The open wound is laughing at me.
Scarlet lips, glittering teeth of bone deep inside,
streaks of blood dulling as they congeal…
I laugh back at it, mouth open wide –
loudly, victoriously, triumphantly.
It is only a flesh wound –
I can master it,
I can manage it,
I can thrive in spite
and feel stronger for it.
Not like the other ones –
dull and habitual aching I feel –
the wounds I can’t reach,
the wounds I can’t heal,
they have nothing they teach –
deep under the skin,
the wounds closed over.
Drawing by Calcifer Shepherd
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.“
– J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Elliott
As I walk through the world in the morning, I walk through chores:
Brush my teeth, feed my flesh, lift my eyes and observe the world.
See the light watch the shadows: frightened and slightly porous
It is braving the dark, but the darkness remains unfurled.
Like a puppy, to no avail
Light is chasing its own tail.
Ceaseless effort – no rest, no sleep
Leaves the shadows dark and deep.
In the forest, the room, the mind
They just move as they hide behind,
They never diminish
Fade out or finish.
And the dance goes on, like a tide – as it ebbs, it flows.
And the mind wanders off, but off what and off when – who knows?
Oh, but time is a funny thing:
Lucky – spiral, unlucky – ring;
Snake consuming its own tail
Has no future, no past, no fail.
With no fail comes no gain – no foul.
As ouroboros tries to howl
It’s unable to rant and rail,
Mouth gagged with a scaly tale…
It is time to abandon this train of thought
As it leaves us nowhere and profits nought.
If I look the look, talk the talk
Then I also should walk the walk.
As I wend my way through the virgin wood,
All I see are multiple shades of green,
All I hear is hue, hue and cry of birds
Known just by the sounds – a sight unseen.
But my mind gets pulled from the joy sublime
Of the sight and sound, the leaves and birds
To the stinging nettles that intertwine
Unremitting brambles, as sharp as words:
“Why the fuck did I wear shorts?”
As I focus on light and sound,
I forget to attend to thorns.
Joy is found, but also bound
By recurrence of cuts and burns.
The annoyances and the strain
Can be taken away by train.
The train that blurs the near spares far,
Serenely cloudscapes through heavens glide.
An airplane left antiseptic scar
Amid the clouds, stumble on the ride.
Landscape renews and we in comfort cruise,
But dusty windows engender dusty views.
A patch of lights through clouds gives me joy
Untampered, instant and without words.
It filters down softly to alloy
Itself with shadows in subtle smooth sensations –
The joy of pure vision midst the turds
Of unremitting complications.
My elasticity declines as I get older –
Of skin and time, and arteries, and veins.
My hands and feet – they are a little colder
Each winter with increase in aches and pains,
As well as other relevant increases
In colds and flu with snottiness and sneezes.
If snake of time contracts then what remains
Is an attempt to stretch the space with trains.
Ouroboros of time constricts my breath.
As body shrinks my mind expands – and shatters
Its dissolution congruent with death
But also with infinity of matters.
What cannot stretch can break and reassemble.
Abandon frame, you all who enter here.
Reconstituted, you will still resemble
Yourself to others, even those near
And dear, them, who try to fix in space
Of ageing body time’s dissolving trace.
At the end of the day we arrive. It’s a velvet curtain.
The applause increases politely as curtain drops.
At the end of the day you are feeling alive and certain.
Your heartbeat is apparent to you just before it stops.
First you figure out who you are not;
then you figure out who you are;
finally, you figure out you are not who.
Anniversary song
My love for you is so strong –
it’s fathoms deep and furlongs long –
it spans the continents and disregards all borders.
My love for you is thick as soup,
it never dries, though it may droop,
it stays past closing and outlasts last orders.
My love is this and also that,
it wakes with me and comes to bed,
it feeds on laughter, tears, cheese and beers.
It lasted me through thick and thin,
it’s in my heart and in my spleen,
and here’s “Cheers!” to a lot more years!
“Oh my Luve is like a red, red rose” – Robert Burns
My love is like a red, red rose
the flowers and thorns combined.
The vivid beauty intertwined
with sharpness. There is no repose.
The colour of the velvet petals
Evokes blood, subsists in blood.
Ambivalence that never settles
existed there from the bud.
My love is like a red, red rose
it’s in my blood least petals dry.
In me, with me, as me it grows
and if it dies the I shall die.
The space partitioned by electric wires
And anchored to the ground by the poles
Is well and truly caught.
They cut my vision –
Straight lines across unending undulation
Of hills and clouds.
Ugly not because
Of shape, but due to insular connections –
They only touch each other, not the space
They fracture with the guiltless disregard
Of those unaware.
Rest in peace
My endless space
Available in pieces.
What kills us is certainty,
unwavering conviction that we are doing the right thing.
The ends have to be unquestioned to justify the means,
questions leave room for empathy and doubt.
Socrates – the man who said that the only certainty is the lack thereof –
died because of his stubborn conviction that he knew the right thing to do.
Because eventually even the bravest of us give in
to the comfort of certain death
after a lifetime in the quicksand of uncertain truths.
The only solution is love
because it makes truth less important than life.
If Socrates had children,
he would have lived longer
and died without leaving a legend.
The sun is low
the moon is high
the sky’s aglow
and I get by
on coffee
and hope
and light.
The heady air
is in my lungs.
My head is bare.
I speak in tongues
of futures
and hope
that’s bright.
The night is waiting
but day is long –
time for creating
another song
with nonsense
and hope
and rhyme.
While sun is shining
there’s time for fun;
there’s no divining
when day is done –
depleted
of hope
and time.
A lot of people making the same decision they always did – or no decision at all.
Making new decisions is difficult.
It carries a risk of making a mistake and offers no certain reward.
It’s fundamentally unsafe.
Better not.
Quite a few people working hard for no gratitude, no acclaim and not much money.
For the sake of decency.
A lot of people working hard for no reason – only money and thinking they are better than the rest.
They always fail.
There’s always someone richer.
A few people yelling as loud as they can – their grievances, their ambitions, their theirness –
Anything to be seen, for they only feel real when reflected in the eyes of others.
The eyes turn away and they have to raise the volume.
Crowds marching, covered in the mantle of righteousness, in the warmth of the herd.
Belonging.
Dozens of people thinking, writing, quoting.
Trying hard for new decisions – and never mind the cost.
A lone man standing in front of a tank in Tianamen square.
The first person to climb over the Berlin wall.
A woman dumping green ink into the voting box in Moscow.
This is what democracy looks like:
Each of us alone with his choice.
