Them

Fragile, labelled bottles of glass

bent their mind,

made mostly of light

spending life waiting

for that something at the bottom of it

where something had been kept secret from them.

What we find there

is most likely always

put there by us,

dropped deep within that vast pool of poison,

like words uttered

with a lump of sorrow in the throat

in this big empty emotional darkness.

Their tears were holy waters. 

And they were at the bottom of what caused it.

Forgiveness.

On that day, at the bottom of the bottle

at the end of the day

they decided they wanted to work 

for people who at least knew

what they were doing in life. 

Years of not knowing was killing them,

they were truly bored 

and I remember they settled on 

chasing life away from darkness.

But, thought after thought and

constant derailment 

into complete havoc 

and grief took over conversation

and with distant laughter becoming clearer 

underneath a wider ballroom clutter,

they had asked one another, 

'Is this life?'

'Is this growing up?'

Still when all was said and done,

in innocent eyes certain guilty pleasures did show.

When the trees had been uprooted

and the grass too had been mown.

Screaming was her salvation they said

and bitterness with its ability to creep in

the unconscious and infect good heart

became his suicide note.

Colouring Book

Toys, they often break before

it's time to leave them behind.

We cry, for such is the loss,

for such is our fear of change. 

Bard's beard grows every day

inching out day by day

coiling around the poetry coming out of his mouth,

blue as the cosmic dance,

but

it has to go.

The breasts when begin to swell,

for her alone

days change differently. 

Some have a curiosity while

others think differently.

All, we are afraid of change. 

Reject this and years pass by.

Childhood disappears

down memory lanes.

Friends and family treat you like a toy

they once loved

but now no longer know how to play with.

Take minutes out of busy lives, and

live the night. Be mindful of days. 

Life, animalistic

whose master has a wife

who let's him have the stick

if only once in a while.

Colour these pictures well 

in colouring books.

Don't let go of the child in you 

even if the light

reflecting off the plastic surface smiling faces

be worthy of miles to go.

It's a journey.

We look for love in other things 

when love resides in special things.

At least live. 

Death lurks, you hear me?

It's in the Bird's singing... 

Lurking around here with terrifying freedom.

You have got to colour these crows well too

for they will eat your dead cold rotting flesh one day,
waking up from their own dreams
at the taste of your blood.

Love somebody before you go

love them with so much heart

that if they pass 

your passing too shall become a meeting point.

Though before anything else,

Pick your toys and your favorite colours,

identify who you ought to be,

else one day they label you and kill you 

for who you never were.

Some toys are easier than others to break,

some colours over others are easier to paint.

Collector of Stones and Different Kinds of Wood

Someone was here last night.

All the trees are fallen

and the soil left ashy.

They harnessed the sun,

our ancestors now dead, mourning, turn

along with this beautiful planet

over our lives put in danger.

But our needs must fulfil. 

And now, they are not our needs.

We don't know when they ceased to be,

maybe somewhere in the middle,

since surely this isn't the end.

Layer upon layer our stones assembled,

then sculpted carefully.

And the women carrying wood on their heads

upon the layers

on which rests the earthen pot

half empty.

Lay to waste the collector's art.

Deceived in disguise.

Here on my table an entire elephant sits

and the table many trees itself.

Before they were cut with the sharp edge 

of an otherwise blunt knife,

they used to be for everyone.

Now these stones are mine and these woods.

They are all mine.

Leave before you are dealt with.

I believe I have sharper knives

for you

than i do 

for the trees and the earth.

Marigold

You haunt me.

Swinging by a rope,

stranded, in the month of spring.

Will you bring my name onto your tongue?

These years have emptied this lake,

but the valley will still resonate your voice

and the bitterness of truth

and the humiliating restlessness in the heart

will awaken regret.

I know,

you will remember me.

I was wronged when I was like you.

Still, I wronged you, unknowingly.

We are reminded of our mistakes to the extent of tears,

of innocent days

when all was lost

long before we could know what is right and what was wrong,

when our fears were just not the irrational fears of a child,
but the very ghosts that chased us.

Signal the wrongs in this world.

Now that noise has grown

inside me

and I am surrounded

by the fruits of passion.

Love embraces me.

The valley is lush

and the marigold fills it.

When these words are sung out loud

and you reminded of me,

have heart,

it's made of sleepless nights, of thinking

what will happen if I sing you these words

in the valley, my voice resonating

finds you somewhere on your walk into oblivion.

I, expressing my lament to your ghost

long before you are dead

find myself, after the sun has died

and the moonshine no longer casts it's silver on these hills,
to drape them with moon's blood

in the absence of yet another bloom in the marigold seed.
When the land is barren
and the eyes run dry.

Writing Called Taboo

Here was a book cover to judge

that somehow glorified nudity,

inhumane nature,

silence of silent heroes

for whom there were few

who would put forward their struggles.

We shun apologists

we damn the poor

we regress

we fear

we fear not knowing ourselves

we fear and that is why 

we don't speak against them

it is not that we don't care.

To read was to delineate the self,

to sympathize with the oppressed, merely a trend.

Pictures of buildings, trees walking around them,

but only at night,

farmlands at the doorstep in daylight

and an eye to perceive the whole.

One of a kind for everyone

and one language to convey somehow 

the meaning of it all.

Before contemplating nudity came civil discourse?

Disgusting masculinity had already won

when we were born,

defeating aging gracefully.

It was sad and depressing.

Women too grew stern 

yet together they too were conservative.

They were all khalifa,

the men of the age,

young girls, naked, insecure in classrooms.

Progression of their lives,

a parade to see,

then civil discourse over nudity!

What to say of protests?

Bodily shame and rural men -

Discrimination embedded deep within,

such were writings we have read.

Social truths, awful images.

Though difficult to know 

if the photograph was black and white

or whether it was hypocrisy.