So there I was, and there you were, all of us,
everyone, dangling their feet off the rooftop.
Four distinctly different artists caught in the same painting
yet, none of us holding the paintbrush to our passions, yet.

Ambitious, yes, focused, not so much, motivated? Most definitely.

Dedicated to manipulation,
to making a masterpiece for the masses,
a decision to "form a more perfect union".  
To map a new demographic before our deaths.

If our desire was to make a mark, well,
we'd be done already.
The mark's been made, but not engraved,
and for it to stay we need to stomp on it until our own foot decays.

And these days, most pictures will fade,
So as us four sat there, dancing with the devil,
we dared to begin drafting on our canvas.
With no brush, but our own fingers,
our own blood, sweat, tears, and elbow grease,
finally finding the paintbrush to be figurative,
that we were manipulated ourselves.

We learned to picture the paintbrush as our pointer,
our palms the palettes, our pinkies the varnish,
a promise our piece would never be vandalized.

The world is your oyster, they say,
and the city was our canvas,
where we painted nothing but pearls,
rare commodities for the communities to cherish
until our masterpiece, the indefinite work in progress, is completed.

I remember the days
where we could laugh and play
in the middle of August.
Those days where the sun
had no bounds. We played

until we couldn't breathe, until
our voices were no more than
shallow sounds lost in the breeze
that carried them until they
lost meaning.

Looking back, I wonder when that day came.
When did those voices fall mute?
When did they die?

Or maybe, are they out there?
Still floating on the wind,
lofty clouds that will never rain?

You must let the kids
sing in the rain, darling.

She is standing on the brink of sanity
looking for something to hold on
She is twenty-six years old, watching a world go by
and wondering whether she belonged

An artist’s child she is, playing with fire;
uncertain if the rug would be pulled from beneath her feet
or if it would just burn in magnificent flames
scratching into her eyes calling forth her tears

She is everyone and no one
She is an idea, a rumor, an imagination
and the last piece of a puzzle that no one tried to solve

She is the pain in pleasure and the pleasure in pain
She is the terrifying beauty of life

She is addiction with a veil of innocence
clinging on to her like a possessive lover

She is curiosity with wide beckoning eyes
She is sin, a devil’s temptation
with delicate grace as enchanting as a lost nymph

She is the woman lying in his bed cocooned in sheets
stained with her blood
with a red so bright that it threatens to claw his eyes out

She is poetry with lyrical verses of wild hair
matted with dirt and blood,
ends curling down the edge of his pillow

She is music with symphonies of chattering teeth
and rustling clothes against smooth ivory skin,
borne of a night as cold as the heart she accused him of bearing

She is forgiveness with serene smiles on lips
as soft as a butterfly’s wings and a small hand outstretched
to clasp his and paint it with red pigments of defeat and strength

She is death with haunting eyes the color of warm honey
that his mum used to feed him
on rainy afternoons he spent curled up in her lap

But he has never been so peaceful
in his entire pathetic existence,
For if death is as exquisite as her
then perhaps death was what he had been searching for all along

-പ്രിയാന്ഷി ദാസ്‌

XXV

A heavy heart, Beloved, have I borne
From year to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God’s own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring
And let it drop adown thy calmly great
Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing
Which its own nature doth precipitate,
While thine doth close above it, mediating
Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.