Scalpel

Chaos, stillness, timeless.
Myth, gravity, fragility.
Incisive, piercing, lingering. 

Eyes
that cut through
the suspense of the moment,
bear
the weight of the words,
unravel
the magic of life itself.

Hamstrung

I saw
cannons firing in the sky.
I watched the spectacle with my father.
There was one that landed too close.
We tried to run for our dear lives,
but we froze in time.
The whirlpool above us
sucked us inside.
A string snapped,
the dream vanished.   
 
Our reality
is a reductionist tale
of the insecurities of the gods.
Millions of them
walk in and out of our dreams
trampling the canvas,
setting off a mindless stampede.
We survive
because of our myopia.
We open our eyes
and we forget everything.
Anyone with the mental capacity
to think beyond
or to remember more than they should
either goes insane,
kills himself,
or becomes a philosopher. 

The perfume she wears on Sundays

Time--
gnawing bits of her scarce joys,
chipping away at her appetite for light and hope,
scraping her element,
peeling her essence, layer by layer,
eroding her zest for life.
 
On really bad days, time
plunders, butchers,
forces itself on her,
gets away clean,
until what is left of her
is a mere shadow.
 
Sometimes,
I stand at a street corner
to take in a whiff
of that special perfume she wears on Sundays,
or to catch a glimpse of her wearied smile
that still warms my heart.
 
Sometimes,
I wait there,
with roses in my hand,
roses of the deepest red, I told the florist.
 
My knees tremble,
my throat runs dry,
as I struggle to summon the courage
to reclaim the grown-up girl
I still call my first love.

Skin Deep

Silhouettes, shadows,
extreme close-ups, tears,
reflections, reflections on tears,
starlit skies, cool breeze
under the starlit skies,
the flight of migratory birds
under the starlit skies,
laughter, unfiltered laughter,
unfiltered light,
skin.
Unfiltered light on skin.
Sweat on skin.
Chocolate on skin.
Specks, flecks, freckles on skin.
Gloss on skin. Lipstick. Love bites.  
The curves, the folds, the pores.
The stretch marks.
The goosebumps
around the areola.
Ice on skin.
Lube on skin.
Menthol.
Thrills under the skin,
thrills on the skin,
titillating,
cold thrills, cheap thrills, chills.
The moans, the smacks,
the hush, the whispers.
Youth. Transgressions.
A life lived.
Blink of an eye.

Fallen Wings

She stares at the blue flame
while cutting lettuce and carrots,
fine chopping the greens and oranges,
mindless of the whirring, humming, buzzing,
and other numbing noises
which fill the frozen space-time
in her little kitchen.  
 
He hasn’t lied,
at least to her knowledge,
but his presence around her
is piercingly suffocating.
He hasn’t been unfaithful,
but for some minor breaches
that involved some one-night stands,
no strings attached,
no emotions involved,
no serious commitments.
He’s not capable of one.
 
Her own heartbeat
in the silence of the night
is louder than his snoring,
her muffled screams
in the shower
are louder than the roar of a passing airplane above,
her welled-up tears
in the middle of a busy marketplace
are louder than the boisterous bargains.
 
She always felt
the man of the house
has a weird sense of humor.
‘Whatever she is,
she became
because I allowed it,’
he remarked to his best friend
at the dinner table,
and guffawed.
 
She always felt
the man of the house
has a misplaced sense of romance.
Every time they become intimate,
things seem more distant.
He starts a timer
and writes an entry in a logbook.
He jibes:
his act of fucking
is the art of fucking.

She always felt
the man of the house
has no sense of acknowledgement.
He takes her for granted:
her space,
her time,
her consent.
He loves to see her naked,
her fears exposed
and dignity bared.
 
Sometimes she stares out of a train window
or into an impenetrable void for too long
and escapes into her internal landscape,
a personal portal,
filled with swatches of neon colors
and a montage of shots from the past,
Neither sad nor ecstatic.
It’s a smooth escape
from the drudgery
and the dreadful monotony.  
Inside the sanctuary
she frantically searches everywhere
for her fallen wings.

Nothing truly belongs

Our lives
have been lived before,
our dreams
have been dreamt before,
our drama
has been played a thousand times
in packed theatres,
our stories are not unique,
our pain, our tears, our suffering
have been stomached and forgotten,
our shames have been exposed,
our vulgarities despised,
our love, our passions, our joys
shall soon be reduced to distant memories.
Like the previous generations,
we too shall pass on the baton.
 
The brightest candles
will be blown by the wind,
the loudest philosophies 
will not make sense anymore,
neither the quietest moments,
like a ripple on a lake,
like a quiet shadow,
like a season’s passing.
The cave paintings will fade,
the greatest palaces and temples 
will turn to dust and rubble,
cities will disappear,
hordes of prophets 
and pantheons of gods- 
even the mightiest, 
will be falsified, 
civilizations will be buried,
mountains will fold,
and land will become sea. 

In an abandoned playground,
a broken swing sways gently
to the whims of the twilight breeze.
In the grand scheme of things,
in the nonchalant silence of the cosmos,
the universe minds its own business.