Sadness.

My tryst with sadness
is a bubbling cauldron
of various concoctions of
unanswered questions,
of questions I inescapably
bury my head into,
of questions that take me
back into the past,
I think of simpler times
I remember a carefree
vivacious child
who hadn’t the slightest idea
of a despondence that was about
to drown him,
an unexplained and extended digression
from a conviviality
which I don’t know how to rationalize
other than as life
The past is a toxic landscape
the past is a kingdom among clouds
But why can I not help my
longing for it today?

It engulfs me
It makes me become a person
I do not want to be
But I am not afraid
I have been acquiring armour
I have been battling
myself.

Coda.

Think of the youth,
Think of the twilight,
Think of the dawn,
Think of the old.
We have the time of our lives
ahead of us
but for someone it fades
all the more
nostalgia haunts someone
nonetheless.
Look at the stars in the sky
and think of the earth
and its people, as a whole
we, who shall live, who shall die
together – in an epoch.

Have You Ever Looked at a City?

Have you ever looked at a city?
Look.
Under the roads
inside the folds of intricate architecture
in cylindrical poles splitting
the streets down the middle
by taking apart a food stall
resting at the junction
of pathways that end abruptly
somewhere
in the faces of its people
above the rooftops of glamorous restaurants
on the bridge overlooking the river
And.
While waiting at the cafe by the pavement for a taxi at twilight
Look.
At yourself.
Unearth something.

Have you ever looked at a city?
What did you find?
Who did you discover?

Bus Stands.

Bus stands
are fastened to sidewalks
by little hooks of space and time
And as I sit here
the cool rustle of tree leaves
gracing my senses
all I long for
is to be an unbiased observer
of the past, present and future
of this city.

Sandbox.

In a box of sand
You and I
Run along glass walls
leaving behind only footprints
Centuries later
there only remains
in the chaos of the universe
a faint impression
of the disorder which our feet
brought upon the sand, together.
which your breath against mine
wrought upon the air.

Here my fingers traced the texture of yours
and your lips found mine.
Somewhere in the vacuum there still are a few atoms
which carry the lingering echo of your voice
as you told me you loved me.
One of them, out of sheer coincidence
collides with another aimless atom
which somehow bears a resemblance of your name
in my voice.
And.
After all these years.
Billions of them.
We meet again.

The scratches on my palms.

The wind blows from all directions
And today it is not easy
to not look at my palms
but I lean on the railings
Against the winds
For I’m the storm, I’m the strength.
I’m the winds of change, I’m the pillar of humanity
I’m the sunset on the horizon, the mast of the ship
And I’ve just set sail
So I’ll stop staring at my palms
Because I don’t see kindness there
There is no destiny that has not wrath
We make our own, and kindness is in ourselves.

I’ll let my world spin around you.

I’ll let my world spin around you,
Not because that is what’s written in the books.
I’ll let my world spin around you,
Not because it is what conventional love is meant to be.
I’ll let my world spin around you,
because it does spin around you.
Because time stops,
the world spins when we waltz together.

Seeing.

In darkness
I march past
head held high
into the tunnel
without end.

There is light
at the end of the tunnel.
There is.
And then the light never ends
thereafter.

The light is the tunnel
I only learned to see.

Phoenix.

I remember my mother
cradling me in her crimson wings
which are most vivid today
as she wears a dress
not unlike in colour.
My mother, she is a phoenix
I have always been her child
and she’d bend over me
her tears would heal me
but the back gets broken
the bones crack
the skin falls off
the phoenix, she
crumbles into ashes
and is born once again
And aren’t these ashes I see now?
Waiting for something to grow back.
Waiting.
A hue of crimson burns bright in them.

Pebbles and Shells.

I dabble my feet in the oceans
of science and literature
and I’m climbing up these giant marble statues
to look over their shoulders;
of Newton
of this mind forever voyaging
of this boy playing on the seashore
and looking out to undiscovered oceans.
Of Mary Shelley
of a nineteen year-old genius
who perhaps didn’t know
what she’d written
the legacy of it.
I look out to these pasts
and I struggle to comprehend
the enormity, or tactlessness
of these thoughts.
And ellipsism
a helpless contemplation
of the randomness
and unknowability of history
seizes me.
I’m the boy on the shore.
Did I pick up a pebble?