Selected Poems
Below is a selection of my poems, capturing the philosophical and slow moments of life.
The Seven Seas of Black
I wait for my weight in nothingness
To come back
Through my eyes dark.
As I asked the Red Sea of Damascus:
'Could I have exchanged my share of sorrow
With the owl's vision;
With the dove's peace?'
In the echo chamber of your prayers,
I lay with bandits, and blank sheets;
I built stone walls in the maze of my desires,
To seep the shadows of commotion
Into the gauze of old age.
My past was language -
The empty shade of identity.
For I exiled to the realm of the living.
From the womb of immateriality;
My mother carried in the aftermath of her tragedy.
Endless running was my fate's greed;
And I sit in the confusion of her charity.
To be bound with fettered happiness;
What have I done?
To be like you, in that fabricated ecstasy?
Don't be coy, as you say:
As you raped my heart with righteous flattery.
Still, light comes to me.
In my wounds, my holes, my pores;
Every inch of my skin's past.
Should I hide behind the phantom of fantasy,
Where the non-linearity of my childhood
Narrates a non-existent tale of purity?
Or should I shed my skin in the blistering cold,
To be absorbed by the complacency of a lukewarm reality?
For my wish is only to blow up the cosmos,
With your burning curse of empathy:
And save Mars, the last of humanity.
Yet, all the seven seas rush into the invisible black,
That you call universe,
That you call everything.
That you call the holy one
Of Brahman through Maya.
Yet, your name is Yara;
The butterfly in my dream forgotten,
The hands of which my hair was made into braids;
And all the olive vines, eucalyptus, and cedar can not salvage
My years of purple haze passed
On the destined Dead Sea.
Blue, was the Dying Night
Wrap me oneirically in the rain of June;
When Blue lulls me to sleep,
Through Mother’s hand;
When tears of amnesia are weaved into a garland,
For my heart of self-destruction.
Ablaze me into the fire of phosphorus waves,
Where the sea folds into a thread of gold,
And ribbons the deep sand of sorrow
Into the glamour of its lost dreams;
Where yesterday is a lingering breath of the present,
And tomorrow gives birth to the past’s virginal lustre,
In the fresh dew of May.
Tie my wrist to the sycamore tree;
Where time flows along your hair’s ginger,
Where my pulse is frozen into passion’s winter;
Through the rich soil of faith.
For blindly, was my touch to thee;
As you guide me through the land of mystery,
And bundle my fate with the scent of lonely reeds.
And in the low land of velvety leaves,
And In the high sea of northernly creeks;
I married you before my birthing’s cry,
I sang to you a nightingale’s eulogy.
Yet, the spring meadow was your death weeping;
Water-blue as my baptism sacramonial,
Time-worn as your prisoner christening;
And so in the prism of the memory gap,
We sit, forlorn, as an empty light,
Against blue, of the dying night.
'Tis My Homeland
I'm at the cusp of the cliff, hanger
Down to the valley below;
For the exacerbation of grief, fettered to
The violent emotionality, that awaits deliverance.
Lingered, was the ache for freedom.
That gazed into the behind of appearance.
It saw an injured individuality recoils upon its
Swift movement, in its entire circus of life;
It kills itself, cleans up its own killing;
For self-perseverance,
And for living in the skylight of the present.
The real world spat on the scalp of empty abstractions;
For when I dream of homeland,
I think upon the lemon vines, and shattered windows;
Where the luxury of creation dies.
And the minds were enveloped into conjectures,
That suffered from the poverty of ideals,
Where the bodies were lost in conformity, and obedience.
And so I walked,
Across the sand of stars, in the thirst of land.
Searching for an unrealised vanity,
In the archives of others' foot-markings;
And I see myself -
Fragmented, miraged, burned in a pot;
Simmering till I no longer recognise my face.
It's a useless fit of depression,
And I suffer from the frustration for its unborn children;
The sweet offspring named Pessimism,
That I once lulled into sleep,
And killed with methanol, and lily of the valley.
