drifting through the jungle

keora leaves fall quietly on the
tired river that
moves steadily towards the
awaiting sea
one cannot be
aware of activity
at all times.
& at all times
tigers roam the
islands of the sunderbans
& at all times
i was not aware.
& all that was received was
a silent feeling of
being watched through
the darker trees
by two luminous
effervescing eyes.

breathe this green

breathe this green
that echoes across
miles, that echoes
underneath a sleeping
river green. breathe
this green that
cancels the brown
of eyes breathing
and the green
breathing eyes
of the river.
breathe this green
through which we squint
for a hint
of orange and black
that never was
that always was
elusive.

She was on him, screaming his name, squirming like a hungry maggot while He lay still enjoying the springiness of the bed. She was a passionate, fiery-eyed goddess and He was carrying an entire galaxy in his head. But in the end, underneath they were both dead. She longed for a countryside life with horses and pigs and cows and little yellow seeds that she imagined growing into big fat trees. He longed for nothing anymore, except perhaps the continuous oral care of his cock. To be honest both their dreams were futile, for while one tries to follow her dream, the other pins her down by the mouth with his manhood. These are all metaphors. In the morning they have coffee together, hungover without drinking, cross-eyed and cross with each other, for no apparent reason. It is just so. They have no work, no hassles, and no expectations from other people to slow them down. But here the question arises: slow them down for what? In twenty years time they will not go anywhere. The same house will stand in the same place at the same street, decaying. By that time his cock will not be able to pin down even a squirrel, and it won’t even matter. It will be too late, too late for her. Her blonde hair will be doled with wisps of grey and white silk, and her hands will be too coarse and deathly to hold the reins of a horse.

After a series of genial miscarriages her want of a life has faded away. Her eyes reflect the apathy and grief of her city, the streets of which are swarming and swarming with her brothers and sisters, all dead underneath. Yet they hide their loneliness well, deliberately and with haste. He likes to think that he doesn’t, anymore. His loneliness is poised on a sad little stage for all to see. He visits strip clubs and dingy pubs with suspiciously mangy women, who spend their time polishing their ten-foot fingernails with a hot bowl of wax while eating soup with their vagina dentate. They are strange. He is lonely. He likes soup but it doesn’t taste like anything anymore. Not with the coarse and deathly hands that prepare it.

They got themselves a dog, a thin old spaniel, name being Rasputin, blind as a worm. He wasn’t a very good dog, but that too is debatable. Half of her time went by cleaning his feces and washing all the insects crawling over his body. He drooled like a hagfish. She loved him but he only humped her leg, sometimes, half-heartedly. She tried to take him for walks but Rasputin would prefer to stay, instead, with Him. He on the other hand hated Rasputin and would tie him up to a poplar tree in the garden and kick him repetitively. After a point that seemed to be his favourite pastime. After a point Rasputin was no more. His ribs had been kicked open and he died a terribly painful death on a painfully festive night. She cried a little, while he got his excuse to get drunk with suspiciously mangy women. Life drifted by.

On the day of His death he was at the museum. A horrendously heavy night of drinking had left him wandering zig-zag with a bottle of rum in his hand all around town. A suspiciously mangy woman followed him, eyes rolling, lips wet. Soon enough and somehow or other he had stumbled towards the museum, and it seemed to him natural that, since he had come this far, why not give himself a free tour? The time seems right to see the history of our little ickle earth, what with the dinosaurs, and the fossils, and the artifacts, and all that science, mystery, legend, and fucking monkeys in caves staring placidly at a group of other monkeys wrapped in white staring at a group of other monkeys embroidered in gold, all these dumb fucking monkeys. Fucking monkeys, he thought. And so he broke in, and he walked halfway down the hall, and passed out, and in his sleep he choked on his own vomit and died. Fucking monkeys.

If anything, she was jealous. Her eyes had not delivered tears when she heard of His death. Her eyes had delivered only a look of confusion, and then a look of anger, and then a look of acceptance. And the next day it was a look of jealousy. It always leads to jealousy with these people, thought God, the most jealous of them all. And so, now she was all alone, and the house was as empty as her mind. She only felt grief, and a curiously large amount of self-pity. In her coming years she will never realise that the change she had wanted, the excitement she craved all her life, was always within reach, always in her hands. She only had to reach out and grab it, and shove it out towards the sky for all the stars to see. In the coming years she will never realise that she, like so many of us, has lived the life of a vegetable. And on the day of her death she, just like Him, will regret every day of her life. And those of us who do not experience life, but rather passively drift by airily without paying any attention, we shall all regret, and never be able to escape this spiral.

