Tuesday, July 15, 2008

i sat by my bed in a foreign land
was a republic of one but kingdom of none

listening a song about a wicked medicine man

who spoke about men rummage through
the desolate crowd
broken and mad
and saw them breathing dust
and loneliness and vast vistas of
desperation in sparse stories and
praying in pain

waiting for the hard rain to fall down

rain never came down

and we all were condemned to live
the collective failure of a whole generation

rummaging through desolate crowds
speaking to ourselves with voices ever so faint

shackled within our republic of one
but kingdom of none

Sunday, June 29, 2008

my hunger is lost in between my teeth and the sky
in search of a city i used to remember somewhere
from my college graduation to
an awkward dance in a wedding

what i found was
cities of death, and sad autumns,
and cheap street food, and clever puns
and drunken calamities, and tripe soup

yet
in their well rehearsed stupor
on the minds of the streets of these cities
stale cliches are repeated until
they are stretched wafer thin and
worn like cheap suits, cheap perfumes,
cheap lives and cheap dreams
but laced with smoke laden and lust ridden
distasteful songs of once respectable
old world aristocracy
only suggesting a shallow ignorant political drama
thrown in between two continents

oh how i wanted to sing
the streets of sparring punches
with a nice bottle of chardonnay!

Flashback: May 15, 2002

look at the way the words form
in my shadow

a legacy of a silent past
rips through the dark and the sound

the streets get empty
bowels of the city shriek
hurricanes plow the roots of my
disaffection of anything human
as i sip a glass of warming beer
in a bar not far from the house
a once famous poet killed himself

i try to remember his lines in this
late afternoon
early evening sun

remembrance once was the way the dead
talked to us
but the dead behind me talked through
shadows on pale white pages
i carry around jealously

and today they say nothing

i take another sip
get up and walk towards the door

shadows dissolve

the hustle-bustle of the city surrounds me

i smile and drag my past out of the door
the dead in my pocket

no one notices an old man carrying
the over-bearing scars of
long-forgotten words
because it is an old city
and there are too many dead
walking on its streets at this hour

gargoyles laugh loud in rain
and gutters too quick to dispose the words
formed and forgotten in shadows too

"the dead can't complain, you know!" shouts
the poet from his apartment
and as i pass i whisper
"to the gallows
once more my dear friends
to the gallows..."

Flashback: June 15, 2000

there are pale aphorisms in one's mind
woven in parallel narratives of one's identity
such as `non serviam'
and today i am speaking as a disillusioned
post-anarchist, neo-idealist, post-marxist
post-modernist and neo-critical agent
who is lost among all the jargon
and centuries old debates of
just versus unjust
right versus wrong
true versus false
beautiful versus ugly.
i wish i had a moral firm ground
on which i could claim what i believe
in my fullest knowledge and best intentions
is just, right, true and beautiful.
but i don't know much and often
i don't act on my best intentions.
in my usual imperfection
what i have believed to be
just, right, true and beautiful,
a glimpse of what ought to be,
may equally become
unjust, wrong, false and ugly,
burdens of a troubled past to be
dismantled, reconstructed and justified.
in an age where
thought is reduced to a function,
language to a game and
reason to an all purpose justification agent
conditioned by genes, culture and economics
nothing i have said or done has any
chance of being
significant, relevant or legitimate
for all the prophets of my age
can't be anything but
cynical and disillusioned.
i am, like thousands before me,
one of those who are about to die of
shortage of breath in the ocean of
insignificance.

scratch and ye shall find a disappointed
idealist under every pessimistic critic.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

break a sheath
break it over your skin
to share between us
as i gasp
desperate
yearning for something
anything

an unhappy and angry ghost
scornfully whispers
"what you need is what you are
what you want is who you are"
only half-joking with a smug smile

i have no hart to tell him
to fornicate with himself
for i know i get angry
only when i am told a truth
i do not like

so, we arrive here: an impasse
and i hear from far away
a lovely yet a very sad song
about loving a broken woman
in a broken bed

i will start humming
as soon as i forget what i am

Thursday, May 29, 2008

i can't write what i need to write
in fear of repeating myself

history
they say
is a cycle repeating itself
over and over again
including my own

my
internal
peace
is
a
never
ending
quest
perhaps
more
dubious than
a pot of gold at the
end of a rainbow

this one however
is guarded by my inner daemons

and better yet
in this particular dream
"there is no place like home"
takes you to a whorehouse
in ankara

as a last resort
somebody screams

"i
am a
rat in
a cage
and
i
am
not
fond
of
spinning
cycles"

fall curtain
roll credits
the end

Flashback: July 4, 2001

look! it is the colors of sadness
dripping lusciously over my fingers
you so fearfully desire

and i remember you stealing a line
from a song you've heard saying
'happiness has an end
but sadness is endless'

a dark shadow passes over your eyes
a deploring look
with a most electrifying touch
over your shoulders, drops on the
floor so very effortlessly that
even my tired affectionless decorum
shatters into pieces
right there

don't speak of love but obsession
not of caring but needing
i'd desperately want to say
trying to catch that look

no, no you say
making our time growing slower
as you utter each 'no'
no. no.. no...
i feel each street-light pierces
the darkness through my skin
cars go by
people shout
and each 'no' hammers a feeling
of a desperate loss

as i join the ranks of poets fallen
for lost causes
my lips start humming hymns
with my fingers still wet from
your endless sadness