It's demonic innocence bled from my eyes,
As I looked into its mirror reflection;
And I thought about the holes in the dirt,
Where the weeping widow lies,
With mud and tears,
As she whispered:
'Pigs wrapped in tobacco leaves.
'Tis my homeland.'
Slow Season
Beside the frosty ridge, deep in autumn's work;
A long look of yearning casted, as we treaded the turf.
Threescore years and ten,
The foot-way stood along the open country, by the brook-side.
Season changes, from a bed of dewy meadow into a tuft of drift wood;
Where water lily, lapis, chronicles the time;
And the stone-crafter, a fellow tale of anguish, walks on the pasture field.
By a dim sea, ephemeral beings glimpse the vision of tomorrow;
In a narrow band of rugged coastline,
Betwixt youth's golden flint and fir-tree-covered wagon on the moor;
Eastward to the vale near the lake.
Tender, was the hale fisherwoman, for her streams and groves;
Behind a thin veil of melancholic haze.
Fonder feelings ascended, as she sank deep into the autumn mist;
Next to an aged metal cup.
And I am alone, happily; for she is a fen of glittering river,
By the foxglove bell radiance manifold;
Cloaked with soot, she is the wild woodland; sorrow-laden.
The scent of thyme and myrtle, etched the heath;
With the nostalgia of a wintry sea.
And I was a young girl, chafing the pebbles smooth;
Wandering homeward 'neath the willow shade,
Tramping on rotted fig leaves, amidst lopsided haycocks.
At winter solstice, I'll go into the moonlit sea;
With the vision of umber-hued oak tree, homebound people, and hawthorn hedge,
Where glimmering waves shall fall like phosphorus flames,
For me.
Ode to a Childhood's Cottage
Dawn, by the Chimney's edge;
We sat, in uncouth country style
Next to an aged lamp,
Which stood solitarily,
Through many small hours.
Mother, piled her intellectual paperwork,
Stirred a soft fire in the grate,
Amidst hushed morning air.
The cottage window, gently glazed with a shimmer,
Was reminiscent of late November days,
When crisp mist cascaded down the vale.
There, we trode among the winding mountain creeks;
And we stopped, next to a shepherd's hut,
To gaze at the quiet, glittering water,
Coloured faintly by the fleecy clouds.
An endearing solemnity and unity
Towards nature filled our hearts,
Which accompanied me through my still youthful years,
In splendour and in turmoil.
Beside our cottage hearth,
We unlatched the door to watch the meadow;
Its vernal innocence grew into a kaleidoscopic summer,
As the willow warbler's mellifluous voice
Took away the melancholy of the blackcap's springtime songs.
A thin shroud of translucent clouds
Swirled above the far slopes of copses and thickets,
Where roebucks ran with mirth on the mossy hills;
Not long after the sharp May storm
Severed the huge crags of the wide cliff.
In that vast field, our lives passed.
And in nostalgia, I long to saddle up a thoroughbred;
Mount up the hills with vigour, drink wild waters from a rivulet's edge.
Then, onwards and upwards, galloping to the distant rocky falls.
Returning by the silent twilight hours,
To sail on a slow-moving boat upon the still water;
Soaking my oar in the moonlit river, drifting homeward,
Tranquil as a cradle rocked with a woman's hand.
Rapt with a small joy from this vision,
I sit quietly on the bistro chair, half-sheltered by the eaves,
in front of a contemporary hut on the Cotswolds' hills.
Womanly Aggression
Sidling haplessly away
From cant and hubristic righteousness,
She, whom civil society denies,
For suffering in silence and clothing in gold.
Insidiously, a crack opens in space,
As the four walls stare upon each other,
And naked beings, for a moment, heard and seen.
In the dark room of her mind,
Time falls into a tunnel of the past,
Beyond edge of vision,
Where stillness kneaded her into a cubism
Of identities,
In the abstract passageway
Of second-hand ideas, borrowed feelings, and logical falsehood.
