crustily etched into each rusting brick

and caked unwittingly in cement sent to exile;

i have looked down every alley and walked through every shadow.

I see my vignettes in the dumbfounding puddles

and the curves that stare back are rigid as bark;

fate in the lifelessness

and wet footsteps blithely tread themselves into hell.

 
My alley is a garden of a thousand treasures and i am the lucky one entrusted and encaged,

for each unreachable fortune promises tempestuous torturous trials.

There are devotees in my alley, and they seek solace in the trash cans:

there is nothing for them in the mainland;

they have ventured out before, only to find

the black gnarly fog blinds them and denatures their senses;

and they come back tattered in tears of laughter, but intact as if fed mercy from the storm;

leaving behind the neon pink and yellow the potholes of water disdainfully reflect.

That is the land of the outsiders,

withering down our devotees,

vandalising the soulful sincerities of our alley.

The alley welcomes them but they do not welcome it;

their vision supersedes our simple,

and our veiny arms do not uphold their imitative vanity.

 
There are animals in this alley, but for them, life is a fever dream:

the fog is a breathtaking sky of crown colour and the earth a fashionable mattress;

whether of feeble soil, entrenching dust, or heartful granite,

in their winceless roams they evade posing for fate;

it bodes well for them to let joy trickle into their eternal vicissitudes.

Sometimes i envy them.

 
The outsiders are relentless without intention,

and intention is a maid-cum-mistress that has seduced their intellect;

like a snowflake that would shatter into shreds is their heart’s volatile temperament

and they sycophantically cajole it

negotiably pull at its strings

in cycles of cruel unsatisfying harmony

clinging and diverging by the clock

one such outsider was a frolicker here in impatient flight;

the twitch in his eyebrows ticked with the ecstasy of passion;

he had a scenic vision for which he commended himself.

And strutting in a shiny stutter, of confident shame,

as if on a journey to a wistful pace;

his eyes sparkled an intriguing glee, astounding in his dire circumstance

as if the answer was got to a question racked through every brittle bone in his hunched snail figure,

his eyes bore almost a soulful reticent naivety - i could have mistaken him a devotee

but their intuitive arrogance dubbed him a wretch;

and the kinks of light exposed the premature greys in his hair, uncared for

undoubted and entangled in his mission;

his sagging shirt blotched with long-lived mustard stains, and his sleeves abnormally loosened at his hands,

wiping decades of sorrowful tears and cold sweat;

a distinct moan creaked from his splitting boots, buckling under his trudge,

but he radiated an isolated stealth, even though he knew of his surroundings; it was admirable.

 
The clink and the rattle welcomed him to the silent store at the corner of the alley

and the door tailed him round impeccably slow, before slamming shut with unpredictable ease.

Our fellow stranger walked out a few seconds later, erupting faster into his stride,

i sensed hostility, and his arms were full;

i heard a shout, muffled by the door swinging fiercely before sinking shut in surrender;

his vehicle was no prize, and its fading blues were shrouded in pale mundanity,

and its multitude of dents were carved in such clarity, i didn’t know what to make of it;

a sputter and a roar, and my entertainment disappeared for the night.

I did not see him soon, but i was biased to miss him

 
Until a month later when i heard a slick approach

down the lanes and up the boulevards, before a cautious turn into our forlorn vicinity;

a steaming black sedan that didn’t huff nor puff

exuding glamour, seemed to breathe the air.

Out of an unnoticeable click stepped out a gentleman unrecognisable,

the creases on his dress shirt stood as intertwined individuals and he embodied the crux of his own persona;

he looked up but his eyes peered down and along with them my vision too shifted;

entranced in his material madness.

He took a step, and a familiar creak, a familiar groan, a whistle of return,

under the glossy velvet enwrapping him to his heels were the same split-haired laces,

a jutting round front in a rainbow of dark shades, dotted with muddy grease

‘how telling’ i thought;

and he paraded to the same shop he betrayed in his opportunist prime.

