can understand,
And maybe we can hold
A conversation
Heavier than air

Weigh me down -
A rock, a burden,
A doorstop -
With a whisper
And show me that
We inhale the same smoke,
The one that
Lies over my eyes.

I do not want to be silent -
In the silence
Everything is dead.

The Day Is Red

The day is red;
It fumes and breathes -

The sky is ablaze with crimson rain
Running, bullets of acid, down
War-worn faces;

Red reads in lines across wrists -
Battle scars of
Children of war;

Can you feel the rage -
The diesel that runs in our arteries
And seeps through our skin

While the smoke we breathe
Into the lungs of our eyes
Smothers our senses

The day is burning
Bright, and turning,
Waiting,
For another day.

Somebody

When will she have cried her full
And cried herself empty
How many times has she
Wanted to be someone to somebody
More than she wanted to be herself?

I am

I am not moved,
I cannot feel my legs.
I have no space, except the space
I occupy.
I fill a vacuum.
I search for - something -
I look inwards,
I look into a mirror.
I know nothing except what
I feel inside, and
I wonder,
Is this what it feels like, living in myself?

Deeper Things

Where the sea meets sand,
People scour the land,
For hollow shells and strings of coral -
Debris of the ocean
That the tide has cast ashore,
Unable - to search the waters for more

But this is the way
Learnt from age old philosophers
Those who, in their day,
Made the earth to be flat -
For they could not see beyond the horizon

To them,
Nothing existed that

escaped their understanding, and

Nothing could be understood

that escaped their sight,
But they saw only through their eyes

And did not see

The heart seeks always;

But the heart never sees
There lie deeper
Things than these

Unknown

Measure reason with the span of the mind
Compress theology into theories
Calculate values of time to find
Paper answers to abstract queries
Observe the universe through microscopes
See only what studies have shown
Searching eyes avert wider scopes
In fear of the unknown

Suddenly

Suddenly she can feel her veins
And the pain in her pulse
It was here to stay
Unlike everybody else

Strangers

Where is the stranger
In the capsule of a body
So familiar to your own

Maybe we are so alike
Because we were never meant
To feel so alone