Intellectural cavewoman, pedantically illiterate,
Gives birth to hope with shielded truth,
In the non-depth of a non-place.
While crimson-eyed priest watches
Blue murdering green, purple marrying red.
He, whose heart seduces misery with humanly passion,
Has twilight of his own, through the motion of a hydrangea's crepitation;
Folding into himmself, as he scythes the town,
From womb to tomb;
Within which, she is a theatre, he is a play.
Borachio's Fever Dream
Weaving field of fern in July; wayward child
Running with the woodland rhyme.
Over the glossy sea, I stand at heaven's gate.
Beating time in the house of toil, paint and clay;
while her heart still dreams of the damask roses on the ridges of old.
Famine-thin, gazing at the falcon tearing a dead rat.
A momentary gleam of the infinite folds of blue at sea's edge;
As the feeble cloudlets rule the shadows of the fens,
Behind the visage of passion; death.
Drink from my green cup,
And rape the night with the veil of morn, under the star-laden sky.
For the battle is coming with wimpish grace;
Flame on flame, bone on bone,
Over the ants in the sheaves of slaves.
The tree hang itself, its own soliloquy.
Blood-dripping kingfishers from the war,
Came for my myriad years of sorrow and mirth.
I pick up the old crossbow, in front of shrubs and saplings.
At night fall, they flew away under the waning moon.
No more killings from this drunkard, methought;
As I walk on the farmland to wake the seeds of corn.
Can I have one last wrestle with love before I go?
I bend to the fire, watching the tenderness die in the gaze of youth.
A larch wood hunting spear, straight to my heart;
Formless creature threw in the clangour of wind and sea.
Its myself that I see, shelf on shelf, a pile of shelves, under shells of white.
At last, my wish is complete.
A Silent House
Dreams abide in the shadows
Of quiet corners.
As whispers labour from dusk till dawn,
Safeguarding the four walls of tales - an infant's laughter or a widow's weep.
Santuary of silence, fluid in form.
One minute a cathedral, one minute a cave.
Yet, I be unbound - this shapeless self of mine, wandering around.
Windows and doors, portals to elsewhere.
Holding up translucent daylights, beckoning near.
To memories of love, lost and all we held dear.
In that frosty winter morning's air, echoing a distant chant.
Changing like the sea,
As the dewy meadow puts her hand on the wheel of fortune.
Every morning catalogued, from attic high to cellar deep;
In the rhythm of life, unfolding at its esoteric pace.
By night, we hide in the nooks.
Pulling the coverlet of moss up to our feet - twiddling an unspoken wish.
Lodged in the dark of fireflies' wings.
Cobblestone-tile roof, soft-pedalled by time.
Oneirically in the backdrop of the meandering hills and overcast clouds;
As sunlight dances through the trees, where eagles glide.
Cloaked in mist and crowned with leaves,
A silver thread weaving through, river deep.
Tranquillised by a quaint longing, for the evermore.
Yet, silent house stands still;
Under moon's soft glow, murmuring a tale of long ago.
Sea, Rebirth Me
Evening waves are roaring with the relics of the past
That possesses all tomorrow's delights,
Where imagination trudges along with my lucid soul,
Married by the sea in an infinite wedding rite.
My body is going through its recurrent, seasonal ebbs and flows
In the absence of a woman's hand.
The shadow of my self approaches from afar,
Intimate with freedom,
Ready for my rebirth on a hill dotted with the French basil of my childhood,
And the oaks I grew tall with.
Time comes on a ferry,
Carrying the memories of a dying soldier's impossible tomorrow.
As I embrace the forsaken light,
Next to the hell of my past self and the cradle of my present.
I gaze upon the passage of one self to another
As if sunlight shifting shapes on an empty wall.
But in the succession of pain's river,
Mine is only the sound of an ewe's cooing,
And I can't recognise my ashes from the beggar's dust
In such glorified eulogy.
How would you like your death?
Blue
How would you like your rebirth?
Blue
Like the starry midnight sky before the first brushstroke of the young Van Gogh.
