Sometimes, sometimes
I will sit in my own room like a stranger
I will gracefully drag the chair out its den
And run my fingers through the white fur
That is white no longer
It lies there inviting
But I prop myself on the table instead
Head just touching the shelves above
Books kissed by dry dust
College notes never noticed
An empty fruitcake box
A candy wrapper
I run my gazes up and down the walls
Up and down
Up and down

A disheveled slave girl bare—
Still for me
Someone has covered her wounds
With poems ripped out of forgotten books
Her tears slide down like curious cracks
Beneath the silver veil
A bottle of Kerosine oil sits patiently near the pallet,
Rows of paint tubes
Children’s beds in a quiet, orphanage hall

Unfinished canvases awaiting a god
Brushes scattered around
Scattered like arms and legs
and skulls
In a tired battlefield

Sometimes I reread the stories
Scribbled on the doors
Quotes as bullet shells
abandoned
and hollow

Like a stranger
I admire the designs on the wall picture
Leaves of all the races
And the blueness beneath
Like a stranger
This silent, beautiful girl I see
For as a lover I have long ceased
A shy dove scared
Quietly humming a tune
I have never known

I look for the person who smiles in the pictures
The girl who’s known to talk to the walls
But the bed is empty
And folks in the photos
Will not meet my eyes
The verses swirl around in the air
And fumes of the oil
Rise up
Slow as the arrival of blooms
Slow as a withering moon
Till they are everywhere
A horde of soldiers
Marching down my throat

There is no one here
Somebody once taped the roses to the window
And painted suns on pieces of stray T-shirts
hung them up as tapestries
But they are not here now
The walls reek of aridity
A slave girl who will not smile

They like to preach to us to
Always be ourselves
But who are we—
Some fancy clothes wrinkled on the floor
As if passed out after a jolly evening
A fidget spinner
Spinning spinning spinning
In my hands
The fan groaning—
A symphony struggling to scream
And fumes rise up

I jump off the table
And slide the window open
The city, a worried lover, rushes in
It kisses the room
Its beautified bruises
Washes her with light
Air jolts the calendar awake
“Are you here?”
“Are you here?” It seems to ask
Are you here, are you here, are you—
And the walls nod their tired nods
A practiced, perfected ritual

Sometimes, some nights
I will tread through my own writings
Trail touches down
My own drawings, looking
For myself
Looking, looking,
And forever on search

Sometimes, sometimes I will realise
that no matter how many plants I hang
And words
I nail to these walls
To make them mine
I will always be a stranger to this room
Searching the stalls for another anklet
that will smile a star
in her next alluring dance—
A slave girl
And her golden crown.
Dah

I wander around the house
Like a heavy ghost
My room.
Turn off the A.C. and open up the windows
Faizan’s room, little brother
Mother’s
My room
It is too barren in here
The kitchen
Open the fridge; I am not even hungry
Drink some water
Faizan’s room
— What up?
— Doom
— Cool. Carry on
He sets a zombie on fire
Hoping around the mountains
Like a wounded bird

Mother’s room
Bathroom for another shower
My room
I might just be passing through the walls
‘Cause man do I not recall
Heading to the kitchen again
Older brother’s room
— What up?
— Hmm?
Exposes a red ear from beneath the headphones
— What up?
— Shut up.
Touché.
Mother’s room
— Do you want my help studying?
— Nah, I’m sleepy

My room
Turn on the A.C.
shut the window
The evening sun pours in through the purple curtains
Washing the room in a faint blush
(not that anybody asked)
…
…
Cannot sleep
…
…
Faizan’s room
— Weren’t you dying? He asks
— Couldn’t
— Ah, sad.
Kitchen
Might just make coffee
Faizan’s room
— Hey! Not here!
— Won’t spill it, chill dude.
He sighs,
Roaming around a darkened cavern
A diamond sword in hand.
He puts on a song he knows I like.
It flutters around us
Like a swarm of frightened moths
I feel I might explode—
Mother’s room
Wait, it’s night already?
But, I just had—
Perfect.
Beautiful.

My room.
The books laugh
The walls laugh, the clock laughs
I feel I might be melting
A night stands dressed up
At the end of the aisle
And I, a bride to be butchered,
Butchered, butchered
Then wed again

Time to study
(not the books,
the ceiling)
Haha.
Tricked ya.
Here, that rhymed, ******
Is this a poem yet?

(Why the hell am I in kitchen again?)

~
This isn't happening
all of the sudden
we need to close the beaches
and call in sick

Don't cry again teargas
it's not your fault
don't get hot there gun
you gave it your best shot

Song and dance, weekend warrior
soothe your soul
with a little radio friendly fire

The forest can be petrified
the sea wild
working without a mask
is both, you know

It's quite out of this world
but you haven't
really seen outerspace
until you've had DayQuil
with dissociatives

Then you take hot trips
to odd places
like an international
convenient store
where they're always
out of Africa and milk

I wish Monday mourning
would go jump off a bridge
I wish taco Tuesday
would become a festive holiday
nevertheless, our girl Friday
is always good for the job

The weight has lifted
the wait has (week)ended
the search for
my socks and sanity
can now kick off
~

We live
in a Universe populated
by billions of
dazzling stars.
Enveloped by the
unfathomable depths
of the night
I wonder,
How can life be just
this
when there's all
that.
So much monotony
in a universe of possibility.

Life tastes of old bread and long-opened chips.
A haggard breath hanging in the heat.
A swollen tongue lolling and sticking to the roof of your mouth
getting in the way of lazy words that seek to dash the doldrums.
Sometimes the gaze of life is piercing and sometimes (now)
it is donut holes iced over and left out overnight
and then left out overnight again.
The muted voice of an underwater murmurer muttering
into cotton-filled ears something half-hearted and uninteresting.
Life is umami for dessert after a gluttonous feast
and never have I so craved the bright citrus peal
of an orange.

Gazing at a mundane paper
The mundane eyes came across
A mundane error in a mundane question
In a mundane hall

The mundane boy returned
To his mundane house
He had a mundane lunch
With his mundane pet mouse

When the mundane moon came out
Of the mundane sky
He put on Eleanor Rigby on his mundane phone
(As he did every mundane night)
And slept mundanely
In the mundane moonlight

This is how the mundane boy
Lived his mundane life

I got tired of filling my gas tank
Seeing fences around fields
Driving a decaying highway
I woke up to the sound of a lawnmower
I thought about the grass
How it never gets to grow
I got tired of filling my gas tank
Just to go no where with you
Listening to apathy echo
From minds I never could change
I thought about the yesterdays
How I never got to grow.

The brightness
of the morning sky
pierces my eyes
birds gladly chirping
in merry exultation
a distant radio blabbers
hunkering for someone's
valuable attention...

The leaves appear to me
as lovely emeralds --
a beautiful, greenish hue
the trees sway monotonously
as if compelled
in a steady dance
absentee music:
silence.

I am aware.

Never learned how to live without this cloud in my head
Got a script for the doctor, tells me how to live
Never wrong, never right, why is everything a fight
All work, no play its the same every day, every day, every day, like its Groundhog Day
Need a break from the monotony its gotten me
Twisted in the head like a knot
About to trip and drop
Spiraling
Never asked for help, now that's a fallacy
Honestly, on my hands and knees for someone listening
But when I look into the sky I start to daydream
Head in the clouds, I make distance from the screams, hiding behind my dreams while I leave them only as dreams its easy to see Why
When we die there might as well be nothing
We can't treat eachother right here
When right here
And now
Is all that really matters