Apologies for an unintentional fraud

 

Apologies for an unintentional fraud,
for I am not a competent painter.
After racking my brain for a good three hours,
trying to find  way to serve your earnest request;
to paint rustling leaves on a windy Sunday evening in May
I was dumbfounded-
failing to do so
and wrote a poem instead,
which still echoes
like rustling leaves in my head-
perhaps not in yours.

 
Finally learned it the hard way that
liminal spaces-
between passing winds and rustling leaves,
shooting stars and closure of eyes,
and what is meant and what is said
cannot be bridged
oughtn't be bridged at times,
for there's some beauty
in our hearts' liminal spaces;
between the known and a greater unknown. 

Reshuffling

When all the world falls apart
And reshuffles in a millisecond
What do you do, as you take
The last breath in, the last breath out
In the moment of recreation,
To keep yourself from shaking, breaking and deforming? 

 
I think of floating clouds
Swept sideways by passing winds
Slowly deforming, I hear some say "to better shapes than before".
So we await, eyes glued on floating clouds
With expectations slithering in
To see a shape better than the one before,
All the while whoever the Maker of this home
Of inimitable beings
Looks down praising her/himself
For keeping the distance between sky and earth. 

 

Pots full of Wine

 

What went bad, who went mad,

Life's a poisonous repetitious bore

Haunted by the ghosts of past;

Tearing my flesh apart each night 

Drinking my blood poisoned with memories 

Blowing into my ear

All the lies and truths 

Of a life long lived. 

I cannot wake up from this nightmare 

When the eyes are sewn shut.

My lashes glued with some sticky incantation to the skin.

Open them! You say,

I cannot, how can I 

The devils waiting to pour wine into them.

I see them waiting at the doorstep 

With pots full of wine;

"To celebrate the dead" they say,

I feel my lungs shiver

Inside my flesh I feel 

A fire blazing 

An iceberg freezing.

Take me, no! Leave me

I want to yell at them 

I cannot I fear 

They have pots full of wine 

To celebrate the dead.

When days fly by

When days fly by
Like flashing trees on a rear view mirror;
The crushed flowers thrown onto the stage last time
Lose their texture,
A tribute to the worst performance
In the one favourite play.

When days flood in
Like morning sunbeam
Seeping through closed windows;
It's the demise of a particular ray of sunlight
Which used to hit the neighbour's window
And reflect back on mine,
That reminds of the season's change—
Gentle flashbacks to the boxing days.

 

The back door to reality

 

Even if it's a delusion
What the heck if it helps me breathe,
I will open the back door to reality
Sometime later may be,
When everyone's found their own reality/s
So they won't roll their eyes at me
Calling my delusions;
Signs of lunacy.

Spiral Staircases are the Hardest to Climb

Spiral staircases are the hardest to climb
with so many twists and turns
like the thousand plot twists of the first and last
soap opera I had no intention to watch but stared at,
at my no name uncle's family gatherings
once in a week during the matching pinapo and shoes days;
the mandatory family time
where everyone was so full of urge
to blow their ancestral trumpets
so loud, with many twists and turns.

Now on this mandatory, once in a week climb
up and down on this spiral staircase at workplace; leading to some soundproof auditorium,
I wonder why I'm often breathless, with only a few more steps ahead.
Unnecessary plot twists are the hardest to tolerate
and spiral stairs, the hardest to climb
with no nice view on the top. 

 

 

Tonight i will sleep on the floor

 

"Tonight I will write the saddest lines" Pablo Neruda

Tonight i will sleep on the floor
Close to earth; seven feet below you lie
Because the ready-made solutions
On quora and wiki
And even Neruda's saddest lines
Do not make sense today at all.
Tonight i will sleep on the floor
Because sometimes you've to be brave enough
To sail without a map on hand
To sleep without a pillow underneath your head.