Like the subtle morning mist in the eyes of a coming of age Florentine muse.
Like the vigorous roaring waves in the ears of the gladiator ready for his first battle.
Like the deep sorrow of the ocean in the ink of Hemingway's last poem.
Like the melancholic pond of the spring in the memory of a nostalgic widow up the highland.
Like the flowing veins of Picasso's withered hands.
Like the vicissitudes of the interconnected planet Earth.
Like the longing of a thousand bluebells on the lilac field.
Henceforth, I venture into the night, into the morning, into the sublime.
I unite all elements;
The master of fire, the teacher of darkness, the servant of light,
The lover of air, the mate of soul, the weaver of mystery,
The baker of imagination, the labourer of infinity, the steward of hope,
The roofer of awe, the reaper of glory, the wanderer of virtue.
To give me life, again and again.
To live!
To let me be, once and for all.
To be!
Metamorphosis of an Unnamed Farmwoman
Ideals constructed on a waste land,
I ploughed, tilled, harrowed,
Among the boundless indifference and ignorance;
Salt in my scratches with wild boar licking my wound,
Annotations of my identity, made of grass, sown on my skin;
I scavenged a shinning gold ring that has been honed by mediocrity,
Put it on my finger, fit me like a glove,
The waste land is becoming me.
Lured by the siren call of imagination,
Till reality, my step-mother, slapped my face
And pushed my head into the freezing sea.
Faeces of sea creatures ignited the memories of my indelible past
That consists of only waves;
Spilling waves,
Dumping waves,
Reform waves,
Crumbly waves,
Double-up waves.
I trod and plodded on the water;
As I transform from one shape to another,
In accordance to the waves.
I'm choppy, beginning to curl and crest;
An eddy building up inside of me but come out as a maelstorm.
Rapid, rolling, tides undulating.
Then, I stagnate and I trickle as a fine ripple;
The ocean is becoming me.
Highland is reserved for my spirit;
When my flesh divorces life,
Dissolving in the wilderness;
Sacrificing the conscious self,
To soak my unconsciousness in the moon,
And feed the dog with my rabid, rampant femininity.
Its mottled anyway, so let it be.
That's the cost of marrying vulgarity as an unamed lout.
I'm not ashamed, I can barely read.
At least, I'm still holding onto the overcrowded path of Truth,
Not letting fate tempt me astray.
So one day, I can break free from the shackles;
The highland is becoming me.
The Lost Youth
I live in my own absurd fervour,
I die in the dream of others.
In the depth of the crack of darkness,
I don't dare to be a plebeian;
In that lowly exchange with the Light Bringer,
I sold heaven for a penny.
For my conscience has been exiled;
As an outlaw in morality,
An errors in creation,
A by-product of the existence of something else.
I lost the war against Cowardice,
I witnessed Caligula's soldiers coming in;
To pillage, to loot, to rape the virgin.
The fire of my anger took one city after another.
Yet, i'm still too feeble to raise the laurel wreath of kindness,
Amongst the ruffians and scoundrels.
The seed of forgotten years that i have planted in my garden
Will soon grown to be a black alder,
And leave me for the unknown benevolence;
Those shared nights of sorrows and longings
Will fade into a whimper.
As I sit on my rocking chair,
Watching the ever bright moon.
So luminous, so venerable, so pure,
Much more illustrious than the dim-lit moon of my childhood;
Yet, they won't guide me to my home town anymore.
Between the burning wood at dawn,
And the pinky promises in the autumn wine,
I lost my youth.
Odour of Wisdom
I have been a serf, a king
A student, a master,
A warrior, a monk,
A killer, a prey,
A fool, a sage,
In my past 1037 lives;
Now i'm living my 1038th.
The cells in my body are reaching their full circles,
With the decay of my flesh,
Emitting the foul odour of wisdom;
In exchange for the soul to rid itself of the rot of naivety,
With the fragrance of virgin roses from Eden.
