Category: Poems

The rep before the failure,
The mile before the fall,
The breath before the peak –
They matter most of all.

These lines I write between my pukes,
My hormones out of flow,
Hallucinations running wild –
I hope they help me grow.

They say he spent a night in jail
To write a thief into his play.
They say she learned to sew up wounds
To write a nurse in Mandalay.

But what do “method” writers learn
Of day-to-day-to-day-to-day –
The tedium of everyday –
Their subjects play, replay, replay?

No novelty in novelty.
No certainty of certainty.
Except the boring cruelty
Of same cliché, cliché, cliché.

In fleshing out these characters
We sacrifice the people who,
On seeing highs and lows, respond
Okay, okay, okay, okay.

The cylinders of oxygen,
Compressors, nebulizers, vents
The shop displays in lighted glass
Aroused my ghosts of recent past
That made my eyes go fully white
Until I sat down, clutching tight
The heart that seemed to beat for two.
“You did whatever you could do.”
And yet, it feels I let him down.
He’s everywhere around this town.
The streets evoke the walks, the talks,
The powdered stains of coloured chalks
That always marked his pocket seam,
The pride in striding on – full steam –
The swinging arms, the upright back,
The people stopping in their track
To bow to him in true respect,
The pocket smile he always kept,
The one he had that final day,
The one the pyre burned away.
“You did whatever you could do.”
I got up, thanked the people who
Inspected me with lazy eyes
And continued to munch on fries.
“You did whatever you could do.”
If only that sentence were true.

So, what does one at thirty know
That one at twenty merely guessed?
That Time is but entropy loosed
From bowstrings of our trembling self.
If all one is is porcelain –
Another person’s precious prize –
Of course, the piercing thunk of Time
Will make one feel irreparable.
Instead when one is Infinite,
When Worth is not Attention’s alms,
Then Time is just a name for Now,
And everything one does is Wow!

I flinch at mention of “deserve”.
And more when prefixed with “did not”.
But most when suffixed with “because”.

“Deserve” is for the ones afraid
To stay detached from fruits of work.
“Deserve” is for the ones afraid
To love their fate, no matter what.

The drowning clutches at a straw
And finds the hope and strength to swim.
The straw becomes a parable
For tiny votes of helpfulness,
But all forget the drowning found
The hope and strength within herself.
The straw was simply just a straw,
Though herald of a change of state:
The drowning swam alive to shore;
The camel broke and cried, “No more!”

Unreason, you are teasing me:
Forbidden fruit or daily meat?
It was an easy, obvious choice
Until I heard your reptile voice:
“Why don’t you sample both in bits?”
That plagued me with why-not-itis.
No way I can untaste the fruit.
No way to simply play the mute.
My Life is short; its Task, undone.
While I am busy having fun,
I’m setting myself up to cry
And ask you for a quick retry,
As if it’s all a video game,
Which I can play without a shame.
But maybe there’s a chance it is?
Perhaps, I’m overthinking this?

Do werewolves have the right to love?
Forget the novels, movies, shows,
And look for once at how things are.
We know in most relationships
You see a beauty turning beast
And then returning back to beaut.
We know you want to kill sometimes,
To simply rip them all apart,
And then to put them loving back.
We know somedays you hardly talk
And weeks go by in silent wars.

But all of that is human still.
There is no real-real beast,
Who loses touch with how it feels,
Attacks against imagined threats,
Attacks because it’s made to kill.
And when it bites, it shreds to bits.
Can one survive with beasts like this?

And yet no wolf survives alone.
The wolf requires a family.
The wolf has just as right to live.
And so perhaps the right to love?
Though how it loves may not be love
That you or I would want for us.
It comes to us, therefore to see
Its love in all its growling stares.
It comes to us, therefore to feel
How much for us it truly cares.

It’s good you got away in time,
Before I started getting worse.
Before you suffered who I am.
Before I started growing terse.

The demons come by daily now,
Their voices screaming out of sleep.
But, thank the Gods, they slip away
A little after breakfast pills.

They must be settling round my abs
For every week I grow an inch.
They must be settling round my thighs
Despite the 5k runs and gym.

The demons must have dwarven blood,
For every day they mine my mind.
I squeeze my temples, forehead, scalp
And hear their shovels clang behind.

It’s good I can be who I am
And still be somewhat useful too.
It’s good we got the time we got,
And good I picked a thing or two.

It’s good so many people came
To eat my head for little things.
Were I to stay in bed today,
As I had wanted yesterday,
I would have lost it. All of it.
It’s not so easy: taking joy
And breaking it to thousand bits.
It’s not so easy to employ
My wording skills to call it quits.
I have to be a stronger man
To stand my ground with confidence.
I have to wait a longer span
To live my dream with competence.