Meadow for a Heart

You see the cursor,
Blinking,
Waiting, 
Waiting for your trembling fingers to bleed on paper
To spill the blood leaking of wounds
Wounds from savage vines gripping your heart in bitter whisper
Searing hot,
They rive its flesh.

A Wind,
An aloof arctic wind,
As if it hadn't once encountered confinement,
Its giggling caresses, like honey dripping from your lips
Melting away the demons,
Liberating your lungs from their clutches.
Sweet air gushing into your scorched veins
Sweet laughter warming your starved belly
Tears flood through the barren cracks of your face
Tears of deathless gratitude
Tears of sobbing relief 
Tears of ignited hope

Blood, Sweat, Tears & Acid

It rains bombs, destroying any smidge of civilisation but oh, what do they know, humanity had been annhilated long before the world gave us our first breath. Families are separated, tearing away mother from child, but oh,what do they know, our hearts were already wrenched astray. Guns in our hands, violence burning in our veins, but oh, what do they know, our minds were already succumbed by savagery, slaughtered by this cruel carnival. Screams ringing in the sky like war horns but oh, what do they know of the hushed howls that constantly convulse our limbs.

A tear escaped his eye, but the only eye that saw the tear was his own because it was wiped away like a parched river even before it reached the high of his cheekbones. How dare they escape his perfectly masked visage like blemishes staining its pale cosmetic. Running till his insides churned, till his muscles burned, till collapse was what his sweat yearned. He could hear the blood plundering his veins, muffling his ears, fracturing his heart. The blood that was begging to cascade out, if that was the last thing that took for it to be heard.

Threatening to break free from his fragile body, they ravage his brain, loot his senses, suffocate his breath. It won't be long before these letters, these words, these sentences that have stocked the libraries of his brain ever since his body was acquainted with his spirit, shatter the walls of this gingerly built dam and when they do, the acid on his tongue will finally spill and corrode the fake reality of us mortals, afterall, they were just words dissolved in water, like acid corroding his blood, sweat and tears.

Nothing to Everything

You held my face in the chalice of your hands so passionately that you left scorch marks of your palms on my ashen visage. You were so focused on learning the colours of my eyes that you failed to see the vermilion tears that spilled from the cadaver painted in burnt timber. The sterling smile that you oh so adored, was a silent sob to let it fade and reveal the ruptured facade shoven underneath. The sound of my laughter deafened you to such an extent that you failed to hear the ring of howling plea that escaped my already strained throat. Those locks have been chopped off, isolated from my body forever as they were an augury of factitious glamour and unfelt passion. It pains me to confess that it is not white roses that were my covert cowling but those pale chrysanthemums. Infatuation with my  crimsons and goldens brimmed the walls of your cosmic castle so fervently that it left no room for my blues and greys. Look at your mural of us, it preens over our feverish fondness, now look at my mural of us, it stifles over our feigned forgery. You loved so earnestly that it burned down the walls of my trivial cottage leaving it in the wake of ashes. The fiery passion that flowed through your veins, inadvertently set my brittle corpse ablaze. You are a raging fire overwhelmed with life while I am a callous carcass choking under my own ashes. Now all that's left of me is woeful cinders dying in the flames of your dancing inferno, slowly fading from nothing to everything.

Ave Atque Vale

Ave Atque Vale

Ave Atque Vale

Everything to Nothing

I want to hold your face in the chalice of my hands so eternally that its texture carves into my palmes. I want to learn the colours in your eyes and paint the world with those shades. I want to engrave the site of your smile so deep in my brain, I could draw it in the clouds. I want the sound of your laughter to be the only echo pulsating through the walls of my cosmic castle. I want your hair to be the only thing entwined between my fingers, so familiar yet so staggering. I want your scent to encircle me how blankets of ghost white roses envelop a lamented gravestone.

For all that, now I can’t even remember the contours of your face, were they sharp or were they mellow? Were your eyes stained in the hues of rosy chestnut or burnt timber? Was your smile too bashful or too boisterous? My voluminous walls fear that they have gone deaf in the drought of your laughter, imploring, “where is the echo?” My fingers are dazed at their own bareness trying to understand, “where are the locks that draped our exposed corpse?” My gravestone was left wondering whether it wasn’t mourned anymore or whether its roses were bartered for chrysanthemums, choking down it asked, “where’s that perfume that banished the reek of death?” Now all that's left of you is a silhouette of the soul that dances in my memory like a haunted spirit in my cosmic castle,

slowly fading from everything to nothing.

                                                                           Ave Atque Vale

                                                                       Ave Atque Vale

                                                                      Ave Atque Vale

See what they wanted to See

The joker skipped across the circus,

Making the crowds laugh with delight.

But little Mary in the front,

Sat as silent as the depth of the night.

She saw the joker jest around,

With that smile of paint plastered on his face.

But the girl couldn’t help but wonder why,

It all looked so fake.

The joker hopped about amusing the masses,

His hands in the air as he twirled with grace,

However those eyes gave his secret away.

They looked like a haunted place. 

So little Mary followed the joker,

Into what they call a greenroom.

Pity and Terror taking over her senses,

As she saw him sink to his knees, cast in a gloom.

Taking a cloth, the joker scrubbed off the cosmetics,

Revealing the truth that lay underneath.

The girl saw, a man with wrinkled papery skin,

His face in bitter despair that he had sheath.

The mascara that gave his sockets vitality,

Was replaced by sunken bags under his eyes.\

And The frills that graced his shoulders,

Concealed a dejected slouch that he had disguised.

Mary didn’t ever visit the circus again,

For under those hooting crowds,

Was its pungent reality scabbed in silent plea,

Were they really so blind to these cruel shrouds?

Or chose to see only what they wanted to see?

                                               

"Every ViewPoint is a View from a Point"

 

“Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.” – Flora Lewis

Recently, I discovered that ninety-two in French is called ‘quatre-vingt douze’ which means ‘four times twenty plus twelve.’ What an interesting way to think of the number! While the same number in Mandarin Chinese is “jiǔ shí èr” which translates to ‘nine ten two.’ Isn’t it fascinating how the ability to visualize a number changes with the language?!

Interestingly, what I’m trying to assert is that the tool of language is so powerful that it narrates the history, manifests the intellect, and acquaints the opinions of the entirety of its speakers! It enables one to think from a certain perspective and what a trump card it is for bilinguals and multilinguals! They get to see the world from not one, not two but from many perspectives. It's like each language is a brand of sunglasses! Just like the quality of vision changes as we switch to different brands, likewise, one’s approach to the world changes as one juggles through diverse languages☺

 

 

A Conversation

 

I: Who am I? 

We: You are me.

I: Who are you? 

We: 

I am the early morning breath that fills up your lungs, reboots your brain, and banishes your languor.

I am the first shower of rain that the parched world drinks up pining over the scent of drenched soil, coveting my return.

I am the soil that holds the ground under your feet when the ashen gloom downs on your shoulders ripping the very balance out of you.

I am the burning flame that dances in your fireplace making the heat rush up to your cheeks, casting the room in my fiery glow.

I am that what makes the stars blaze in all their glory, blinding bright, ever radiant, so lucidly dark yet so candescent.

"I"was set ablaze in the brilliance of this realisation. By Loosing itself in "We","I" found itself. Now that "I" has been incinerated, only "We" remain..

PS: The sequel "Confidence & Conceit" coming soon...