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VERSE | IF I COULD

If I could live another life with you 
I’d talk of a few more things
More palpably, more honestly with you
Of things that gnawed
At my mind; at the way my gut wrenched
Balling up inside, or even when
The pit of my belly dissolved
In a fluttering crush of butterflies
I’d speak of love light-footed and pure
The kind that knocks you to the floor
And the next instant pins shimmering wings
On your tingling spine so you can fly
High high, breath-catchingly high!

I’d talk of heartbreaks too
That shred the organs into little bits
Where the pain ripples in screaming peals
Your thoughts marking time with the cacophony
Where you stumble on your own feet
Where you want to just lie down and feel
Nothing for a while
I’d share secrets that I have held deep inside
Now frozen, frigid, petrified
Mute scars of speechless agonies
Never named, never identified

I’d also tell you that I loved
My quiet, my solitude
When it was just me in my room
Or just you and me
Sipping tea
In the lounge, watching tv
And then I’d tell you about the things
That would make my tone-deaf heart sing
A constant humming underneath
Beneath the sheath of my skin
Of peace that was soothing, softening
Of flame-bright hope and quiet joy

I’d talk to you
Of beginnings and of endings too
Some tragic some tender
Of sometimes going under
But always re-surfacing, I would
Talk of spirituality, the ethereal kind
That makes the hair stand on end
The kind that quickens your breath
That makes life and even death
A fleeting, splendorous enterprise
A mystical trip with no finish line

And when your time here or mine
Was drawing to a close
Together we would
Strum those notes
One last time
Of all the things that we’d talked about
And all the times that we had spent
And then I’d have held your hand in mine
We would have laughed and cried
And laughed again
Because nothing would have been left
Unsaid at the end.
Image: Cathy Jacobs
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VERSE | BULRUSHES

The bulrushes are whispering 
Of secret things to come
I hear their murmurs when I pause
In life’s frenzied thrum

Their words are indecipherable
Like runes on ancient walls
I know that I will understand
After their prophecy befalls

Still, I try this once to see
Through the hazy veil of time
To prepare myself in ways that are
Ephemeral, sublime

Everything happens when it must
Not sooner nor delayed
The murmurs become clearer as
We journey on, the sages say

But I try to circumvent
What nature has prescribed:
A time and place for everything
A cosmic order to all life

My mind rebels as I reach out
To visions beyond the glass
Willing a rip in space and time
To see things not yet come to pass

But the bulrushes keep whispering
Their murmurs wafting on the breeze
I know that when I’m ready
Then their secrets they’ll release.
Image: Bulrushes – Dorothy Berry-Lound

VERSE | THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED

When life gets hard as it sometimes does 
When the weight of the world is pulling you down
When you want to hide in the depths of your bed
When you don’t want your feet to touch solid ground

When you want to close your eyes and just disappear
And hope that in some dimensional shift
You can escape the world that surrounds you here
That you can find the cosmic ether that fits

When you have to part your hesitant lids
And the effort is excruciating, difficult
When despite your aching, your most ardent yen
There’s no secret exit, no miracle

When you bring your hand up to your sleep-shrouded face
When you glance accusingly at the lines
When you wonder if ever they would become
Prophets, purveyors of better times

When you finally rise and breathe deeply in
When you feel the pulse of your blood again
When the vestigial coolness of your room
Brushes up familiarly against your warming skin

Then know that although the odds are stacked
Up sky high, crushing, overwhelming
That the universe still holds you close to her breast
That there are still songs that she will sing

So when life gets hard as it sometimes does
When your heavy heart has robbed you of your smile
Slow down, pull back from the rush of life
Dearest one, take the road less travelled for a while.
Image: Forest Path by Jillian Crider
Image: Forest Path by Jillian Crider

VERSE | THE FACE IN THE SHADOWS

There’s a face in the shadows
Downcast, serene
A quiet glow drapes
The rest of her
As she sits cross-legged
On the floor
She holds the cosmos in her prayerful hands
I want to see the face
so full of quiet grace
I want to understand
Where the woman gets
Her stillness from
I tilt my head to see
More clearly
And then two shimmering orbs
Rise from under their lidded veils
I hold my breath I’m no longer
Watching from the outside in
I float I glide out of the place
I’m light as a feather
I rise up there’s no tether
To time and space
To anything I have ever known
I float on
And I drop
The sharp edged angst that I had held
In my chest and in my head
And it falls
Away from me
I stretch out my arms
As I rise and rise
Into the infinity
Of those glimmering eyes
Through twin portals
To my paradise.

VERSE | SPACES

I sit with my tea
The silence sits with me
Deafeningly
Piercing my eardrums
With its wordless cacophony

It has made its forever home
In the lounge where I now sit alone
It’s been there a while
Years of rooting itself in place
The air, the space
Is soundless, still
Like the world in night’s numbing vigil
I look around for something
Anything to cut through the dead air
Its atoms conspiring
With the silence that sits everywhere

And then I see it, a little plume
Floating, dancing in the room
From my mug
As the tea steams up
Severing the bond of silence and air
The desolate, deflated, joyless pair
Their essence once filled
With people now gone
The moist vapor wafts in
Reaching into spaces
Where images, reminiscences
Lie inert, forsaken
Loosening, thawing, warming them

I take a sip of my tea
I feel my spine tingle
Familiarly
As I’m wrapped in the arms
Of rekindled memories.

