i was a girl, except

when they removed my ability to move, disapp

roved my right to excuse myself

from discomfort.

i was a girl, except

i was silenced, licensed

to be doormat, eternally, not

speak for my sanity.

i was a girl, except

they disrobed me of my human essence, vul

nerable in their presence, na

ked and shivering, ash

amed, at their mercy, a-quivering.

i was a girl, except

now, i am a woman.

without choice, without consent,

enforced role, profuse grief

no room to breathe.

-up and down it goes, where it stops,

ain't nobody knows.

he was always bemused to see
the calm oyster shrivel
in the face of the slightest purple
sunset.
and he always wondered how the dark inside
could be more comforting than the paler
blackness of the skies.

said the oyster to her bemused audience
the dark inside may be more frightening, but it and me are
well-acquainted, closest friends
these past few years.
the vast expanse of the sky is yet an unexplored
stranger, and fear
shuts all my doors,
even the ones through which the light may come.

sepia pearls are born, not out of beauty,
but out of the coal black fear.

pieces.

-on a business degree...

i'm
taught the obvious,cemented
in vacant crevices.Chase
they tell me.
chase and compete.
chase and
kill. primal
instinct. utter animals,
disturbing.
humans as dispensable
rats(race).
mockery of life
i
refuse
to chase, follow,
overtake, stab
in the back, smile
at my step ahead.

stroll by my side instead, i
persist, there's more to life than just
this.

-on a sense of acute lost-ness....

''sense of purpose'' forgiven self.
forgotten. 'Purpose'
Direction.Dictionary definition.
Lost, life explanation.
consquence of an aimless
pursuit when
unclear of who/what/where to pursue.
unworthy
of my time and energy and yet
i
run
circles circles purposeless circles.

your tone remains consistent mellow purple

mauve lilac lavendar

the subtle shades insinuate

your anger, displeasure.
.

i await bated blue breath

for the calm the storm or even

being stuck in your epicentre.
.

callous caring can indeed

be worse than cruel indifference,

or overwhelming love.

reflections.



pitiful obsolescence of my presence in your life, i am
the extra letter carelessly tossed in, typo
my existence, use
less, in words, sentences,
feelings.

All the king's horses, and all the king's men

couldn't put Humpty
together again.

My baby,
I wonder what nightmares darken the insides of your eyes
enclose your eyeballs with
swirling black anguish.
I watch you for hours, scrunching
eyelids tight,writhing
in white bedsheets as if you
unconsciously wrapped yourself in bandages
(before the war even began).
And I
too far to calm you with whisper
voice, or touch.


My darling, I wonder
what grotesque, appalling ordeal could possibly
make you whimper, so.
Your barely audible moans
chills the marrow in my bones, stiffens
fingers, blood. 
And I
too far to translate
screams to symphonies, laments
to lullabies.


My love,
you say your nightmares involve
me.I wonder what you mean.
Could love horrify the soul
into pieces, asleep? I
will not leave.
Do not allow absences to frighten,
fracture souls with fear.
When I
too far to suture pieces together,
Too far
to remedy,
repair.

the journey.

Momma told me to go get fixed, child. stay happy.
except happiness was not the cure.
So i went to see the shrink he said it
would help if i wrote.

It wasn't the cure, but I
plunged hands into my mouth and removed wads of
paper and tissue, old cardboard, magazines no one
wants to read anymore,
and still the words wouldn't come.
what came instead was mind-vomit florescent
green neon blue and daisies
in pink with frills.
think happy child, they had said.

i want to read she said
the cure, holding onto Pamuk, Ondaatje in hand
and Eliot leading the way across
vacant lots with newspaper scraps i am
an old lady. My soul is stretched tight
across the skies. Nut in blue, silver
stars i am afraid of the night it
reminds me of Him.

Cigaretteburnt

there is something oddly alluring darling,
in the way grey smoke escapes your lips,
gently let sideways, cascading into summer swans
eagles, through the holes in my soul.
fine lines, tight lipped, half sly smile.

barely concealable how your indifference,
seductive so, melts me into quiet rage
sometimes.
some other times,
intense yearning.

inconsequential your white
tshirt unshaved shadows the tie rack
behind you the golden cube round
your neck.
inconsequential
my observations but for the fact
they are about You.

everything has Meaning.

pinky edged nightmares bloom
into roses, violets, sunshine darling, when i
wake them to thoughts of you.
my nightmares cascading away like smoke darling,
away like ashy eagles, radiant grey
swans.



.

red gold dipped mornings drag themselves out of
pots of paint and sheer bluey skies
slash colour and spring across my open window i am
yellow gold blue on the outside red black broken
on the inside
i wonder if colours can explain feelings states of being
in ways words cant.

red is anger and black is grief
im spun of the twain consumed
beyond relief .

.


i am shattered like crushed butterflies coloured red
smeared across blank white walls my wings
splutter and fall under your feet
cement and marble
tiles and tears
there is no compassion in your voice
in your feet.



