The Eighth Colour

"For if a lover's face survives emblazoned on your heart, the world is still your home."
~Orhan Pamuk


Again the infinity of a blank page stares up at me. The familiar ache of silent echoes just out of reach gnaws at my senses. In this part of the world, at this time of the night, darkness seems to spill over endlessly from the relentless skies, as if from the grim peak of a celestial waterfall. At the receiving end of a forlorn night such as this, I can only hope to brave the intangible heat of an overwhelming Absence, whilst daring to disillusion myself into believing that I am beyond any hope of salvation. Like the last remaining tree barely alive in a forest consumed by fire, I shiver, desiccated, in the utter silence of death.

Oftentimes, I think to myself - I do not wish to merely live life, I wish to live its meaning. I then ask questions, but later realize that the inconsistency of my thirst does not merit true answers. I have often felt that the essence of my being, despite the depths to its anguish, falls just short of deserving the light of my disproportionate dreams. I searched for my answers in the kiss of a stranger, in the sound of wind, in a drop of rain, in the touch of music, in the dance of poetry - and each painful time, I was met with a crippling sense of loss. I sought, in desperation, for a redeeming colour, and the rainbow revealed to me the inadequacy of seven. Like a suicidal autumn leaf falling meekly to its own unceremonious demise, I saw myself plunge into the abyss of my own unsatisfied soul, irrevocably burning its edges as I descended my wretched way. The single, final journey to the shores of blessed anonymity.

So there I lay amidst other fallen leaves, burnt yellow and unremarkable, mediocre even in the eyes of my own colourless misery. I could almost hear the ghosts of my slain comrades as they exchanged stories of my errant rebellion to one another. Faithless, homeless, I felt like an impostor in the light of their unforgiving gaze. I shut out their whispers and I felt that familiar burn of the Absence flood my insides again, threatening to drown me in my own blood. I could hear the others desert me in the wind, and I decided to stay behind and live my aching thirst instead. I, an unworthy traitor to the very cause of life, lay buried beneath more falling specimens, revelling bitterly, yet again, in the self-imposed obscurity.The hollowness of the present was quickly devoured by the fallacy of time, and the past eventually became stories I told myself. Soon these stories turned into unfaithful memories that leaked away at the faucet of my consciousness.

Then one day, beyond any quantifiable measure of time or memory, a lost wanderer came floating by and picked me up ever so gingerly. The hardened weight of the Absence seemed to melt along the insides of my parched soul, healing my rusted edges. As if the lock of a kiss had sucked its way into my mouth in the intimate darkness, and drawn my pounding heart out of my throat. As if a drop of rain had engulfed me in its frozen bubble of blinding light. Imagine a painting of fire tearing through ice, and the metaphor still pales in comparison. I dared to open my eyes hesitantly, and my insides shook with a fervor unbeknownst to me.

I was staring at my answer. I was staring at the eighth colour of my rainbow.

The world is now slowly starting to feel like home.

Ghosts of Silence

The evening was particularly long; the sullen stubbornness of a rain washed street, the glaring neon lights of the motor vehicles suffused in the thick fog of a pompous weekend night out in the city.  The taxi jerked to a halt, jolting her out of her wistful reverie, and she forced herself to step out into the overwhelming crowd, knowing there was no escape from the engulfing numbness now. An overpowering disassociation overtook her, and she got the feeling that she was watching a vestigial self of her mingle with this new crowd of people – the all too happy picture of social fraternizing – engaging in forced conversation, and being awkwardly pushed into offering half-baked opinions about topics she couldn’t begin to care for, as the incongruous listlessness wore her patience thin and made her foot soles ache in frustration. Bewildered by the ecstatic commotion of voices around her, she found herself unconsciously looking for him again, as if her mind had a will of its own.

