‘It’s better when it’s quiet.’
Between a laptop, a cup of coffee
And a ton of indiscernible emotions,
He fumbled for lighter themes,
Quieter proceedings
And tastier imagery.
But it all felt wrong.
‘Also make it short. Make it sweet.’
No. It might end up schmaltzy.
‘Alright. What about making it rhyme?’
No. It will be more of a crime.
‘Meter? Syllable count?’
No. No. No
‘They say you should write like you talk.’
Yeah. But then it would be all whining and pessimism.
‘Who cares? It will still be you.’
Does it have to be me?
‘Isn't it more satisfying when it is you? ‘
Right. After all, it’s for me. Not for them.
But it should not be quiet. It should not be subtle.
It should not be short either. It should overflow.
It should be angry. It should be an explosion.
He cracked his knuckles, made up his mind.
He was always loud and open.

They never trusted him with their secrets
Though he was always known to be reliable.
They talked but shared nothing with him
Probably because he shared nothing either.
His life had never been eventful as theirs.

If he did talk, he would only come out awkward.
No one wanted his nerdy theories, nor his feelings.
They saved him a seat while they discussed.
His intellectual **** just drowned in their garbage.
They were all too polite that they ****** him off daily.

He had conservative parents, and self-doubt.
He was always shown the path to walk
And was taught that thinking is useless.
He watched Bill Hicks all day and wondered
How he escaped crucifixion.

He grew up so studious and religious
That it took him a while to figure out things.
The smart ones took him to be a bit slow.
The others were sure he was getting mad.
Soon enough, he was in love with rebellion.

He would come back to see old friends
And find that he was the only one who cared.
He would listen to Grace Slick yelling all day
And know that he must find somebody to love.
He became another tired, self-pitying *****.

He started accepting the world the way it is
Though it would never accept him.
He would want to explode once in a while
And tell them all what's wrong with them.
Instead, he kept writing his bad poems.

A soft sun faded,
calmly and unmindful of
the poet beside.

Mist fumed out from those
burnt remains of the sunset
and smoked them streets up.

I grew more distraught
and more desperate to write,
to compose my next.

I walked through that fog
in search of a new poem,
and came out crawling.

As I figured why,
and as I watched, midnight came
gracefully quiet.

The deserted road,
stretched under a silent moon,
then smelled more sullen.

And the broken moon,
that peeped in from its abyss,
just grew more morose.

And this bleak journey
in search for inspiration
proved overwhelming.

And I was so lost
in some lost place for lost souls.
So lost.

I met your heroine today, on the roadside.
She's just as broken as you painted her.
The child still sells flowers for a living,
And still wears that soiled, tattered frock.
She skipped about those sour streets,
Begging every passerby to see her flowers.
Everyone felt sorry for her abused body.

I approached her and asked for a flower.
A smile spread across her dreary complexion.
'You're an artist, aren't you ?'
Her sad, weary eyes understood everything.
'I have met all sorts of artists.
They have been here to paint me, photograph me,
And some have even composed tragedies on me.'
I told her that they were all trying to help.
'It's not that. I just make a good subject.'
Her bruised hands lifted to me a rose,
'I prefer those who come for the flowers, instead of me'.

I took it, looked at her and asked hesitantly,
'May I write on you ?'.
She smiled yet again. That same haunting smile.
'For a change, will you write on the artists who sell me ?'

I walked through that silent garden;
In the past, it had many children.

I played with that abandoned swing;
Heard its loneliness sing.

Sat by those lost trees of yore ;
They were never just wood before.

Picked up a fallen petal;
Dead and dead, with a broken fettle.

Talked with the parched leaves in the grey;
They too had a thousand things to say,

Of broken glory and drying times,
Much like the decay of growing human lives.

I too will wither , I too will grow bleak,
From the song of the child to the silence of the weak.

I have long been that puppet in society’s hand,
My every step timed to entertain an audience,
And my every word scripted, fit to their rules.
It’s been a life living on other’s terms --
My voice silenced, my opinions corrected,
My actions checked, my dreams restricted;
Except for that war waged underneath me,
Except for those thousand casualties inside me,
Except for their perpetual scream,
Except for the shatter of dreams,
Everything about me is inanimate, dead;
Just a doll moving to the strings of society.

I have sat by the silent fields at dusk;
And by those still leaves and cold air
And that sordid silence that grows on you,
I have felt and known them presence there.

Alone in those dim times after sunset,
I felt as numb as those fallen leaves.
When the wind blew those leaf-corpses away,
I could feel them dead people alive.

I have seen them black birds flying around;
Confused little wings circling the sky,
Away from the reach of the ghostly clouds
That fume forward like widening smoke.

There are them trees lined on the horizon;
Dark forests with a cold mystery.
I have seen them eyes looking me from there
And have heard the dead, wounded trees breathe.

I could feel them hands creeping up my neck.
I could see tortured souls and dark pasts
And the dead who lived their time on that mud,
Lying around like the cold night air .

One day, I too would die and join them
And be a dead piece of this cold night.
I knew I will be slowly joining
Those black ghosts that invaded the sky.