innerlimbo

my lips they seem to have been sealed
i cannot say till it is revealed
for now my heart is still as stone:
it fell asleep to a simpler tone
it breathes and breathes in yellow sighs
and it may not stir until it dies
and within it lies another heart
that weighs too thick to be torn apart
that has no will nor life nor grief
that bears no way to feel belief
but deepest down i know of this:
you must fight for what you miss
and no heart of stone can ever stand
between me and my wonderland;
so i take my leave till it's revealed
my lips they seem to have been sealed.

lonesome night

watch it grow, this lonesome night
this night i wish would fade to white
watch it breathing lullabies
watch it breathing through its eyes
my conscience chokes and cannot sleep
i've run too far and delved too deep
and now the road that led me down
has led me to my lonesome town
so now i'm here and i cannot leave
i cannot do what kings achieve
and when the world is cold and still
look out through your window-sill
watch it rise, this deathly plight
watch it grow, this lonesome night
the stars they're glowing yellow-white
the stars they're glowing crimson-bright
never dancing out of sight
never reading what i write
the stars they made my heart ignite
they need no love they have no fear
this lonesome night i disappear.

Misery disappears at the realisation of a beautiful indifferent universe.

Hiding Under the Living-Room Table

I have been hiding under the living-room table for almost a thousand years. I have hidden in many other places around the house, but this was my favourite spot. The living-room table. And a marvellous table it was, with it's precariously polished, beautifully carved legs that hung down like the limbs of a black jungle-god. By now everyone knows where I am, for they've figured out where I spend most of my time. Hiding under furniture. They call me furniture man. One day while I was concentrating on my usual hiding posture I was surprised to see a little girl sneaking in from behind me, her eyes big and wide with fear. I asked her why she was where she was. She said she was running away from her captors, and I peeked outside and I saw her entire life in the shape of a jackal scavenging through the room, in search of its little vessel .

Why am I here? I could jolly well be outside, basking under sunshine, running around in circles, enjoying myself. It is because I still enjoy myself, outside or not, and rather immensely at that, in my little dim rectangular cave under the living-room table. There is a difference between isolation and solitude. Here, I have all that I need. Outside, a face among a thousand more, I feel isolated. Sometimes, I sneak outside and merge with everyone else to keep them happy. But wherever I go, I am always under the living-room table.

The only time I feel I should abandon my shelter is when I am in love. When I am in love, I falter. I no longer wish to be by myself, but rather with (and very awkwardly so) the one in question. I am like a cowardly dog, too afraid to come out from under the sofa to take his little scrumptious treat. I am afraid, perhaps, of heartbreak, and perhaps I am not afraid at all, but merely apathetic. Or perhaps I am afraid of dependence. I falter.

Her hair is a mesh of golden brown, almost the shade of her eyes. I remember watching her walking by, I remember dreaming. She remains beautiful, she remains graceful, while I remain untrodden, silent, staring. She is also afraid, she is indeed hiding. She is yet to pull me out. When we are together our tables bump against each other. She knows nothing yet, but might just be curious. I may be curious. I may have faltered. But I have faltered while sitting under the living-room table. And I have loved under the living-room table. And I am in love under the living-room table, wishing I could just crawl out.

Why are we here? Not to exploit, or destroy, or deceive, or hate, or multiply, or believe, or even to love, or travel by foot, bus, train or flight, or just to smile and be happy. We aren't here for fate, wisdom, or grief. Nor are we here at someone else's expense, or because it was our destiny. No, we aren't here for any of that. We aren't here for anything at all. So why are we here? It doesn't matter, fact is that we are. Relax, just enjoy the ride.

Autumn Lady

It's been many lazy afternoons
That I've seen you through your window
You were dancing in the living-room
You were spinning nice and slow

And I entered through the garden door
And I caught you before you fell
For I know that you have constantly
Been falling to the floor
And I've seen the way you look at me
I've seen your eyes before

And the sun had stopped its shining
And the seas are breathing softly
While your eyes they shimmer brighter still
Like a star from long ago

And the stairways zigzag through the trees
That stand outside your walls
They hang onto the highway
For fear they too will fall

And the gates of hell have been grieving
To have lost the sight of you
And no king nor god can ever fathom
The things that you can do

And the sun had stopped its shining
And the seas are breathing softly
While your eyes they shimmer brighter still
Like a star from long ago

And your breath it sifts the sand at night
As we sleep upon our beach
It stretches white for miles and miles
Its end too far to reach

And I've taken all for granted
And I predict what could be said
But you, you stand a fortress
And your soldiers have left me dead

And the sun had stopped its shining
And the seas are breathing softly
While your eyes they shimmer brighter still
Like a star from long ago.

