Brute

Yellow, with a core yellower –
the slice looked a petal on his palm.
Perfect manners, he consumed 
with a spoon –
a fruit fresh from the farm.

Translucence, the residue,
tossed away in a bin –
decaying as he gets ready
for new appetite.
 

Public Figure

High tide,
your cheek against
the moonlight –

does it matter
that I am not the spire
you fly towards?

A grain of sand,
I cannot capture your
mighty moon-shadow.

Your laugh
is for the eyes –
you flutter, because light.

I crawl to the shore
as you soar to the white
that cannot be had.

You Killed The Artist

Pierce stars,
slip them into an abacus.

Let them twinkle
but on a cactus.

Between the bars,
the sky would linger.

Let it exist
robbed of its status.

As you adorn each finger
with the torn stars -

as you bow to Mars
and plunge into Venus -

think once of the galaxy,
think of all the stars.

Did you steal from a womb,
its sleeping foetus?

Thirteen Lines for 'The Poet'

Of course, everyone would be there but you.

Crawling into the ‘lit’ mouth, converging 
to the tooth that bites into your poetry.

Smiles would be thrown, aficionados shown
the restless tongue of the coterie -

Of course, ‘candid’ moments would be caught
by an unpaid amateur,

an aperture twinkling to tinkling glasses.
And you won’t be there

the anonymous loser of the lottery,
loyally by a book about death,

talking to your late father - founding a therapy
in the proud madness of rejecting reality!

Why?

Why to touch what has
settled into a coil -
why to add to a stagnation?

I see you crawl
around your point -
slowly you’re inching away.

Not further. Not behind.
Elsewhere, on the finite globe,
the mind that has us, two thoughts.

Why to look through the same lens 
when I want it further
and you need it larger?

These venomous trails,
that were once our ballads
are broken compasses, that’s all.

I don’t mind waking up to a blur.
Why do I care to clean
your glasses?

Limited

I’m limited to you -
a lake you pass by
and absent-minded,
throw pebbles at.

You do not care
for the momentary ripples
they create -
you think they’d rob me,
expanding my dimensions.

Yet within the nebulous
you hunt yourself.

We're Too Poor This Christmas

We’re too poor this Christmas.
All we own is a breath,
long, tedious and green,
a piece of bunting, a futile chain.
We hang it between
two distant numbers on a clock.

And then as we look at it for long,
we get creative.
With a pair of lurid scissors, we chop
this decoration into hyphens;
we use the little lengths
to contrast the grotesque walls
of the rooms that occupy 
us.