Turncoat Muse

Dusting off the imaginary cobwebs

 From my word document pages,

I adjust my vision to focus on my keypad quill and LCD parchment.

Words--- are just words they say.

Words we use every day, hour, minute,

Until we know not what we say,

 What we mean, what we have said minutes ago,

Words that come so easily at the most inopportune moments,

 When silence is the ideal, have abandoned me.

Poetry hangs in a mist all around as I reach out to touch it,

Stick out my tongue to taste it,

But all that touches me is air,

All I taste is bitter tastelessness.

My muse has turned thief and stolen

All the words crowded at the tips of my fingers,

Left unwritten.

Love is a cliché, politics overused,

My metaphors dry and my wit, a wet blanket.

So here I sit, one hand idly tapping out nonsense,

The other, a fist on my cheek

In a posture of false thoughtfulness,

And here I wait, like so many before me,

For words to come find me once more.

Sliven Thoughts

She walks on quicksand,

Sliver hued anklets dipping below

Golden-bronzed grains of mortality;

Her raven locks whip in a wind she ignores.

She blows soap bubbles,

Ruby lips in a pout,

Lashes kissing her cheeks;

She notices not how they pop seconds away.

Earphones in ears block out the world;

Sunglasses are a camouflage;

And the twilight hours between waking and sleep,

Between life and death, is peace.

The Workings of a Convoluted Mind

Have you ever felt the pathological need to be left alone

And held at the same time by arms which no longer exist for you?

Have you felt the shackles of your existence pulling, and pulling

As step by step you drag your feet forward because the forbidden fruit

Of the past makes you mad with desire to go back, back, back?

Have you had dreams of fairy tale loves and princes singing songs,

Saying all the right things, riding in to save the day, to catch you,

But known all along that the bone shattering fall will be cushioned

By just you, your own mortal body, your own fragile mind,

Waiting, waiting to crack into little pieces like a time bomb ticking down its final seconds?

You break, you mend, you break again, mend again, with technicolour cello tape;

You hide the spider web of cracks with new colour, superficial, grandiose,

Until all one sees is colour, flashing brightly, glowing, trying too too hard,

And underneath lies a world black and white and grey, where you wait, wait, wait,

For the coloured fetters in which you bound yourself to be torn away,

For someone to brave the journey to the very centre,

To the centre of you.

The Mermaid Fairy

She lived in a sea of green sands slipping through her toes;

She drank the nectar of acrimony and called it sweet.

She flew the seven skies, higher, higher and higher still,

Enchained in the wings she built for herself;

Fine links of gold woven into each feather with such care

Now binds her to her prison of black lonely clouds;

Losing the will to land, the will to fall, to let go.

Today she weeps from an azure abode,

Enchained by freedom, enmeshed in liberty.

She spun faster and faster in circles of rainbow world

Tighter and tighter, the perfect ballerina’s poise

Till the world was a blue-grey blur

And faster still she spun in search of perfection.

Silk-spun silver, her Sliven limbs gracefully flowing

Not noticing her blistering toes, the drops of red

Faster, faster, faster, leaving today behind,

Spinning to tomorrows illusion, spinning free,

Spinning high, spinning, spinning, spinning,

Spinning, never to stop.

Pin-pricks of Consciousness

When a smile reminds you of smiles you no longer receive,

You run, run, runaway until your feet burn and your lungs cramp.

When salt drops cannot be restrained, you hide your head in your arms

And pretend the moisture there is your sweat.

When the world of deception you have built around yourself crumbles,

You are left in the shambles of today, of pain, of reality.

Then you know, then you know, you breathe.

When legs are knee high in mud and mire,

Your eyes no longer find the will to look up.

When the dream of a life of perfection shatters like

A fragile crystal globe, pretty, ostentatious, unnecessary,

Then you know, then you know, you live.

Contrary

Soft petals glow in softer blankets of darkness,

Soft eyes beckon into unfathomable nothing.

Soft, silky strands enmeshed in sin and virtue

Deceptively beckon through a drapery of the exotic.

Unto a labyrinth of thorns, unbreachable,

A reality of brilliant diamond hardness,

A collusion of helpless valour and pride

Wars with disclosure, wars with oneself.

Incongruity, thy name is woman.

My Lingo

What makes a man?

Well, simply, man is someone who...

Someone who speaks a language.

What is my language you ask?

Is it English or Bengali or Hindi?

Or the convoluted, broken mix

Of all three that is always on the tip of my tongue?

I’d tell you:

My language is in the Bronte and Alaister Mc.Lean novels

Kept side by side on my book shelf with a smattering of Harry Potter,

It is in the poetry of Dylan and in “The Sounds of Silence”,

In the smell of old books and new, in old winding north-city streets

Where water stagnates in ugly potholes, and you forget to look up:

Up at the majestic old structures of a world now half-dead.

It is how I look at a drop of rain stuck to the brim of my umbrella,

Or the “ten thousand thousand” nameless stars, a twinkling warmth,

It is in a cup of hot tea warming my hands on a cold winter morn,

In the smell of coffee after an all-nighter, extra strong,

In the extra crispness of fresh printed pages, a work complete,

In the second time I look in a mirror, or the third, just because,

In the beauty of earth-coloured gerbera daisies rather than “red-red roses”.

It is these lines that seem so random, so comprehensible, yet just out of reach:

This is my language,

This is me.