How are you?
The sea kissed our feet and went back, like that shy girl from Farm, hiding behind her mom’s curtains, revealing herself part by part.
We had laughed hard that evening.
I nodded to the question, the usual one eye closed nod that you hated. I heard a sigh.
This place hasn’t changed a bit.
And you?
Remember that one time we raced down a hillock? I wish I
could go back to that day and ask myself how I could smile when everything was going downhill so fast. How could I be brave enough to battle the winds with open eyes and laugh at my bruised knees?
A single rogue wave climbed up our ankles
and knowing how waves lead on to waves, I held her hand and we took a few steps back.
She looked at me for the first time that evening. Why did you leave?
For a long moment the question hung in the salty sea breeze,
circling around us like a cat waiting to be fed. Eventually, it went away,
searching for its answer someplace else.
She put an arm around my shoulders.
I felt warm and tears came easy.
Let’s go home, baby.
Apr 29, 2020
Apr 29, 2020 at 11:54 PM UTC
Evening spilled onto my stale bedsheets. They reeked of ruined sleeps, a year's worth perhaps.
Sleep came in strange patterns,
unannounced to the wrong clocks and evasive to the beggars.
My clock said wake up,
sleep had decided she'd grab me and never let go,
like a lover I lost to a crowded fair, now tearing out from the crowd to wrap me up in embraces and kisses of a past that now lay only in dusty diaries.
The corner of my one closed eye caught red on the walls. My hairs stood up in unison, my mind went blank and my heart started pumping blood hard into my cheeks and ears.
Whew.
It's only paint, a few drops of red on a wall of fighting violets.
A painter's peril, maybe.
A shake of his hand, a tremble of his lips,
a gasp and a sudden chill through his spine.
He was as human as me, as tired as me. Perhaps he even slept on my bed and masturbated to the sunlight leaking.
Maybe he smiled, his crooked rotten teeth shining through his peril.
Nov 16, 2019
Nov 16, 2019 at 4:24 AM UTC
I had ditched my slippers,
Useless and heavy as they were,
Full of beach sand, dragging me behind.
Not that I hated my slippers,
I really liked them.
One of them once said 'FOR' and the other 'EVER',
Of which only the 'F' and 'ER' now remained.
(I told people it said FÜHRER.)
The sea promised it'd wash away the sand,
And I had fallen for the sea a long time ago, so trusting him was easy.
I left my slippers and started walking barefoot
With sunset in my eyes.
Then the waves stole them.
Devastated, I rushed,
The sea drawing its sands back urgently,
Its roaring waves slapping me,
Citing remainders,
And hindsights and insticts at me.
Not the slippers, I was praying to Poseidon.
I found them lying on the beach,
Squeaky clean.
I decided to walk barefoot, holding my forever in my hands.
Mar 11, 2019
Mar 11, 2019 at 9:45 AM UTC
I was born at the midnight
On a stormy twenty second of April.
But I couldn't see the storm,
Or my mom and dad, for that matter.
You see, I was born blind.
I lived a blind man's life for 40 years.
I ate a blind man's meal,
I watched a blind man's TV,
I read a blind man's newspaper every aftetnoon.
I litsened to a normal man's music, though.
Anyways, I got my eyes when I was 41.
The local drug store boy wound up dead in a police shootout, with both eyes intact.
At last, I could see things,
Real ones when awake,
Realistic ones when asleep.
After two weeks of my surgery, I gouged my eyes out.
Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019 at 12:44 AM UTC
The reaction to my confession was a singular one,
Odd, even.
For a moment, just a fleeting one,
The eyes grew,
Swallowing the mask,
Revealing a booming laugh,
Or a nervous giggle,
Holding back the curiousity of a kid.
But that moment passed.
It was replaced, as it always should be, by an appropriate one.
Feb 14, 2019
Feb 14, 2019 at 10:16 PM UTC
It was my birthday when I killed a man,
Shot him with a Kalashnikov as he was running away.
The commander congratulated me,
"Mard ban gaya tu ab", he said, patting my back,
I had become a man.
I felt so happy, so proud.
I was thirteen now and finally I could grow a beard.
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 8:00 AM UTC
In the dead of the night,
She'd sit on the railings of that bridge
And watch the citylights sleep
Inside the river.
Jan 11, 2019
Jan 11, 2019 at 9:37 PM UTC
It's so easy to push a man.
First, they'd stupidly go to the edge and just stand there,
Saying it felt great.
I've never stood on the edge, so I can't vouch for them.
Anyways, they'd stand there, oblivious to an impending doom,
How, I often wonder.
I mean, how do they trust
So easily?
Do they not know the ways of life?
I do not trust myself, let alone crazy looking
Strangers with scars on their face.
And even when I come close (too close, uncomfortably close) to them,
They'd look at me with somber eyes.
Even when I put my hand on their back,
Ready to plunge them into darkness,
They'd be look onwards with a smile, as if happy to embrace their fate.
I've never seen their faces when they fall down.
But, for my own sanity, I like to think they aren't smiling ones.
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019 at 12:41 AM UTC
Bake your cake,
Look outside the window,
A sun is burning for you,
Impatiently hot,
"Ah, come on already. The cake!
I'm waiting, **** it!".
Look out of the other window,
That neighbour,
Her nostrils flared like a boar,
Mouth watering, eying your cake with her x-ray vision,
Like Superman .
Oh my, her ******* are *****
Your cake has aroused her more than her husband, I think.
If you walk a few steps and look out of
The railings of your front gate,
The postman is standing with a letter for papa,
Arrested (probably handcuffed) by
The sweet smell of kaju and kismis in your cake,
The look in his eyes saying he wants to barge in,
Drop all his postmanship (his letters) and stuff
Himself with mouthfuls of your beautiful cake.
Go on now, bake your cake.
I'm waiting.
Heck, I even wrote a poem for it.
Jan 5, 2019
Jan 5, 2019 at 5:12 AM UTC
Mrs. Dolores sat on the armchair in her balcony,
A cigarette burning in the ashtray,
A tattered Jane Austen on her lap,
Her pretty face made up,
Mascara smeared,
The bright red lipstick intact,
The same smug look,
With a tinge of sadness in her eyes.
Her beauty had faded away,
Not long after her innocence did,
But she loved herself for what she had done,
For whatever she had become.
And hated herself for killing what she could've been.
Mrs Dolores sat on the armchair in her balcony,
Blood dripping down her wrist,
The same proud look,
With a mist of betrayal in her eyes.
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19, 2018 at 11:19 PM UTC