 
The clink, rattle and gentle slam followed his exit and he marched into the tinted concealment of his sedan having conquered the wind:

an aura of authority.

The entire affair was over in what felt a matter of seconds, rather than the prolonged minutes

i recalled of his first visit;

and in the meditative trance came rushing a foreboding roar of smoking indignance,

a harrowing howl of a pale blue motor,

one i had heard some time ago, and it zoomed from a distance, and i felt its swerving vibrations

and with a thundering bellow i felt its imminent presence, and then a violent screech

and a crash, the sedan jerked forward in compliance;

in front of my very unnerved self, there was the stranger that had crawled so close to my conscience having spoken no words

no longer still and towering in his dominion; motionless

except the single streams of dark velvet blood that soaked the fibres of his shirt;

red stains.

To ruminate on the entire ordeal or to sigh a pathetic chuckle;

he was just another stranger in a revolving world of mirrors

with apparently all to lose and nothing to gain.

 
The devotees live not long enough to see

what for them is an amusing blunder of chance,

and what for my tired self was once a piteous wail

but now reeks a cold cackle which even my dementing conscience concedes;

had they survived my destitute ranking of years on end,

they too would laugh at the lethal folly of their fellows.

Oh how lucky must i be shielded from an asymptomatic snake voraciously gutting my energies?
 

Forgiveness be the hand that grips my sweaty palms; kindly fade reality into my reach

Forgiveness be my eyes; mark your shrewd observations into a worthy conscience

Forgiveness be my whole; every doubt staggers humbly at your timelessness

Forgiveness be my checkpoint; renew my cycle of restlessness if it will not subdue

Forgiveness be my maintenance; iron the wrinkles of wrath and wrong that I knowingly flogged upon myself

Forgiveness by my saviour pluck me from my drowning dreams that bury me alone under layers of morbid earth

Forgiveness be my dawn; paint sequins of tomorrow’s glory into the tempestuous walls of my thickening dusk

Forgiveness be the heart of boundless wisdom; seep the drops of your ancient reawakening from your soul into mine distressed

Forgiveness be my gestureles companion; swallow me when the candidly raw sights freshly appear and we venture into the finality of the storm.

Forgiveness be my end; your respite sets me free
 

Sullen shades tinting the expectant tips of my pupils

And I feel only what I see

The gloom of certainty in the trees that I grew surrounded by

It heaves on my eyes a layer of eternity I thought I wanted

And I cannot shake it for what I feel is what is crudely studded into the very off-beat throb of my heart.

 
There are sirens in the homeliness

Alerts only a shade greyer than the clouds above me

And at a hand’s effortless reach, I could touch them, and swirl the shades into ephemeral concoctions to distract my tedious thoughts

And for passing moments, I would be a god of resurrection

Shifting the blues that guard the beauty like immovable puzzle pieces.

 
There is a bitter aftertaste in the soothing tea I swallowed

Hoarse enough that I bear the feeling, yet my head resists shaking in unease.

I was a galloping falcon feeling the biting breeze at the pores of the very shiny skin that tarnishes.

 
To be a homecoming sailor is an ordeal of celebratory sickness

Synthetically staining blues which unbeknownst to me in time, vapourise.

 
When the oxidation becomes my reliant momentary breath, and the bitter turns to my sweet palates for solace,

And the kaleidoscope of blues, my cages of earthly grounding, are soiled with a single shade of brown,

Then my focus is loosened of the cunning grip of the blues in the beauty.
 

A synergy so nigh it is restless beneath my veins

Throbbing at my jugular, yet it moves further away

Indescribable blues

A thin sullying smile contemplating alone

And it wears off like the palpable stains of childhood.

 
I want to make it real,

A fleeting second to rejuvenate a year

But a year shall not bring back that second

Only unleash new possibilities

Unfound hues

Colours beyond my kaleidoscope’s breadths

For them, I write, in dry ink, a puzzle of letters.

