Stranger at Dawn

There is a crack in my voice
Underneath this sanguine filter,
And it usually gets louder at night
When I lie awake in my bed
Inhaling the darkness
And exhaling the light.
There is heaviness in my sighs;
Words which get stuck
In my throat- slashing
My veins if I force them out.
So, I don’t. I let them settle in
Until they burn my insides
And the smoke comes out
From my nostrils;
Rising up to form a cloud
To drench me in rancid rain
And I melt, absorbing
This stinging pain.
Every night I dissolve,
To come out at dawn,
Feeling like someone else
Like I don’t belong at all.

Last Breath

When I say my last goodbye,
where would you go?
Would you take off with your weightless toes
and dive in the clouds?
Or would you climb the stairs
and look for another life?
Would you look back at my cindered bones
and smile?
Or would you lose me to oblivion?

Because trust me, at that time
I’d want to hold you one more time.
But I’d be dust by then.
So, I ask you today
as I write this ode to you,
“Do I mean anything at all,
or am I just another vessel to you?”

Because when I say my final goodbye,
I’d want you to look at my motionless eyes,
and say, “I love you too”.
And I swear,
you’d find my heart come back to life
one last time for you.

Weight

Today I feel heavier
than yesterday. Yesterday was heavier
than day before that.
So I am guessing,
tomorrow I will feel more weight.
And day after tomorrow, more than that.
And I think it will be the way it is
until I am crushed under this weight.
Maybe then it will all go away.
Just like that.

Facade

Words have torn me tonight
Slashing, ripping asunder
Into a facade
The stream has blown away
The pieces all gone
Left is just an image
No shadow, no reflection
Dying in existence

Writer’s block

I stare at this white sheet-
An empty page,
Endless possibilities;
Infinite stories to write,
And yet all I see
Is the void,
The inability to write,
Of never being able to.

A shadow on the ground

Upon this barren land I lay
With my eyes wide open
And my lips sewn shut;
Immobile, under this leaden sky
Like still water
Reflecting this floating madness.
Tomorrow
If I still don’t move,
Don’t trample on me
As though I am gone.
I am saving my breath
For a new day to come
For a new day to emerge
From the depth
Of these rotten ones.

The sound of nothing

What sounds like nothing?
What does nothing sound like?
By the dawn of the light
When the windows are shut,
I hear my room
And it utters a static sound;
Even though there isn’t anything around
I close my eyes
Stop breathing for a moment
And hear
Static.
My room sounds like nothing,
Nothing sounds like static.
Maybe the molecules collide
And produce charge,
Maybe the light particles rub against each other
Maybe it’s the sound of the universe
Or maybe I think too much.

Mortal Men of the Undying Society

We are but a palette of intricate faces

Sniveling on a belligerent canvas;

Eyes- drooped,

Acquiesced; like corpses,

dragging our cadaverous bones,

tethered to the loop of infinite time.

Eroded toward the edges facing light,

filling the air with a stench

coming from our crumpled uniforms-

unsymmetrical stripes, and disheveled locks,

dancing under the blood moon.

The operation theater’s light is on,

Someone lost another muffled battle;

No one cries, and another life fills up

these dormant shoes,

pushed into the file;

Walk! Walk! Walk! Walk!

Until the end of time.

The Same Song

What do I put on paper today,
When I know the ink has run out
And there is no white left between the blues?
All the papers I have filled,
They all look the same
Carrying the same weight.
Each of them
Is singing the same song
With a change in tempo, perhaps
But they all have the same lyrics.
What do I write today
When the song I put on repeat
Has started to wither in my mind
And I have no other on my list?
How can I write today
When I have nothing to say?

Stripped to the void

It’s easy to shed your clothes
And stand naked
Exposing your bruises and burns
But it takes a lot of strength
To peel off your skin and
make your shattered bones,
fragile heart and the void
In your soul
Visible to naked eyes.