Now, after politely sipping on a drink she didn't like, and lying automatically in reply that she was “fine” to a person she didn't wish to talk to, she found herself retreating into the farther corners of her mind, and scanning the room to catch his gaze. Not meeting it, she was overcome once again with a specific loneliness – he wasn't around so she could lose herself in him and by natural consequence unfocus from the disastrously loud music drilling into her ear drums, he wasn't around to make her feel more comfortable in her anxious skin, he wasn't around to understand her look without explanation, he wasn't around to forgive her myriad inadequacies – and his absence continued to burn her heart, rather like the disgusting drink did her throat. Multiple parallel trajectories of thought, the grammar of which eluded her understanding, wove in and out of her mildly inebriated consciousness, threatening to overflow into the surrounding air of thoughtless revelry. She saw the words of her incoherent yearning waltz before her dazed eyes, mimicking the uncoordinated dance of the disco lights, the syntax of which spilled out the pages of her mind, shaping wickedly into the luring shadow of his smile. She fidgeted with her phone to overcome this anxiety, only to find herself fixating on the reason behind it compulsively, her fingers absentmindedly tracing a pattern of his name in the air. She felt as lost as the distrait drop of condensed air trickling down the outside of her glass, stalling for a second only to resume recklessly on its meandering course to the bottom, whereupon it would disappear into an insignificant pool of such misfit nobodies. That is what she would amount to in the end – nothing more than a melting puddle of wasted desires consumed in the heat of life.

A painful couple of hours later, she headed home, past the rambunctious gaggle of easily excited college kids, her lonely heels echoing on the pavement, its regular rhythm reminding her of the empty space carved out in the shape of him beside her – an excruciating emptiness outside that dug a similar hollow within. As she turned round the final corner to her apartment, she stopped in her tracks, willfully drowned out the pandemonium of the city lights and the steely stares of strangers, closed her eyes and wondered fondly of what he might be doing now – quietly absorbed in reading, perhaps in bed, whilst plucking at his nascent beard, or simply listening to music by the window, having shut his mind off the world for the remainder of the night. She gazed up at the distant depth of the skies, and wondered at the silence of the oceans, and wondered if at that precise moment, he too was gazing up at the stars from his abode, their shared solitude binding them together in that moment. Slowly, like a falling leaf, she felt a warmth in her bones – the knowledge of his stoic solitude seeped into her consciousness, its enduring spirit wrapping her in its comforting embrace. She took a deep breath, smiling at the visceral living memory of his laugh, marveling at how intensely vulnerable and yet safe she felt in the light of his fierce love. As she continued to walk, the warmth of his elbow brushed against her bare arm, and the touch of his breath whispering in her ear drove her to madness. 

Sunset

The evening sky fades into shadowed pink,

Immersing us in its melancholic luster.

Again the silence of the dying day.

Again the echoes of yesterday.

Memories often render an illusion

Of retreating quietly, like waves, 

Into the distant confines of your hustling mind.

You let the thrust of time conquer the ocean of life.

Not for long this false stupor of time's healing.

For the scars continue to burn you in silence.

An overwhelming passage of remembrance leads you there.

The charging waves of seeming eternity, 

The swelling tide of seething misery.

This then, the fabric of searing loss,

Chafing at your insides tonight.

Like every other desolate night.

As if, the slightest touch of warmth, 

And you might melt into the disappearing light. 

Empathy

Sifting through the fog,
Deeper and deeper yet.
Like the falling snow,
Not knowing where to go.

Dried rivers burning the land,
Heat of the wounded light.
Life raging past in silent fervour.
And you, the mute beholder in chains.

Old faces ask you where you come from.
Past walls and shelters you stumble forth.
Not knowing the answer,
Not comprehending the question.

You trace the diagram of the fire,
Bones rattling in the bitterness of nothing.
Cutting out the language of memory,
The limits of a story you wish to forget.

Your hunger reaches the water's edge.
You lean in and gaze at the tremulous mirror.
Staring into the dark, two unsmiling pits of emptiness.
The grave of your eyes, the death of the "I".

Lullaby

Sing me a story tonight,
The stars shall lend us a jealous ear.
Tonight the dipping moon
Drips with the teary-eyed pearls of your affection.

The indigo shade of nocturnal desire,
The blistering flames of parched separation.
I watch the shrinking birds in the distant sky,
Reach out and touch me, my love.

Retreat

Scar of the spirited word,
Shine in thy secret glory.
Attuned to new webs of fiction,
Caress the dark, soft mirror.

If you knew,
If you knew all along,
Would you go back?
Would you swallow the story whole?

Fitted labels,
Bracketing the name, left to right.
Diminishing voice,
Speak when you're all alone.

Disquiet

Sparks igniting half-muttered questions,
Inescapable in their urgency to speak.
Curious shades of hesitant blue and abstract green,
The tedious search for answers at the peak.

A certain walk of withering will,
The lone certitude of blank adversity.
Fall of the noble oceans,
Over edges, boundaries, and myopic corners.

The mirthless urge to perform, create, kill.
The rage of the savage fire.
The caged voices sing as they die out,
Drowning in their overwhelming sorrow.

