Because Poetry

My heart has been in hiding ever since
he took me off of it and painted him
like skin, like sin, like things I can't evince,
like reds and blues and moods, he painted him.

There's this bed I sail on
during nights darker than his eyes.
And it feels like so many storms
trying in vain to set me right.
I write.
Because poetry.

There's a tear that I never shed;
I bled red, but I never shed,
this truth that I left unsaid.
I write. I write.

A million gongs to the morning,
bells and more bells-
he tickles and I cry,
our silences have gone dry
we try
to keep away.

A million alarms to the night,
we feign sleep before shadows.
They make love while we
make poetry.
Because poetry.

I Write, Why?

There was nowhere to go
but I whipped the horse anyway;
made it run
and bleed,
this steed I call my pen.

I wasn't speaking the truth.
There was no truth to be spoken!
The truth dwelt in silence
and I invoked words.
Words?
I drew from a dry well.

The ancient soul is but too young-
it is artless.
And here I paint pictures,
I design.
I wince with want 
of words!
I write
when it cannot be written.
I write, why?

Ride. Ride. Ride, they say.
But when I ride,
I feel like being ridden
by the beast instead.
Why must I saddle myself?

I write
when it cannot be written.
I write, why?

In the Mouth of a Zero

Every night the ceiling fan

weaves me a whirlpool

to drop my eyes into it,

to land weightless

in a stale pool of desire.

Every night

in the mouth of a zero,

I find your dream,

bubbling like

it has just escaped from a bottle,

like it has come with a tide

to be gone,

to be gone.

I peel the white waves

off the shore

and wear them like morning

across my neck.

The ceiling fan never tires

of weaving me this endless drape

of nudity.

To Be Contained

Bones are bars and behind them is a bird

that flutters and fights but only to fail

escaping them until the rail gets blurred

and the bird is delivered from the jail.

The heart that learns to beat between the 'bars'
the soul that is limited by a 'score',
the game, this life and all its destined wars
are but the music He creates ashore.

And we die 'being', we live only to cling
to these waves that are nothing but the trail
of thoughts He drops into an endless string;
we embrace the wave but forget to sail.

Why is it that the father so ordained
that we'd be us only till we're contained?

Process

Id

I was born a poem to God's mind;
I was to her a tarantism.
Her fickle butterfly, a favourite, perhaps.
I was God's passion, 
but she gave me a name.

If

In the blinking of an eye
I learned to flutter my wings.
God kissed me often
and sometimes she called me a name.

Then she gave to me, 'you', a poem.
And you were as mine as I was hers.

If only you would rest on my lips,
you fickle, colourful thing.

It

We swam to the silver depths,
to frozen red wine.
And we did balloon into two lakes,
you and me.

Two poems were never a pair.

Id

I bear you everyday
in my poems.

Death is a Delivery

Hark, you wildlings of the world!
The world is but a wing
of Time.

Look! It perches awhile
on the weightless branch
of Space.

Hark!
A leaf is dead-
disowned
by the tree.

Hear!
The crisp skeleton of a heart-
frail leaflet,
it goes.

Look!
Time ferries it again.

Look!
Look how it grows
in the womb
of the Universe.

The shedding was
a delivery.

Death too
was birth.

Phenomenon

Report the poem; go tell it to the mountain.

Do whatever!

Love is godless.

God is not a meaning!

You are not a word.

I'm soundless.

We meet, we kiss. Not really. Never really.

Non-words and soundlessness are heard clearly.

I loves the I dearly.

Panacea's Proxy

They bring me black holes, they bring me black souls;
they bring me the night, calling it starlight.
They bring me a jar, the make of their spite;
they bring me power, they bring me controls.

I am playing Panacea perhaps-
they bring me their open wounds to nurse.
A pot of poems, the pithos of verse;
why do they present me my own collapse?

Absent minded, when I open my heart,
all bonds fume to nothing; their names escape.
And I am left a creature sans a shape.

Panacea playing Pandora's part-
I am but a myth floating in the scape.
I am only a drape and not a shape.

The Prufrock Paradox

Is there a word that you’ve forgotten too?

And do you hear it in the mornings when

a shy bird sings, the cuckoo refusing to coo;

when silence simply is beyond your ken?

Is there a sound that you would love to woo?

Is there a thought you would want in your den?

Is there a feeling which being absent, you

beseech your fingers to besiege a pen?

Is there a voice you’re trying to undo?

Is there a song for which you’ve not a yen

but you recall it only to get through?

Is there a word you remember often?

Do you write 'nothing' on many a day?

Do you speak and yet never have a say?

Prevail

Prevail again, only once more, I say-

will you return to me, my only one?

I am the adret and you are the sun;

won’t you retouch the sky, make it a day?

All my words- they come to naught as I pray,

so I stand forlorn, flowerets undone

and I wait for you and me to just run,

but there’s nothing that will push me today.

I am frozen but yet unbroken, come!

This tilt towards you is ‘hope’ beseeching.

I am taken but yet unshaken, come!

This guilt, this pain; you should be reaching.

I cannot exist thus forsaken, come!

What for is the dark, when it isn't teaching?

A Wail to Your Avail

These tears that fall into your lap tonight,

are love gone sour and life that lost its grip

on time and truth and trust, only to slip

into the dark abyss, that zone of fright.

If you will laugh, my dear, spare me the plight!

Unlike the kiss that blossomed from your lip,

these rivers do not flow from a red tip;

they dip, a black ship that'll be lost to sight.

Concern for them, command for me, or more-

do you have something to give me today?

Don't open it again, that wanton core,

remain, if there is nothing you could say;

return nothing and just settle the score.

Your tears will flow and my heart will obey.