Category: Poetry

Buzzing,
masking violent swirl
breathing out through
feathers nostril

Frozen plastic
trapped-in time

The moment, in itself,

is vague, shapeless,

insignificant

 

The next bubble,

the next jump to

the new moment

 

They form, they group,

they live, they pop

A few together, soon

 

A path they draw

to a sweet new

from a bland now

Long before the night,

the day’d grown dark

 

Of the necessity for grandeur

Of the need to be winning

Of the need to be happy

 

Or the need to be

not losing,

Or the need to be

not unhappy

 

Of nothing clear anymore

Of worries to settle no more

Of dreams lost to years

Of breaths burrowed to fears

 

Of waiting for a hint of light

Of a bare ounce of will to fight

Of a pulse of life, of a punch of life

Of keeping still

Of breathing still

Right when the tip

of the pen hits the paper

Before the ink ploughs on

To a stroke, to a shape, a something

To dry and to die

To be the shadow of my thought

Right at this tip

I …

She grips and grasps and holds

my hand

In her hand

both shaken

Her fragile palm

freaky, feathery

For me

Her veins,

popped and purple

run through hers

and mine

 

Years of

gripping, grasping and holding me

In her arms

The monster me

softened, slowed and sober

In her touch

Fit inside, bouncing off

the ceiling and the surface

My lines go along and across

these dotted tunnels

 

My words build on

My thoughts overflow

A hundred-storey building

flown horizontal

 

Shapes of my mind revealed

on the blank page with

a fence-work of

tiny black dots

 

His designs,

the unknown maker,

his thoughts unknown

Shapeless and vacant, for

 

My words,

scrambled and sullied,

in slots within dots,

in my search for a form

They drift away in their whining bubbles

My feet tap unsettled, food getting cold

My passive eyes unfurl those greying bonds

 

Once common threads,

Once frizzle, now free

We branched apart

from the common tree

 

Their blatant views on the many,

“cringy”, “stingy”, “reckless”, “unfair”

They hate in a rush, judge in a hurry,

“The others” they loathe,

still boxed in the old

 

Torn, untethered in quiet,

adrift far they leave

The taste of a fine spring,

A table and the wind.

Lost,
in the deep
in your ocean,
in your search, while

Invisible,
to those who tread the surface
who judge, who plan,
who are lost in search of maps and compass
taunted by skies and sharks, while 

Lost,
in search of the unknown
to touch the elusive,
in your own depths,

lost.

To the bird, the river smiles,

like a thousand leaves fluttering,

shimmering and shaking,

each claiming

a piece of sun,

each claiming

to be a piece of sun.

 

To the bird, the leaf rebels,

scorns the metaphor.

A thousand voices thunder:

I suck in the sun.

I am the sun!

I borrowed the words of others
To face the truth
The unmistakable presence of reality
My tongue swirled, blurted out sounds

My eyes looked down, searched for nothing
The ears got a lot from all
I repeated what I heard
My sense was not constant
My fear was
What I saw, what I said, what I felt
Didn’t matter
For, he was not there
To watch, to feel, to hear

He was there
A month ago
I said what I said
Unpolished, raw, unleashed

My words.
Not borrowed.