Ridiculous, the veil of material normalcy,
I look beyond a life measured in coffee spoons,
Not knowing,
What I seek is what I do not know.

Tempest

I existed
Just about.
A wisp of starving air
Almost
Not there.

Taking care,
To recede into the background.
To drown like the ebbing sun,
Into the unknown horizon.

Suddenly a hand,
Tugging at my soul.
Seeking my live breath.
Shining light.

Flame in the dark,
Distant nebulae,
Adrift wanderer,
Chase,
Chase after the falling leaf.
 

Night

The weekend night burns,
In memory of an old waiting.
The ringing onomatopoeia of a hammering heart,
A stirring song of a knock from the past.

The potent intoxication of unbidden expression.
Proximate, unlimited, in its intimate immediacy.
Your soft smile reserved for the wordless moments,
Forging a parallel story of sweet sundries.

Delightful in their melange of little nothings,
A pastiche that weaves together a memoir worth everything.
Somehow all this tastes of meaningful contentment.
A gratifying taste my palette has never met so far.

Tonight I could write the finest poem,
Or achieve the highest merit of excellence.
And yet I would trade it all,
For a quiet walk with you, in all its prosaic mundanity.

And so this cold night burns on,
Weighed down by one muted breath after another. 
The slow dance of the lamp plays on,
As thoughts of you wash over my heart.

Name

Drowning in the permeating apparition,
Throbbing vitality,
Incumbent life of flesh.
Show me your face.

Search beyond the fire and brimstone of empty spaces. 
Eyes that speak of raging storms,
Battering my curious mind,
Lost land of old secrets and forgotten forests.

Shifting memory darkening the afternoon,
Silence of retrospective hunger.
Echoing through my pages - two ceaseless syllables.
The beginning and the end, the circle of your name.

Addiction

The not knowing,
The waiting,
The indecision,
The menace of endings.

Yet I cross over to the other shore,
Despite the fear.
The burden of impending addiction,
Weighing down upon my feeble consciousness.

The lure of hope,
Leads me like a moth to a flame,
Inevitably towards the disastrous fire,
Towards the joyous perishing at your indifference.

Ghost

In the empty spaces
Between the fingers,
In the tiny air bubble
In the water bottle,
I see you.

The buttonhole
Closes up in the memory of your touch.
Fill in my blanks.
Fold the edges of yourself around me.

The presence of your absence.
Ocean without water.
 

Communication

Channels of meticulous thought
Traced through the device of hermetic jargon.
Ideas imported into the atmosphere,
An esoteric schema of expression.

The speaker withdrawing into irrelevance,
In importance receding.
Yet personal subjectivity not entirely forfeited,
Further enhanced in detached obscurity.

Amidst the linguistic distraction of semantics,
The struggle to not abandon reason and rationale.
The disputable liability of the anonymous tongue.
The undefined being and self of language.

Lesson

My memory
Distorts the picture of my history.
It is not so much for the sake of posterity,
But more of a desire so deep to spell.

To travel the roads of the past,
To contemplate at the crossroads of possibilities.
What might have been is strangely more clear,
Than what actually did.

Markers of time - minute, fortnight, year.
What do I opt as the right shell for my narrative?
All that I choose to remember and reveal,
Is only an eclipse of the absolute meaning.

What you see now, what is around you,
Is always only half the story.
All love is conditional,
The only time that matters is now.

School

And she had to learn,
That all things exquisite,
Came with allied ambiguity.
The tiring hunt for the silver lining.

She had to die a little,
Each time love turned his back on her.
Before she grasped the pattern,
And wove her answers around it.

To grow
Is to recognize limits.
To feel the texture of imperfection,
Rub up against the flesh of life,

And despite everything,
To look up at the infinite stars,
And still be able to wonder,
And smile.

Serendipity

In the stillness
Of that quiet sundown,
An uneventful conversation,
Over a cup of tea,
And music.

Also the wordless exchange
Of soft glances and self-explanatory smiles,
In the comfortable silences in between.

What an unremarkable evening.
What an indelible memory.

Song of Reprieve

Writers look for a muse,
I only search for my own voice,
Timid and trembling,
Crouching behind the curtains of silent doubt.

If music ceased to weave blankets
Around the fissures of my wounded soul,
If brushstrokes from the past
Failed to paint a smile on my face,

No personal versions of Maud Gonne would suffice.
The sealing seam of hope would then split open,
Bleeding a river of blue songs,
From an old, discarded shadow that used to be me.