Mermaids cry with freshwater tears,
Dreaming of handsome sailors who do not flee in fear,
Or even mermen to share their dream with,
For mermaids are alone.

Sirens cry with silent sobs which no one hears,
For their voice,
Even lost and forlorn,
Would only entice further lovers to watery deaths.

Dryads tears drip heavy from leaves of great trees,
Their pain giving life to the forest,
Even as their love ensorcels their soul mates,
And their heart cries out the truth,
What is bound cannot be freely given,
And is forever changed.

Poetry can’t be a limitation
Words radiating the poet’s imagination
Transcending beyond mere understanding
Poetry mesmerizes the soul and heart
Words beyond the regular
Reading between the lines, to decipher
For Poetry shall remain forever
Lyrical hymns, always hummed by poem lovers
Surviving the centuries, and beyond
Poetry can pay tribute, to unspoken feelings
From poet to poet and from poems to poems
A rich legacy will weave intricate Art

Roses aren't always metaphors, you know.
For the ghosts in the walls that write poems about how you sleep.
For the shadows in empty closets that you fear will creep.
For the rivers you've travelled that leave burns on your arms.
For the faces pressed against windows that slip colours into the wind.
For deserted bus stops made of crushed beer tins.
For the bars filled with grannies and trannies and the best kind of sins.
Sometimes they're analogies.
And boy, are they lovely.

To use a quote that encapsulates my feelings right now,
“I'm tired of this back-slappin' "isn't humanity neat" *******. We're a virus with shoes.”
― Bill Hicks

The Poem

Originally I thought I suffered from irritability,
irritability of the human race.
Then I realised whilst looking at my face, it was hate.
I told the Doctor I'd thought of suicide, then realised
I wanted to commit mass homicide.
Become a hermit.
Mankind, womankind I hate you, people think me nice, fair,
and kind, I know the truth, I am a *******, so you must be too.
We as a race need a cull.
Do I like the human race? No. What's to like?
I even dislike people that purport to be friends.
I intricately step my way through this world of vermin.
We defile what is beautiful and true, hate because we
are taught to. Ruin, start wars, cause pain, then moan about the rain!
We as a race are quite crudely put, a pile of ****,
but even **** has purpose, a role.
What role do we have? To hate one another?
If so please make it equal and adhere to political correctness,
by that I mean, Hate Everyone equally.

We laugh at him,
My friends and I,
In our bubble of teenage invincibility
We laugh at him,
Skinny and ungainly,
In shirts one-half size too big and
Kakis  that were probably $10 at Meijer's.
We laugh at him,
Hair carefully gelled and combed to cover the
Bald spot where too many nights of
Indecision and loss have rubbed it clean.
We laugh, his awkwardness fueling our
Shameful antics,
Shrinking him until he appears no more
Than an irritating fly with
Strangely sad eyes and  
32 years of small-town memories not
Validated,
Never appreciated.
We laugh at his first-time fumbling and confusion,
Not knowing how to handle us,
In our smug overconfidence and
Judgement like one thousand pins,
How to reach beyond our stubbornness
To teach us something worthwhile,
Something beyond the plan.
He sits like an origami bird that was made
Without instructions,
Perched on the corners of old desks,
In storage rooms of old textbooks,
Wrinkled and refolded.
Yet his sad eyes and open vault of memories makes him
Stronger, stranger, than I, we, have ever seen in the
Four walls of our learning.
Favorite books and winged metaphors
Fly
Next to seeds of joy and a father's death,
Twenty-two pieces of musical
Coping
That we laugh at,
That we see as a pitiful attempt at rejoining life,
That we scorn
With our teenage invincibility.
It's alright.
We know the value of less than nothing-
Our judgment means nothing.
His too-big shirts
And lyrical memory will
Exist
To anchor a life
Far after we have left,
Lost,
Wandering.

Looking around at the
State of Our Fears

Our only focus should
Be renewable energy

And a non-material shift
In values  

All other roads are
Razors resting

On the edge of a
Bathtub, ready.

During the very earliest 1900s
A little boy walked a gravel road
With his grandfather.

The old man kept whittling him
Birch shoots that he whipped at
Weeds with, before he threw them

Aside; ready for another. "Cut me a
Whip, grandpa." "Cut me another."
The old man obeyed smiling.

The man was my great-great
Grandfather. The boy,
My grandfather's oldest brother.

I grew up walking
Those same gravel roads.
Whipping.

High on the mountain, overlooking the valley,
the valley where I was born, is a wooden bench.
Standing to attention are the bottom of the deep V
are houses, all the same, all in a row.
From the bench the village can be watched
It's comings and goings, the neighbours gossiping
talking about nothing and everything.
Everyone is there down below,
John the butcher, Dai the milk, Mair the bread,
Oliver's shop, where anything and everything was for sale.
A picturesque Welsh valley, where everyone is actually
Psychotic, and where you'll never leave except in a coffin feet first.
Those of us that get out, stay out.
Old feuds still burn, families not talking,
not remembering how it started.
Chocolate box prettiness masks the tension,
the hate, the jealousies, the negativity held
in the ***** of the valley.
How green was my valley?
It wasn't green, it's colour was red, like a hell fire.
Oh, the trees were green, the mountain was glorious
but that valley was poison.

A U-turn is all it took to drift away
Hitting the wrong lane
Dangerous pursuits

So simple life would be,
To walk the chosen path
Of such as him or she.
No regard for things of value,
Civility, Traditions or sin
And most importantly,
Caring not a **** for
The mortal encumbrances
In the forced companionship,
Of their Human Fellows.

No strife in seeking redemption,
No apologies offered or received.
Having not one speck of regret,
For their own moral misdeeds,
Living as they do with absolutely
No expectations of friendship or Love,
Or an ounce of human acceptance,
Given, shared or received.

Living a life time of this
Empty lonely existence,
Until the very end.

The lasting price for which,
Is the very path they picked.

This land, where we can roam free
Boundaries have been set up
Mapped by the pen of a cartographer
Continents drifted apart, tectonic shifts
Ripping across the land mass
The mightiest of mountains turned to rubble
Giving rise to new landmarks
The fury spewing fire, the molten lava
Created fissures along the ground
Rivers of fire flowing across the veins of Earth
Resentment of nature marched to new frontiers
Earth transformed itself, to a new avatar
New landscapes and greenery adorned it
In the coronation ceremony of the usurper
Commandeering life - forms to a new future
We are living that dream for centuries
Without an inkling of the next rebellion**



















© Amitav (Radiance)