Up the mountain, i saw an old widow;
Reminiscing her past glory,
Shaking my hand,
As if to hold onto her lost youth.
Yet, even with her resolute gaze and tight grip,
Time is slipping through her fingertips,
Without kindness, without mercy,
Aching desperation, heart-wrenching to see.
A philistine clinging onto the useless vanity
From preserving her bag of meat.
Instead of opening her eyes
To the enlightened soul and the true beauty.
Meanwhile on the other side of the earth,
The lofty, educated young man tied a rope around his neck,
Determined to kill the sorrow from his
Self-imposed, melodramatic, ostentatious suffering.
Inside this abandoned old church,
The nun prays for God while God prays for men.
Except the innocent little girl with pink, plump cheeks;
Sitting on the pew, nonchalantly plays with her toys,
Unfazed by the jest and noise of
The modern world and its over-engineered men.
The Longing
In perfect stillness, the lovers stare into the distance.
Her head next to his chest, her arms are intertwined with his.
Engraved in the moment,
Just like that old, slow, wooden clock,
Is their embrace.
A lost boy,
Fixate his gaze on a singular point of the cracking staircase,
Among the fumbling crowds,
Who leave nothing but the flickering shadows on the wall behind.
Eyes closed. In silence. He prays to God.
Extending his hands into the empty air.
His eyes, pious and pure.
Like the incidental raindrops on the window of the first morning train.
Loaded with the longings of world-weary travellers.
The softness of an infant's breath,
Lingers on the strange man's tobacco-stained shirt;
While the old widow on the street outside, collecting lost coins,
Apathetically observing the thin girl with the black umbrella.
Her fragile arms, reaching forward,
Into the melancholy of a rainy night.
Light smokes from the burning wood,
Flew into the vision.
Accelerating. Condensing. Concentrating.
Fading. Dispersing. Distilling.
Expands. Contracts.
Soars. Falls.
Space, an infinite word, is coloured green.
Time, is running fast ahead.
Translucent. Transcendent. Like a tunnel.
It's the end for her. It's the beginning for him.
As the story of the first disciple and the last of God unfolds.
The Triumph of Death over Boredom
If its love, then be it.
If its death, then be it.
If its revelation, then be it.
Anything, anything is better than boredom.
One, two, three.
Three, two, one.
Will you blow up the roses in my hand?
The thorns will prick your fingers,
And i'll hold the glass to drink your blood for wine.
Fair exchange, won't you say?
My only friend, my lover.
Follow me till death prepares our final bath.
Nocturnal animals, foul sewer.
Rat-like existence, swarming, twisting in pain.
Your ugly face, your crooked, yellow teeth.
You beg and beg and beg,
But no one heard a whisper;
Poor creature, you only ask for a release.
Just a brave and pious heart, for the next rebirth.
Not for long, my friend.
I sniffed a whiff of the revolution,
Down at the brothel.
Naked, shameless, crying
Whores fussing around.
Smell of desperation from old age.
They will save you in their bosom;
They will send you for the road.
That less travelled, that solitary path,
With silence to hold your soul.
So one last vodka for the road.
Its time to go my friend, its time to go.
Confession from a Dilettante of Love
What i would trade to be that
Effervescent neophyte of love again,
Said the old man.
A bonhomie in the morning,
A sinner at night.
I dither in love, between love, out of love.
I'm intrepid to fight for a recalcitrant love,
But i'm a perfidious man at heart.
Like a true fisherman,
I hold onto the ephemeral amour.
I put my heart on the table, i surrender.
I'm deft in ruminating, in philosophising feelings.
But i've never able to wake up
My languid, sophoric spirit.
All ostentation, no substance,
She said.
I want to expiate, i want to atone
In front of Venus, in front of Love.
Tell them i'm not mendacious;
I'm not indolent;
I'm not a fickle man.
Even though in my heart,
I know i'mm just an unfortunate man,
who's led a licentious life.
An almost lover who's never been graced with
The presence of love.
I'm just a dilettante of love.