 
Muscles confined and eyebrows tense

My eyes tranced in unintelligible stare

As if my past severed with my drowning present

My blues incipient yet waning too;

 
As if a million miles away

I gloomily float

frantic wails inside

In pindrop silence

a melancholy moan

In pindrop silence

my intestines shaking

In pindrop silence

In a haunting dark

I hopelessly hang.

 
Fatigue paralyses my surviving delusion

I can expose the far but reach neither hand

See the earth around but look only into a mirror

The control is lost and the simulation ended

Cycles of happiness, my blues remain

When the new cycle begins, my addiction will retain

I sleep, only to quell

The blues forgone

And I wake only to live

The blues I foresee.

 
My blues are scars, shedding hoarse tears

Reminiscing their worth, humble and hollow

Deliberately forgotten but integral limbs in me

For without each shade, my blues are incomplete.
 

Sealed beneath a brown-pink tint as dark as dusk, a fleshy camouflage.

Devoid of language, there exists no frame to encapsulate the paragraphs I could speak

To splurge out of me the painstaking burn that crisped my heart to a hearth.

Sometimes bobbing like rose petals on a sea of blood, what a magnificent identity

And sometimes hellish angels streaming through my slippery skin, yet finding the friction to prick me at my every recall.

Scratch upon scratch, skin red then pale, itches that don’t forgive nor forget

And nor do I forget, the few moments that distractions send me shards of bliss

But even those seconds are slivers of time, and I slip back into unarmoured battle.

It seems I was too restless, that once someone asked of my erratic ailment

But I could not shed light upon a shadow, that itself survived in the dark depths of my conscious

A wound that silently scattered flashes of emotion, monstrous vibrations thrusting in my limbs

Yet outside, an artificial organisation to my movements, mundane but mechanical.

No respite, no solution, no cure, my gashes feed on their unholy imperceptibility,

They ooze not blood, but tears I could not manufacture at memories I have flushed,

Whispers I was not meant to hear, familiar scents I wish had disappeared,

Voices I interrogated violently thrashing my eardrums, textures I gripped in desperate, moist palms,

Hugs of laughter, kisses of reunion, hands of holding, hands of scolding, fingers intertwined, fingers of blame.

Now I wince and make room, for new cracks to blister, and old open valleys to scab, for my fractures to leisurely derail me hollow

My bones are not brittle but abrade to be polished, far from broken, only mildly tested of their human strength

I am my fractures, my fractures are us, and without fractures, how imperfect are we.

let the sky shatter spirits, slit souls, lay serpents within us

let nature scratch, scathe, slaughter, stare stingy at our expense

but let not me be the reason you cry

 
let even mercy not spare its tongue, stab us raw to our papery core

let our mechanical breaths turn blue, worthy of no more

let stars steal our tears, and shine paths to our enshrouded graves

but let not me be the reason you cry

 
let our passions burn our liquids to gasping vapours upon a pyre

let brazen voices abrade our shame till dust pellets we hover

let our shadows outlive us, leave our footprints concealed

but let not me be the reason you cry

 
let our dreams stampede our volition, thunder abuse our ambition

let fate truncate our very survival, love’s roses prick at our fickle divinity

let our wounds throb and wallow, our worn hearts wish they were hollow

but let not me be the reason you cry

 
let us be found adrift, the leaves upon us grey

original naked, our touch absorbing every light of the day

let our hearts wish they were hollow, our skins wish transparency

but let not me be the reason you cry

 
let our brittle bones break at the wrath of the whirlpool

let the crude voices within bring us to our knees

let the sea torment us until we die inconsequential

but let not me be the reason you cried.

to myself;

replaces it, with an apathy to all.

is it watering me

or drowning out my own

tears

they are one-off tears, i assure myself.

my validation is untrustworthy.