VERSE | MOMENTS

The thing with moments
Is that they never stay
Ethereal, chimerical
They alight and fly away
They come upon us
On gossamer whispery wings
Or rush with such force
That you’re left reeling
The breath knocked out of you
And then they’re gone
Or they cloak you silently
So imperceptibly
Like the lengthening shadows
Of eventide
That you realize
That they were there
Only after they have quietly
Etherised into yesterday’s dawn

The thing with moments
Is that they never last
Always on nimble feet
They are fleeting pin pricks
On your skin
A quick rush of warmth within
The lungs for a moment collapsing
A vanishing scene
The stuff of dreams
Always receding
But not before leaving
Their forever tattoos
In reds, yellows and blues
A kiss, a hug, a bruise
Eternal imprints on the heart
Emotional ink
Permanent, piercing
Sunk deeply in
By the wraiths and ghosts
Of moments past.

VERSE | SADLESS

My thoughts sometimes
Become like rebellious kids
They dart about my head
Swarm into my hippocampus
Making me sweat
I race after them
Calling to them
But they don’t heed me
They’re chimerical beings
Elves and pixies and aliens
Coins and marbles and peeling paint
A stubbed toe, a tired saint
A fierce cupid on a fountain
Rose bushes that run riot
And then I just lose sight
Of them at all
I hear the silence
Numbing, thrumming, sometimes strumming
Through my brain

Then I see them again
They’re out on the streets
They’ve run free, leaving me behind
They’ve escaped the prison of my mind
I watch them from afar
Tumbling around
Laughing, skipping, rumbling around
Moaning, groaning, fumbling around
Far away from me
I’m featherlight now
I float above them
Like I’m dead
The leaden weight of life
Has dropped
I watch it tumble with my thoughts
Rumble, tumble, sometimes stumble
In its frantic vitality

I’m timeless, sadless, gladless now
E m p t y
I float away
In a silent conspiracy
Of air and nothingness.

VERSE | FOR NOW

Dappled sunlight 
Upon my skin
Warm, streaming motes
Kiss my neck
My arms, my face
Whispering sweet nothings
Caressing, comforting
My shoulders drop
The weight of the world
That sits on them
Like twin rocks
I’m no longer Atlas
Holding up the sky
Shivering
In its storminess
Legs quivering
Under its burden of sighs
And tears and loss
For now
It has all melted away
The coldness, the heaviness, the grey
For now
There is only a quiet joy
A rainbow sprinkling
Of dappled sunlight
Upon my skin
Thawing me, warming me
From within.

VERSE | GRACE

Are you ready? said he softly 
I was sitting and watching tv
For what? I asked full well knowing
The implications of that simple question

For your journey onwards from here
He said quietly in my ear
I stared ahead, I couldn’t look
Into eyes that held the whole cosmos

I still have things to do I said
Even as my heart filled with dread
I still have dreams and wishes said I
Even as I felt my mouth go dry

He waited watching me silently
His shadow was now a part of me
I took a breath and looked at him
His eyes looked back serene, glowing

I cried, I am afraid to leave
Even if I have always believed
That one day I must walk away
Wrapped in death’s final embrace

But that faith has always surrounded me
On the outside, while inside of me
Has grown a choking, gnawing terror
Of the day that you would appear

He took my hand and held it fast
My hand in his we touched my heart
The blue-gray fear that sat in there
Evaporated into the air

I felt my soul for the first time
Floating, thrumming, humming inside
I smiled even as the tears flowed
Silver, sparkling, love-hallowed

I laughed, I cried, I laughed again
Life was beautiful even at the end
I loosened the strings bound to the past
And closed my eyes as I breathed my last.
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UPDATE- New Book Release | SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS

My book SHIMMERING SCRAPS OF POETRY AND MADNESS is now available at the following locations:

SRI LANKA:
- THE BAREFOOT BOOKSTORE
- THE JAM FRUIT TREE BOOKSTORE
- PENDI
- SARSASAVI BOOKSTORES
- EXPOGRAPHICS

PAKISTAN:
- LIBERTY BOOKS
- PARAMOUNT BOOKS
- READINGS

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The book is a collection of poems and essays, and as the name suggests, the contents of the 243 pages range from the sublime to the ridiculous; from soaring on the wings of ecstacy to struggling with overwhelming despair; from the capricious joys of matrimony to the dubious delights of singledom; from the profound ecstasy in a mug of steaming latte to the ardent disappointment in a less than perfectly brewed cup of tea; from the comedic to the somber and from the customary to the controversial, this collection of poems and features encompasses them all, and like a sore-throated bulbul (who also has some clear-voice days) I have sung them all for you.

VERSE| A SELFCARE NOTE

You know that tiny little thought 
That forms inside your head
The one that nags and corners you
When you least expect?

That atomic little notion which
Makes you doubt yourself
A hazy inkling barely there
Now sits big upon the shelf

You try to look the other way
From that space inside your mind
But your racing, tearing brain has left
Your willpower behind

And so you stare at the thought
Treacherous, stinging and sly
Of how you could have done better
Of how lacking was your try

The tiny speck of self doubt
Grows gargantuan in size
As it festers in your head
The truth hidden behind the lies

Put up your guard, don’t be afraid
To not see it at all
Know its savage purpose
Don’t let it spread its pall

So when that nagging little thought
Creeps in out of the blue
Face it only when you can
With kindness, grace and truth.

VERSE | MIST

The winter mist is rolling in 
Casting umbras and penumbras
On liquid walls conjuring
Illusions of nostalgic things
Like tapestries of sunny hills
And shadowlands where
valleys stretch
Into soft concaves
Of velvety darkness shimmering
At their edges, glimmering
In the halos of lit up orbs
Glittering, pulsating
Watching and observing all
Like eager sentries making sure
The invading mist
Covets no more
Than the silver kiss
That it bestows
On each doorway
As it tiptoes
In and then away
Into the darkness further along
All the while
As it glides
Whispering its vapory song.