there

i am not
there,
where
my bones
break
and
become
air. no,
not there,
where i lose
my voice to the
wind and unearth the
hollow from beneath my
skin and i live without, i die
within and i would never begin
myself
again.

On the bus

there is a poem on this bus - something about the
collective sway of bodies as it hits the turn
and the studded whir of the motor's churn

there is no drum like the hum of steady breathing
and no beat that could compete with the seething
of passion and pulsing of pain, punctuating the silence

In-Between

Life comes in
  bursts; in gushes, violent
rushes of air, in
 flashes so fierce
they blind - as love does -
 eyes from seeing and jolt
black-cold blood
 into being.

It comes in a flood,
  ancient as birth, in
currents which shock
  and startle the earth,
and when
  the waters die down
into the land,
   the dry still remains
     in the desert sand.

But we, with our
linear lives live in the
   in-between, apart, and
unseen, in the great gaps
 of the great peaks -
and for hours, weeks,
  we wait
(and barely survive)
    for time to arrive
  in the wind.

Quietly

at times 

the awareness of words

is lost to meaning

but let the soul speak

silence into the clamor and
watch the world 

unfold -

into song

- quietly

There is no time for poetry

There is no time for poetry
in the mad rush of daylight through
the skies, weighted with suspense

For the night that has lost its depth is now
tense with the cumulative strain of eyelids
over a billion pairs of eyes

Lying more awake in the dark than anywhere
else, in beds, where the world retreats
into the body to rest from time

Where, just as the mind has begun to
compose it falls into sleep, and its stirrings
into the dusk of dusty dreams

Neon

The colour of the generation, it
Pronounces loudly all it touches,
And wailing, it tightly clutches
To the electric plastic of bright bar signs,
In jarring, jaded white-hot lines,
Glaring into the deep-set eyes of
Travellers in the lonely night
And illumines with artificial light
The empty pavements of a one-way street.

Necessity

"This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?" 

- Rainer Maria Rilke

so i stretch inwards into myself, where,

   buried beyond understanding,

lies my heart 

    - but it gives no reply. i wonder:

has it grown mute from neglect
or fallen asleep in the broad daylight,

into a peaceful rest? should i wait idly
by for future pain to awaken it rudely, to
stir up passion that rises up like a swelling
wave at the high tide of the evening, against
the background of a dying sun, a protest against
the oncoming darkness? 

is now the time for searching, 

to store up, to be still -   

the pale period of hibernation before 

the creature emerges out of its cave 

into a bright new world that blinds 

and dazzles it with complexities

painfully wound around every experience,

inspiring the intensity that presses the pen
into paper and impresses meaning onto material -
before life?

but no, there is always a need -

for who knows when wonder will dry up and
leave the soil of the heart barren with indifference
and the gentle light by which infant eyes 

see the world is torn away by time, in its great envy
of youth, and they begin to adapt to the darkness?

In The City

Rain falls soft in the graphite night it
runs down the world and all
seems to melt:
traffic lights into pavement;
people into umbrellas;
cars into headlights;
even the body I call my
own assimilates into
the view is no
longer mine to have and
hold, my surroundings
slip right through me (with
rain as a lubricant) into
a scene.

Wanderers

We are wanderers in a world where
wonder lies waste, splayed thin across
digital screens and cheap paper like a
slight dab of butter across stale bread, where
all expression has been etched into the few
lines of the face with little left to form
a gasp, or even a sigh, but we wander in
search of an apt reply to the echo-cry encoded
within the vacant streaks of a dying light
silent remains of a star in space long exploded.

Words dissipate

words dissipate, wait

to watch them vapourize

before your eyes and know

there must be somewhere

that they go, where meaning

finds a place to thrive

where people speak 

to stay alive

Caught in the rain

As I walk down the pavement rain seeps into my skin I wonder if it will dissolve me if I let it - if only I could take it and dissolve it into myself - because in the cold biting wind I feel the edges of the world - suddenly sharp - at my fingertips my face (the parts of me I feel the most with) and I find myself absorbing soaking in the moment as much as I can before everything is dry again before reality before I find myself standing alone by the side of the road heavy with the weight of compounded tears - the burden the clouds release onto the earth.

A confession

i used to believe in a redemptive quality about honesty
as if the truth itself was true enough to be considered pure
the uncovering of ourselves akin to surrender -

i thought i could save myself if i tried -

so i extended my arms upwards, tensing
the joints in my fingers to achieve the right posture -
but i didn't know where to face my palms,

clueless as the murderer who surrenders
the red stains on his hands
to coarse water from a rusty tap

and trails down the sides of the sink,
down pipes and drains, and finally,
into the sea, where sin is diluted

to a subtler shade by the collective
sympathy of the others who decided to baptise
themselves in the same salt water

(i saw some of them go down, once,
but when they emerged, they were wet
and nothing more).

face value

Criticise my imperfect state of mind, and unwind
the woven world of ideals bound, so tightly, around
my naked naivete; view reality through the painfully
transparent lens of skepticism, discount it with realism -

but don't taint my words -

don't smooth over their rough edges with slippery varnish
so they slide in and out of the mind as seamlessly as a
mantra, or the hauntingly beautiful anthem of the new age;
they are as whole as I am incomplete, closer to me
than the ground beneath my feet.

Close Your Eyes

Close your eyes and wonder:
Where am I in this darkness?

When nothing else exists, do I?

The people with their eyelids taped open
have snake-eyes that tunnel into the ground
and no relief from the blinding walls of their
neon-fluorescent enclosure and suffer sleep 
without anesthetic dreams to dull the silence. 

They have no rest, they do not blink -
there is a singular sadness in their look
that I once mistook for longing.
But for what would they search,
if nothing escaped them, if
everything they knew of
was right before
their very
eyes?

When I want to write

It sometimes starts with a single word, like 'vacuum', or two, like 'give me' -
not so much a key to a locked door, through which my heart gives and takes,
as a single stone displaced from the wall of a dam by a sudden jolt of current.
But the water does not leak like it would from a tap carelessly left open,
but rushes out impatiently, with the rage that is gathered from invisibility.