LONG AGO,
            I     S P R A W L E D.
I WAS THE OCEAN FLOOR
            I WAS AN ASTRONAUT, A COSMONAUT
            Still impressive,
                               I am now
                               Harry Houdini
                               in the worlds'
                               smallest box

Less impressive,
I am covered in my own ****
which is soaking into the cracks between the linoleum tiles
in the ****** kitchen
of the ****** apartment
i live in
with my ****** ex boyfriend
(But he is not home)
  
Serenity, alone
It's rare
To feel love
From inside

Serenity, together
It's hard
To have help
from outside

An hour and a phone call later

A friend hoists you up and carries you
Mopping your floor
wiping your genitals
Tenderly, platonically
The way we hoped had already happened for the last time
A moment between you as a baby and you as a parent
Before you gained a real memory
But that moment is happening right now
But, somehow, your whole childhood is ahead of you still

Work the bread and the butter to the bone,
Let it penetrate your pores,
Become your very blood,
A part of your soul,
Emerge a hero of your own.

Because if you’re not then who?
Who,
Who,
Who, who will be your own?

A true part of your heart.

Work the bread and butter to the bone,
Be the magic you speak of so,
Have it become your flesh and core,
The vital part of your all,
Emerge victorious on your own.

Because if you’re not then who?
Who,
Who,
Who, who will be your own but you,
Who will be the fuel but you,
Who will have the power but you?

Don’t lie to the single being who is a must for you to have a life,
                                                                          
for you to have it all,
Emerge a…
Emerge vic..
Emerge a…
Emerge vic…

You know thyself too well to lie.

The waves welling
Up my throat
My stomach full with doubt
Constipating despair
Irritated by questions
As my brain can't comply
My reasoning sick
And the rhetorics
Driving me crazy on what
Is the real deal here.

Who am I?
Why me?
Why all the struggle?
Then purpose drops
But the questions still
Remains unanswered
Bewildered at how people
Push through suchlike
Waves
And why?

You know yesterday
I actually found a card
He once sent me
Then reading I discovered,
He saw that coming
Us breaking up
"We may not be making each other aware of our feelings often, but the love we share, is beyond the day to day expressing...
Its a feeling that our hearts have taken for granted forever."

Am not sure what I
Feel anymore
Should it be joy
That he hoped that even though now
We might part ways
That later we will reunite
Or he saw that even though
Our love was true
It was forbidden and
The only way out to
Protect both our hearts
Was to break the bond and hurt
To nurse it all our lives.

Its hard to keep breaking
Through when all I can do
Is try keep up!!!

I started to tell the lie that shes fine and that shes okay
She's a little bit sick that's why she looks so down today.
But she's not fine and this feeling wont go away
That aching feeling that makes her chest drown in its own blood
That little spark of hope washed away within the flood
Her grounds were shaking yet I still lied
Her soul was crumbling every part of her died
But she tries her hardest to laugh and joke
I was just there to make sure on her lies she didnt choke
I just wish there was something I could have done to make it alright
But I left her stranded on her battle field losing her own fight
She didn't break down until she was alone in her room that night
She scratched at her wrist wishing it would be the last
The last time that she remembered her old haunting past
She felt sleepy so she slept not thinking it would be her last
She died right there she died alone drowning in her past.

#Gray

As the eastward Monsoon winds blow
Dark clouds hover above
The summer sunshine fading
Dawn and dusk now look alike -
In the same nightly hue.

Inside, my insides echo a nasty white noise
Of the rain birds' incessant caws

Lightning flashing, illuminating some
Darkest corners - wh're I haven't ventured yet
A rapturous thunder, in shocked wonder
I break into a silent sweat
As the pregnant cloud precipitates
My frozen heart aches - in shades myriad
- An unwilling contrast against the crystal clear vapour of a cloud
surrendering itself as the monsoon rain!

The heard wrenches - in agony
With each thawing drop of rain
Of a lost hope and frozen wish
A facade of happiness, I feign.

Another dull winter day painfully crawls away
       into garden-variety biography
          just a run-of-the-mill résumé
          filled with antecedents whilom
          and to top it up
          a corrosive impostor syndrome.

I lie quietly in the flickering, yellow light
of a jaundice-stricken forty-watt bulb
trying to think about something superb
which would somehow improve
the way things do (or do not) move
in my achromatic life.

Nothing worthwhile emerges.

Only some vague urges act out
from their stingy hideouts.

The clock pushes the evening further
into the dry, arid chill of the night so still.
I sigh and switch off my ghost-like
sleepy, vapid eyes
into the ancient time-line
of a vast, un-bridged solitude
in my quarantined, immotile life.

© Chandra S., 1995