 
never had my heart broken

and it is still intact

never had the floor under me crack

and it remains still unsplintered.

never had life jolted intermittently in and out of me

so why do i breathe heavy

as i hunt out my self-withering passions

 
i always embodied an occasional gratitude

a disguise i never truly internalised

that brought worldly utility,

a self-appeasing scar

i let the virtue of gratitude down.

now my nostrils breathe

contaminated complacency.

 
the hail does not nurture

nor does it care

but it alienates me

from myself;

to my whistle,

it is a flare

without it i will not sleep tonight.

 
i am the bane of my own prejudices.

the source of a faithful nihilism.

how dare you think me devoted?

i am a Janus-faced believer.

 
the hail has stopped.

 
let flesh and bones fall where they may.

look at me, where i lay

they keep naming me human

but i declare

i lay a foetus that decays.

 
like a frozen soul

around which a cold lantern

in front of which a mirror

silently spitting away rays of warmth

perpetuating its self-disdain…

 
residue melts on the window;

scars spill water;

it is too dark to refract a rainbow.

 
and any light that does shine

it is but deception at twilight

a so-called tranquillity hides

its darkness in another’s light.

pity the one that borrows a shadow.

i wish rather for apathy than to be a dusky afterglow

a shield i hold up of misappropriated light.

 
so look closely and you’ll see

a mirror without it’s skin

a lantern without its ribs

and a soul without a soul

 
hail, i plead for hope.

you answer me not.

so now i linger.

in the dark.

alone.

To those who persist,

That they exist.

The night, commander, howls;

Shadows loom larger;

They are submissive.

The mist of the moon, a fickle glimmer:

Magpies its very light;

A philosopher calls out for the truth, “Night, enlighten me!”

He is unappeased.

The stars, sprinkled far and wide, crackle, fizz, dissolve;

He is disheartened.

The night is merciful, but stubborn;

A will to gatekeep wisdom;

He is unslaked.

For those who seek it,

Indeed the night petrifies;

For those who inadvertently encounter,

The night is a revelation.

The night is a rose;

Pricks of supernatural;

Preying on colossal fear;

For those who resist plucking at its mysteries,

Uncover its invisible secrets.

The philosopher claims to discern reality,

Penetrating mere illusion.

Yet light eludes.

Must not then day betray?

But if day betrays, then night is right.

A right reality.

For weepers and sorrowers,

The night is serenity.

For the joyous likewise,

The night bequeaths peaceful slumber.

For the contemplators,

The night a wondrous span of thought.

Yet the fearful do suffer,

For them, the night most unenlightening.

Illusory.

The night may never be won.

For the night is eternally knowledgable.

Nay, the fearful eternally oblivious.

That the night is not a contest,

Yet some are still crowned victors:

Victors of the Night.

I remain past the dusk emitting disillusion;

I am the one who understands;

For I do not build with the sand.

My value is undeniably less than a grain;

Yet in the storm I am not the one who feigns

Integrity. I am the solidarity of the land;

For I do not build with the sand.

When the sun does shine, they carve gilded spires;

Gold mammoth palaces, laid upon their pyres.

But I will be safe when tide strikes strand;

For I do not build with the sand.

When the wind comes calling, where is your refuge?

When the hail shrieks curses, you find no blameable deluge;

Your castles are bleak: on illusions you stand;

For that is why I do not build with the sand.

Behind them are grand houses, colours ablaze;

They boast vast vineyards, all are transiently fazed;

But mortar of ego, bricks of brittle pride;

All do crumble when reckoning arrives

Just like the castles, they are a living death;

Singing silent screams, awaiting their last breath.

At the setting of the sun, they are grey all around;

As if they were built from the same sand.

Then comes the awakening, the storm finds its prey;

Castles and palaces lay in disarray.

The kings of the beach flee now forgotten;

Their wrecked creations are all they had begotten

The dawn finds the shore swept smooth and clean;

Freshly bequeathed for new folly to be seen.