.

there is much to say
and not enough in me to declare it
i wish i could just
rip my heart out
onto this page
let the red rivulets map their own course, spell out
the way this feels inside right now.
your absence
makes heart sore and snap in
wooden splinters, newspaper shreds, glass shards,
sheer motes of
knife sharp dustsandblood
splashed on this blank white canvas.
elements forming stories, confessions,
vulnerable exposes of
spirit skin and soul.

(spiral red stains)

after all,
visual
graphic devastation
needs no more
feeble
poems, words,

explanations.

Eloquence evades me.


I find myself distressed, because I cannot
spew out pearls of such intense clarity they make
jaws drop in awe, eyes bulge with wonder.


Write to me some summer lines.


Write to me an ode to the days of yore.
when words and daisies
lined up my street with white sunbeams,
golden dreams.


Now even happiness leaves me uninspired.
oddly content. oddly hollow.
bated breath and tip-toeing eggshells to see
if it (when it) ends.


Suspicion.
Superstition.


Hollow laughter in hollow silences.
Hollow words.


I become become become
speechless.

I am the lovechild of glittery gold city night lights and illusive melodies on the subway.
urban child. city child.
child of the chaos. child of the beautiful .

child of the constructions which
lace cold pavement
and cold heart


stony smiles in gray water puddles.
stony imprints of people's gray souls.

snippet.

A spectator watching my own life on a remote t.v screen I am
too far to even try and come close and
reach out and touch myself to
feel me and pinch me and stare me in the eye and see
if i am real and i
am me.

and yet...

You find in me the girl I lost to the hands of time and eyes of men and
eyes of time and hands of men.

I lost myself to use abuse and scarlet
tattoos
of scars and wars fought, forgiven
and not
forgotten.

but you make me forget and you make me hope and hope
is not the thing with feathers but the bird of stone that
weighs me down and wakes me up and makes me wonder if
this bird of stones can fly.


i soar on these dreams and find the world
flying beneath my weary feet.

held

you got me in a choke-hold.
Hold.
choke.
choke more.
check me.
life line.
check mate.

hate blind

cursed fate
fake case
suffa cate.
catch phrase
e rase
caught breath
brain dead
dread lock
lock down.
down cold
choke hold.

snippets.3

On new students.

its like a parade of masks
facades
i get lost in plastic smiles
hollow eyes
flash all too briefly in my eyes.
surprised?
not quite.
it is Fall, and they, like me,
are unsure of who to be.

till then let's all dwell
in meaningless laughter.
Ricochet off the walls.

On some remark by the World Lit,prof.

it is hardly paradise
if not golden.
hardly
if angels persist
on moldy wings.

On some new girl in tutorial.

her eyes dance
around the room
almost
making us
insignificant
she glides alone here
with her gaze.
dancing the tap dance
in rubber
shoes.

On sum other person in tutorial

sit a little too composed
for comfort.
A class act
practiced all too many times
before.

Hands.

Hands that curl and uncurl around soda cans.

Hands that hold onto bus poles, hold on like

they’re clawing, clambering, drowning,

To let slip is to let go.

Hands that

are tiny, and fit into a palm

and curl around a finger

for security, for safety, for

Comfort.

Hands

that lay twitching on lonely table tops

twitch to the beat of loneliness, to drawn out breaths

to the stranger who never comes.

Hands

that salute to power, hands

that pluck out flowers, hands

that dig graves for the brave, the old, the forgotten,

and the Cherished.

Hands

that follow like a breeze around her waistline

as he steers her around the crowd, steers her to

make her his own

Hands

that flourish pens, pencils, praises,

Hands

that she gently raises

to the Heavens every night in prayer.

Her hands

that pray for peace, for patience, for her

Salvation.

inspired by Odysseus.

I am
the withered leaf caught
in iron rakes, the
land of eternal gloom,the
infertile eyelid
wrung out of its last
beads of grief.
I am
the agonized soul
that wanders forlorn,the
shattered mirror that yields not my
reflection but a broken
million faces of my wife, my son and my own
heart. I am
Icarus.
I fall.

Every flicker of hope
brings me closer to my ruin.

of them.

hush now.
i will murmur ballads into your ear of how
they came back and back and back again
they came crying and lying, they came to you begging to be urs
again and again and again
and how is it and why is it was only after they had failed you
and they had told you that it was
You
who had failed them.
they will not know why they came back, when you
had already slunk away into the shadows into
the corners of your eyes into the tiny
holes in their minds.
how will you tell them then that you had found a new solace in a new
sun?
how will you tell them that you played by the rules
that were meant to be broken, because You wrote the rules you wrote
the untouched and the shattered.
how will you tell that you
loved them no more that
the world had spun around and lost itself
a million times over in its
multitudes of intricate threads
that were born and are born
and fade into a nothingness with every passing
second
and that new stars had shone a million times and a
million new suns had shone every day since
they last went away
and that
it was all a little too late?

hush now, flow
on the clouds of a myriad blues
dewdrops of iridescent hues
and spin
in the embrace
of a gentle dream's glaze.
hush now and forget
every word that was said.