A tapestry of a life lived
Depicting memories and victories;
A tapestry that is gold,
A tapestry that is frayed.

Hangs on the wall this tapestry
And before it sits a Paragon,
Musing, reminiscing and wilting,
Her little world ever shrinking.

Does a Paragon lose her quality
If she can no longer act?
Would her love and patience be forgotten
Or would her past glories suffice?

Illness demands a levy,
Exacts a crushing toll.
Its every touch a withering stroke,
Its very cure leaving another wound.

The curve of a changed smile
Is like a scythe to the heart.
The mutated sound of a voice
Cuts you with its familiarity.

I sit beside the Paragon, unworthy.
Unable to heal, unable to help.
Ill equipped to fulfill her smallest dreams
I sit beside her and weep.

I see now through the veil of the past
Where lives a life I loved.
Over my shoulders I drape a tapestry,
Frayed by the dead hopes of the future.

I hear your name in the whispers of the ocean;
The winds from the heavens carry it to me.
I hear it as a lullaby sung by the night,
But I do not understand it.

I smell your perfume in wistful memories.
I imagine the gentleness in your eyes.
I desire the warmth of your naked embrace,
But you are not real...yet.

My aching heart calls out your name.
My lips declare my love for you.
My soul livens up thinking of you,
And I understand without understanding

That though you are not here yet,
Though I cannot hold you close to me,
Though i cannot press my face into your tresses,
You are real to me.

As real as the rainbow is to the parched earth,
As real as heaven is to the broken sinner.
As the embrace is to the lonely heart,
As the hearth to the bedraggled soul.

As the dreams of romance lay dying
Among the embers of my youth,
I grasp at the will-o'-the-wisps in the night
And wait for you.

Will you come to me as I have imagined,
Clad in a beauty glorified by my dreams?
Or will you come as a soft caress,
Unnoticed at first, but lasting till the end?

Forgive me if I remain silent when you stand before me;
For the unspoken words of a lifetime are like an ocean within me,
And looking upon you, they will seep through my eyes
Or evaporate in the furnace of my heart's anguish.

Unitl then, I will keep thinking of you
Clutching close to my breast a pain that feels real.
I whisper with longing, your nameless name
Hoping the winds will carry it back to you.

The pregnant clouds rumble overhead,
The atmosphere as heavy as my heart.
The meagre light has long given up.
Bracing against the fierce icy winds,
I walk across the rocky plain.

A moment of stark stillness
As lightning forks across the sky;
And I see the ground gently dipping
Leading to a circular green depression
With black boulders strewn across

As thunder shakes the world
I take shelter under a rocky promontory
Jutting up from an edge of the circle
And wonder at the perfectly round boulders
Hewn by some giant in ages past.

As the dusk deepens,
And the winds die down,
And the world waits with bated breath,
The weariness of my mind takes me
And I slip into a restless sleep.

I wake to the sound of rain and music.
The night is as pitch.
But there is light swirling in the rocks,
Gold, red, blue and green,
Whirling around inside the hard blackness.

And as the colours dance,
I hear the sound of lutes and lyres,
Of harps and flutes and violas,
And of instruments whose beauty
Is not meant for the newer ages.

Thoughts come unbidden into my mind.
The music dredges up forgotten faces.
Lost voices rise up in my memory.
Futures wilt and dead pasts resurface,
And Regrets take root and flourish.

Vanquished by this wicked magic,
I bow my heavy head,
Hide my tears in my drawn up knees,
Hug myself against the onslaught
And drown in the deluge of that cruel symphony.