My still dark attire, my isolated brand;

I am the one who did not build with the sand.

I continue to shape my lone stone sequel;

The fools of the past, they were never truly evil.

But in their futile formations, they now understand;

For never to build with the sand.

You skip our gentle voices; to you, our story is a ruse.

I speak the Unlanguage, the language of the true;

It is concealed deep inside me, how can you think you speak it too?

My voice only a thread, you effortlessly ignore;

But the rope of language is a merciful saviour to those who implore.

It heeds no one else but the hanging men who hope, in pleading tones they sing;

It dreams of nothing else but enjoining the hands of those whose unheard yearns ring.

The Unlanguage is whole, sweet in its harmony;

Taunts do not taint it, pain does not stain it.

My bloody tears are droplets, droplets in the ocean;

The Unlanguage hides them, gathering in its whirling motion.

Silent in whistling breaths, a roar bashes beneath;

Like waves crashing the surface, a tale throbs underneath.

The Unlanguage violently accumulates, tranquil from afar;

Silently breeding, its eventual release inevitable to leave scars.

It does not argue with the tide, nor battles the raging sun;

The oppressors incessantly strike, one day, the battle will be won.

The Unlanguage is sweet but bitter to the oblivious;

Don’t swagger with imposition, else you’ll make it obvious.

The Unlanguage repels coddle, it turns away to the crude;

Yet its arms embrace the authentic, who walk their intentions nude.

The Unlanguage is free, but unlike the freed, it despairs;

The seekers may seek it, and let it out if they dare.

If they dare, they must hold, the crown of humility,

The sceptre of empowerment, the majesty of humanity.

Our filtered narratives, myopic insurmountability;

Indeed they are encumbrances, we simply usurped superiority.

Let the Unlanguage dismantle them, they hinder our uniqueness;

What we should really call: our incompleteness.

Twisted and tangled, they cackle with derision.

A crumpled throw, crumpled dreams;

I sew and sew, but I shall not sleep.

Does destiny conceal a moment of respite?

Nigh, any repose for me will be transient, a mirage.

Traipsing on the walls my fallacious cloths, my masterpieces;

Vibrant pangs that stain my conscience, nay, my consciousness.

A voice, my voice, bellows;

The penniless child, the sinful servant, the wailing widow;

All of whom you cast into the shadows of the night.

My sky of solidarity, incorrigible holes appear.

My vicinity of peace sectioned by knots of cruelty.

My heartbeat throbs like the saturated colours of my work unsoothing;

I sew and sew, chasing redemption.

My forearms sizzle with pain, spatters of mistakes bombard me;

I see splitting wool, loose threads dangle;

Loose threads of compassion, unity, peace entangled.

You shall reap what you sow, they said.

I did. Seeds of tradition, deeds of pride.

I sew a blanket, to cover my guilt;

Now I sew in vain.

I sew a quilt, to hold me tight;

I sew human threads to shield us from our self-inflicted blight.

Yet even this fleeting fusion of fibres unfit to my purpose;

I sew for salvation, my own, not for all of creation.

I wonder at my artwork, incomplete; wishful;

Can a needle so sharp ever sew gentle?

More loose threads, enjoined no more;

I sew them together, weave over woe.

I scream.

Sew away my invisible sins, forevermore!

Let me sit in peace, sew ethics evermore.

One day I will rise, with a cloth so unblemished;

Too seamless, flawless for a spot on my wall.

Wefts and warps, my remorse unravelled;

Metamorphosed into my forgiving grace.

Not held back by blandness, rather for all to see;

Will I be redeemed, once they see me?

A rocking chair is like a pendulum;

But never will it cease to swing.

I take my last breath, sew my last stitch;

My masterpiece shines, I relive my conquest.

Into the night I shall disappear,

A light left behind, a trail of goodwill.