The Door

I hope
You aren't like the door in my dream.
To keep walking along the corridor,
Desperately fumbling along, groping for the handle,
Eventually trying to forget that it even exists.

Sometimes the search
Feels like looking for my glasses underwater.
Blurry, like night vision through a rain-swept windshield.
As if I could fall off the edge in the darkness any minute.

Nothing hurts like the fog of doubt.
Not knowing whether to keep going,
Or stop trying,
And retreat with self-fabricated dignity.

Sometimes it's good to hurt.
To have life fling you into its deepest abyss.
The rock-hard bottom teaches you lessons.
Fulfillment might just be out of reach.

Or maybe,
I'm not dreaming.
Maybe the door is staring right at me,
And I have my eyes closed.

Homecoming

For this,
Is where we finally return.
A desolate homecoming,
To the untamed shores,
Of untouched sand and unopened doors.

At the unbeknownst mercy,
Of the plotted turn of time.
The crickets resume their nocturnal chanting,
Tracing back to the peripheries of their past,
A prophecy of the night, a divine forecast.

The aged chambers of yesterday
Open up to shape new histories.
The wind dies down in desperation,
To stifle the whispering trees,
Prompting the silent slumber of subdued breeze.

The winding green ivy of requital,
Twists like a snake around our flesh,
Drowning us in our residual filth. 
Further away, the tides rise and fall.
The buried centuries echoing an ancient call.
 

Spirit

Sun-kissed and warm,
Toasted feet dug into sandy earth.
The shrinking walls fade into a blur,
Crumbling into a vision of shredded petals,
As if in a forgotten trance.

Your song breaks out of nowhere,
Like a wandering feather,
In search of an old ghost.
An act of remembering your tender stare,
With my own deprived thirst.

The solemn voice inside,
Gives way to muted words.
Unspoken, they cannot perform.
Yet they dance around the ethereal fire,
Those nameless flames igniting the netherworld.

Awaken the first stranger,
Your closest link to the unknown.
Tear open your darkest secrets,
Lay them bare at your feet,
Touch them, watch them melt away.

Odyssey

And then that still moment,
When we dissipated into smoke.
Stolen trails leading into the darkness,
Like tiny drops of light,
Dotting the fringes of our galaxy.

So we walk,
Like two lost shadows,
Drifting through locked doors,
Breaking the silence
Of broken, untrodden paths.

Twisting the surface of smiles,
Around the wounded layers of hurt,
Burying the screams of our bruised caution,
Our misguided footsteps go forth,
Stepping into the illusory edges of peril.

Mirror

Under the shadow
Of a page unturned,
Lost in the folds of dried tears,
Retreating into the years bygone,
Those lonely, wilting shivers,
Like a long winter's frost.

Reflecting in circles,
Flaws upon the muddy crevices,
Of an old mirroring lakeside.
Sometimes the shifting clouds
Speak to the coy night star,
Whispers of a thousand unlit dreams.

Space

Like the soft corners

Of a threadbare wooly blanket,

Amidst the seething, dark clouds

Filled with last night's lost downpour,

She came like the ocean's salty wind,

Tossed around like a withered autumn leaf.

So like the first speckles of an orange dawn,

The dazzled eye now sets the scene in motion.

Tenderly promised stories,

Blurring into one another.


After the engulfing darkness,

And before the blinding light,

Beyond the tantalizing schism of silences,

Between the two temporalities,

Lies the eternal brink of nothingness.

That edifying moment outside of all time,

Where there is both existence and non-being,

That is neither fully here nor there,

Knotted fire,

Consuming the inside from the out.

Subsistence

So in the end, you were reduced to a framed photo in the hall.
Time took your soft hand in his, and led you away.
An aching vacuum was all that was left.
That, and an irreplaceable absence on your side of the bed.

I open my eyes in the morning,
Your untouched glasses stare back at me from the bedside table.
I walk into the kitchen, and put the water to boil.
Your empty tea cup stares back at me.

As I step into the bathroom,
Your bristly old toothbrush sits beside mine.
Comforting, standing tall and stoic as always.
I gave you a hard time for not replacing them with new ones. I wonder why.

The batteries of the remote need replacing.
Sometimes it's the omnipresence of your absence,
And at others, it's a loose thread from your shirt on the sofa.
Little things that remind me of you.

They say it's time I cleared your wardrobe.
But even if I dust the very last stray thread off the sofa,
What about the consuming blanket of countless memories
That you've woven around my very being?

Even now, if I listen closely,
I can still hear your chappals echo down the verandah.
As you go to pick up the morning paper.
But today, I cannot hear the news headlines read out in your voice.