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.