she paints her sorrows
with metaphors and word collages-
each stroke spells her heartbreaks well.
and her eyes are floodgates
with tears free-falling...
drenching her soul's weak outer shell.

shards of broken clouds split the skies;
cloudburst is dressed in crimson hue.
gray hearts are cold, silent and smug,
all rainbows fade to shades of blue.

purple art sprawl on her skin;
this paper girl keeps painting still...
and every touch from her vintage brush,
leaves deep wounds that would never heal.

she's everything creased and crumpled-
a flat canvas embossed with scars.
her soul is pale- a torn sheet trampled.
her life, a chain of dying hours.

and when she thought love could save her,
it just tore her into feeble shreds.
her heart was burned in dinner date candles-
windswept trails of ashes spread.

lifetime wounds grace her pallid flesh,
as ice cold tears continue to spill
she's an artist of bruised tragedies
and this paper girl keeps painting still...

...

And we die
along with monarch butterflies,
and stray cats,
and dotted orchids
growing in your uncle's yard.



We die,
looking at each other
unabashed
as people
pass us by
like dejected clowns.



We die everyday
on countless trainrides
commuting on the edge
of our open graves,
humming a playlist
of familiar requiems.



We die
with pages and pages
of unpublished poems,
purchased tickets,
and a set of faded receipts;
rotting altogether in our ***** pockets,
waiting for salvation...

or none at all.



We smell of
formaldehyde,
sweat and lavender,
a perfume too strong
for the crowd.



We die
breathing;
staring at death
eye to eye,


never blinking,

and

never afraid.

You are a papier-mache
with distorted silhouette,
dancing along
the crowd of broken marionettes...
stitching the edges
of this wrinkled world
like never-to-fit puzzles.

Button eyes,
fake laurel crown,
creased skin,
crumpled rug cling
to your limp shoulders
coating your flaws.
You're a breathing doll
made of pulped paper.
nothing else.

But you unravel
the faults on the crust,
scrutinize helium,
recount sky snow *****
over your head.

While all broken things
laugh and mock...
you come around
to fix them.



For what?



Your chapped lips
whisper...



for POETRY.

i.

He smelled of
rotten dreams and cigarettes,
oozing, sprawling,
coiling in the wind
like a twisted art.

And he told me,
he fell in love once
with a woman of art
he met at the train station.

He worshipped her name
like a biblical face, free of sins;

As she worshipped
someone else, wrote letters to
someone else, fell for
someone else, never that guy
who smelled of rotten dreams
and cigarettes.




ii.

I listened to the way
his broken tongue
dropped words loosely;

and for the first time
i heard how a heart
fragile and vulnerable
breaks in front of me
like classic chinaware
held by shaking hands.



iii.

Last winter, the sadness-
thick as an avalanche-
got to him badly
a gunshot roared,
no one heard;
blood splatted
on the blue curtain
like an abstract painting
void of life.

His neighbors
found him 3 days after.
nobody missed him
the way
he should be missed.


One dead man, a lengthy poem,
and a dozen people in black
pretending they knew him
close enough
scattered on the cold tarmac
of the cemetery grounds.


Nobody cried at his funeral
not even the girl
he worshipped like
a biblical face,
free of sins.





And that was how
he chose to love.

I spent time
repairing beating cardioids
like a profession;
graspers, needle holders,
and sternum spreaders
sat comfortably
on a veneered table
living in the attic,
mimicking an exotic
surgical room.


The spiders on the cobwebs
watched how the stitches
were done, though none could patent
the way my hand weaves
the hollow of your chest,
and how the edges
of your broken skin
wrinkle beautifully
with every touch.


A mountain flower
stood dehydrated
on the window sill
sipping the last drop
of rain
suspended in a styro cup
as old as your aging soul.


The trees undressed themselves
carefully just outside the door
like warm teenagers
feasting on the aftertaste of summer.


The fall visited early this year,

though a bit too late
for the both of us.


I grew white hairs
watering that amaranthine flower
in your coffee cup;
fervently fixing a battered heart...



for someone else
to break.

Cliffhanging teardrops
are you tired of holding on?
You can let go now.

which sounds less painful
your rude words or your white lies?
whichever, it hurts.