I wake up in a dream,
Without fear, without doubt.
Without a desire to divine its meaning.
Shedding the stupor of existence,
I wake up in a dream.

~~~~~~~

Gloomy skies and silence
Greet me as I cross the dead fields.
I see a mountain in the distance,
Its peak shrouded in mists.
I walk through a drab world.

As I draw near to the mountain,
I see sparks of colour.
I am drawn to them
Uncaring if they are an illusion -
Like the Lonely towards Love.

I see butterflies flitting to and fro
Between flying petals of every colour.
I see the ground littered with fruits
And blue puddles on the lifeless earth.
I see rodents scurrying into the distance.

I see colours everywhere,
Of every hue and shade.
Here a golden moth,
There a mauve lamp.
Rainbows springing from the ground.

A golden rain falls to my right
As if the sun has melted.
And in that patch of deluge,
I see formless faceless children
Shedding black tears.

I look to my left
And see the air wriggling -
Many moving dots of no colour.
And looking into its expanding mass
I feel as if adrift in a void, weightless.

I force myself to walk forwards.
I see birds of many wings,
And red flowers dripping honey.
All whirling as if caught in a tornado
And at its vortex, a man.

I see him standing infront of a canvas,
Moving his arms and moving around.
He is painting but not only on the canvas.
His brush moves even on thin air,
The paint changing colour as he moves.

He is drawing a multitude,
He is drawing them everywhere,
And he is drawing them into being.
His eyes closed, his head bent,
Bringing his paintings into life.

He stops after a while.
His hands fall to his sides.
All the space around him
Is filled with his living paintings,
And yet there is silence all about.

He notices me and seems puzzled
As if wondering when he has painted me.
He beckons me to come closer
And I go to him without fear.
There is only trust in his eyes.

He tells me that he is a painter.
I look around and nod.
He shows me an inkpot
And tells me that it has magical ink.
I believe him.

He asks me to try painting with the ink.
Anxious about the formless anamolies
That might come out of my artless hands
I politely refuse.
He looks baffled.

He draws a pen in mid air, catches it,
Fills it up with the magic ink
And offers it to me.
'Write, if you can't draw,
Life, one way or the other', he says.

He points to the dead lands all around,
Asks me to help him bring them to life.
Others before me have accepted the Ink.
He tells me he never saw them again.
And yet he trusts another.

Or if I'd rather return to the world I'd come from
He advises to take the pen with me.
I tell him I can't carry anything
From Dreams into my Reality,
Except for things untangible.

I tell him where I come from
Hope is a dangerous currency;
That Rivers of blood would flow
Long after Rivers of Ink dry up
Magic or no.

I tell him where I come from
We don't need a pen
That can bring to life everything it writes.
More a pen that can
Write Life into others.

Come soon,
with your smile
prettier than I've imagined
in my musings.

Come soon,
with your voice
more melodious
than the cherubims I may never see.

Come soon,
to take my hand in yours
and pull me
from this quagmire of mine.

Come soon,
to breathe into me
a life I've been too afraid
to hope for.

Beloved Beloved,
born in my dreams,
born of the desperate longing
brought by loneliness.

Come soon -
walk through the veils
of my fantasy into a reality
where I wait for you.

Let me hug you from behind
and weep into your shoulder,
so you may not see
the ugliness of my sorrow.

Let me savour the beauty
of your name on my lips,
as I call out to you;
Your name is a succour, a solace.

Let me kiss you
on your brow,
and tell you wordlessly
how precious you are.

Let me love you
naively, nobly,
forgetting my fears and pains,
forgetting everything.

Let me love you Beloved,
let me become yours,
losing myself in your embrace,
like a tear in an ocean.

I was sitting at my desk, gloomy,
I  had sent out my CV.
I wanted to be Santa's apprentice, you see;
's long as I remember, that's what I yearned to be,
And unintentionally, my words have come out all rhyme-y.

Suddenly there was a loud bang and a clang
And I toppled off my chair.
I  whipped around expecting to see
Father Christmas or at least his deputy
Come to take me up on my offer.

Instead of the gold, red and green glow,
I saw black and grey smoke curling
around my room; and out of it
Rose a sinister scythe and holding it
was the last person you'd want to see.

"Ah, the last person you'd want to see, eh?"
He said, reading my mind.
"For most I'm also the last person they would see."
He stood there, his head cocked
as if expecting me to get the joke.

"Am I going to die? Is it my time?"
I asked, all the things I've yet to do
rushing through my mind.
Especially all the swear words
left unsaid to some special people.

"Nope," he said in a dead tone,
"I'm here on official business.
North Pole is overstaffed,
So they forwarded your CV to me.
I've come to take you as my apprentice."

I stood gaping at him, my eyelid twitching.
He looked at me and I looked at him
And there was a grave silence.
"Well, giddy up," he said, "say your goodbyes,
Pack your things. Chop Chop!"

"But why you?" I asked morosely,
"Why not the Easter bunny?
Why not the Tooth Fairy?"
He snorted in derision
And looked around my room as he said,

"The Bunny doesn't take on help,
Doesn't want his precious eggs smashed.
And the Fairy has pixies to help her.
Cheer up, you'll see more action with me.
My previous helpers used to die for more."

He gave me an ominous smile.
Not entirely reassured, I packed my stuff,
Went down to bid adieu to my parents,
Left a letter to my friends,
And posted a spring punching fist to my ex.

He was sitting on my chair, one leg crossed,
his foot jangling to the death metal
blaring from my stereo,
smoking a cigar while
reading 'The Book Thief', when I returned.

"Alrighty then, let's leave," he said.
Thick smoke whirled around us
And the next thing I knew, there was another
Bang! and a curious Clang!
and we were standing in a town square.

"I get the bang, but what's with the clang?"
I asked, curious, following as he strode off.
"I pulled a prank on Santa once,
popped up behind him much as I did in your room.
Thought we'd have a laugh," he said sourly.

"The fat guy didn't like it at all,
And ever since then, every time I travel,
This bang and clang follow me.
Ruins my style, it does.
I'm usually all for silence and smoke."

"Where're we going?" I asked as we
turned into a deserted street.
"We're going to ***** out a tough old idiot.
He's escaped me for too long.
I'll have him this time for sure."

And from the folds of his robes he drew
A black saucepan and handed it to me.
I looked at him perplexed and he explained,
"We don't give out scythes to newbies.
This is the standard Reaper's 'pprentice's weapon."

Armed thus, he with the scythe and
I with the oddly reassuring saucepan,
We passed like vapour through a closed door
and floated to a bedroom upstairs.
Pretty impressed so far, I took a look at our prey.

He was a bald, thin, old man,
sleeping in this chintz armchair,
hands clasped around a rifle on his lap.
He was snoring, oblivious to the terror
that was us - the fearsome death dealers.

The Reaper's robes slithered over the carpet,
His step soft and graceful,
His eyes glinting with power.
And suddenly, the old man woke up
and started firing blindly.

I rushed for cover while the bullets
went straight through the Reaper
and got lodged in the wall.
I crept up behind the old guy
and banged him on the head with my weapon.

He crumpled, his body falling prone.
His spirit started floating up
and yet it tried to get back into its vessel.
The Reaper stepped forward and swung
the scythe, cleaving the spirit from the body.

He caught hold of that phantom
and brought out a large pouch.
Promptly stuffing the spirit into it,
he said, "A portal to Purgatory,
Hassle free way to deal with reluctant spirits."

We left the house and walked on.
We looked at each other and shared a smile.
Acknowledging with a nod the head rush,
the thrill, the coolness of our job,
We set off into the night for more.