My dear I know it should be clear,
but I fear to tread and tarry here,
because your madness is so appealing.

Revealing
eyes of passion blue,
that burn with the ill-intent
of what you plan to do,

the furies you will harness
going from seriously harmless
to sinister in seconds.

Yet, red wet lips are made for stealing
the warm affections that I’m withholding,
withdrawing deposits, I should be saving
for another worthy lover,

but your disposition is enslaving,
ensnaring me in in your insanity
as if it was a bear trap.
I can feel my bones snap
as my will collapses.
So, I lay back
to submit to
what you will do.

Until, you leave me dying
and drying
from an unquenched thirst
and a deep hue of blue
that hurts worse
then the pain you caused
while you were here.

I am not depressed.
I’m just revisiting
similar settings
where I was possessed
by depths
of melancholia
that I thought
no longer had
any hold on me.

I am not crying
except in dreams,
from which I wake
to escape sad scenes
of strange things
that never happened.

I not despondent.
I’m sure I will
respond if
someone
asks me to.

But this room does feel cold.
I have been sleeping a lot today.
Need to workout
but my gym is closed
and I have forgotten
how it feels to be passionate enough
to workout at home.

I am fine.
I swear that everything is ok.
I’ll see you tomorrow
whilst I stew over
the pains that slew
my yesterday moods.

Life’s the poison that you make
to take as your breakfast shake
just to go out and face
the coal and the rake
that runs you down
and burns you all over the place,
and the symptoms that you see
are the result of our shared social disease.

Some grow immune.
Some just get dull,
and nothing is all
that they can feel.

Some spend a life
in states of stress
burning through
the brain they have
till they’re broken
and raving mad.

The director,
stage setter
for this actor;

What matters
is the placard
that they place there
to mark a space
for time to air
a multi-verse
of unanswered prayers.

Axe dropped,
action stopped,
“Cut!”
I hear,
because we are
being very clear
that every movement
is staged,
played for some purpose.

Perhaps to breaks us
of the meaning we love
to make out of chaos
or maybe the design
to help us find
the opposite
of chaotic.

Razor shifts,
cutting through the mist
of madness
as we paint this
world with a stained plaid dress
that turns from two shades
to darker wet reds.

What a mess this **** is.
I say we edit it at the end.

Its work time and I am
earning my pay
by seeing the day
fade quickly away,
while I am forced to
stay glued to
the CCTV
I watch for security.

Camera distortions
of strange changing proportions
shift from shades of blue
to blobs of green,

as my fatigued brain is sprained
trying to come up with
some sort of quiet game.

I listen to the cooling system.
I listen to the elevator.
I listen to the world outside
wishing that it was so much later.

Even under lockdown and quarantine,
The Poet's mind forever remains free.
Free of all earthly ******* and takes flight, -
To that ethereal land of poetry!
Nothing lasts forever in this world of
change and flux.
But poetry tingles my mind, gladdens my heart,
and elevates my soul,
Free from all our earthly virus!
                                       - Raj Nandy, New Delhi

If I could live in
an eternal state of
the sun setting and rising
with dark night
starlight twinkles
interspersed
in cosmic bursts
of transient glory.

If I could **** the chaos
of daily moving
from one maddening moment
to the next mad rush
as we brush by people
we will never meet
on these cacophonous
streets.

If I could feel the quiet
invade my being
going deep and drawing
from the dark depths
that I possess
to create poetry
that is less of a mess
then my usual
lines.

I think I would be fine
with all that lonely time,
with the inevitable ache
of being awake
in a world void
of people.
Even though,
I know
it would bring
some old familiar sting,

the beauty of creating
something
truly inspiring
would be worth the price.

Why must the Eternal Dreamer

Seek to sow his golden purpose

In a fickle poem, for a fickle world

Pleading to be a destined grain of late harvest

And not a seed of sand from the desert of abundance

Lost, like every other, in the wind

Drifting, fading, falling

Till only silence, with the lifeless dune

Remains.

It’s too late to be forgiven.
In truth I was merely living,
not trying to fit in
but still getting
too comfortable with
just trying to exist
in mere moments.

I wasn’t a pretty party guy
who was trying to get high.
I’m pretty sure I was
sound of mind,
so, the fact that I did not make time
to visit my transient treasures
that were slowly disintegrating,
that fact that I left loved ones
alone and dying
without really trying to go see them.

That is my sin,
and one I seem hell bent
on sadly repeating.

I find my humanity
in stories,
in Japanese Anime
and cool manga,
where all those heroes
spring from things
that seem unbearable.

I find my humanity
in far flung fantasies,
of fictional realities
where characters strive to be
better than they were previously,
where they are constantly
working and growing like me.

I find my humanity
in flowing verses of poetry
that sweep stale cobwebs
from my sad cluttered head
and help me see things differently,
which is what my scifi perspectives
also offer me.

Even though, sorrow stains my
poetic flows,
bringing in
cynicism,
and anger towards my fellow men.
Even when people tend
toward hateful trends
of violence, sexism, racism,

somewhere in the art I love
lay similar hearts of
humane ambition,
of nuclear fission,
of dreamers on a mission,
and there my humanity
is frequently restored to me.