And every second my eyes rest upon
The path that you have walked
My heart he leaps and disappears
And my lips they cannot talk
For I know the path that you have chose
Was the path that I have strode
But I'm lost and my shoes have tethered down
From the friction of the road

And the sun had stopped its shining
And the seas are breathing softly
While your eyes they shimmer brighter still
Like a star from long ago.

Atonement

Our night is young
It sweeps the sky
In its cradle
We learn to fly
And one can see
One wear a smile
And snigger secrets:
Secret guile
And long ago
Within my sleep
I fought a war
I went too deep
Now that is lost
And lost for words,
I sit and stare
At shadowed birds
That sweep the sky
Forever young
Riding verses
Of songs unsung
Yet here you are
With your pretty hair
And I look at you
And I sit and stare
So hear me, love
And heed my cry:
Our night is young
And shall never die.

these people that are now a crowd,
these people that have screamed aloud,
their sorrow hides behind their frown,
their stories i shall pen them down.

To a bird

in the streets that we have bought
i have seen you lost in thought
in the plains of grief and naught
i have seen you walking.

and upwards you had hitched in lifts
and downwards i have moved in shifts
and never have we paused for gifts
nor water nor conversing.

and i have seen your inner world
and i have seen your sighs unfurl
in fits and screams they swirl and swirl
without rhyme or reason.

and as i drift on further down
through our moon's dressing gown
there is no tear nor grief nor frown
only quiet acceptance.

and as you circle up in time
through fields of forest smoke sublime
most definitely in your prime
too soon you reach the sun

and when you touch the fireball
one day baby you have to fall
and spiral down where angels call
to you in dreamy murmurs.

so do not breathe another sigh
for in my dream you learn to fly
and in my dream you never die
this dream that spirals downwards.

and in the streets that we have bought
where we have drifted lost in thought
where the city groans in grief and naught
existence has no meaning.

how long has it been?
how long, through these filthy semen streets
have i been walking?

these things on the wall

these things on the wall who are forever in yearning
these things on the wall who will forever be sleeping
they stand for no man and they stand for no minstrel
and they are standing no longer but are hiding in mirrors
these things on the wall they have reflected my reverie
they surround you with hunger till you cry out a memory
and every waking morning they will feed on my conscience
and they follow me in subtleties till i end up going nowhere
and they wait for me in numbers and are guided by shepherds
and they dance around their campfire and lather in their alcohol
and none have ever lingered for more than a moment
and none will ever linger for the rest of this evening
and there will be no one to come follow me tomorrow
and one cannot fathom the weight of their sorrow
but soon it shall pass and soon shall be forgotten
and i will never look back over my shoulder
these things on the wall they are waiting for morning
these things on the wall they have truly been learning
and they have leapt on the trees but not on the mountains
and they are leaping over rivers and riding the oceans
these things on the wall, they are not breathing
these things on the wall, where are their shadows?
these things on the wall, where are their shadows?

My motives are lost in repetitive thought.

estranged

this face is not mine
these hands hold no dust
nor shine
nor an ounce of love that lived on
in the creeks of my skin
i, within
a world submerged
upside down in the waters
of sweetest nonchalance
yet if perchance i wake up
from this terrifying terrifying sleep
hold me tight, sir Tragedy!
for i refuse to fall back:
god knows i can't swim.

Starry-eyed

Wave goodbye to moments akin
Ferment the flesh of the fruit of sin
Sip it, now, with nonchalance
In death do I live my foreverdance.

Icarus

Red gleamed white in this brightest night,
Red rushed past my eyes.
Like angels soft and sad with hearts
That fell into the skies.
In leaps and bounds we spread our wings,
In leaps and bounds we flew---
But I dreamed too soon, I dreamed too soon,
I dreamed I dreamed of you.

Verusian Vinniefly.

His little box

Years later, I found a little box where I kept my most prized possessions. It was empty. Had I not wanted anything as a child? Perhaps I had lost everything. I remember losing my toys at a ridiculously rapid rate. Even now I consistently keep losing things, and people don't trust me with their lighters and matches any more. I pocket them absent-mindedly. I pocket all sorts of things absent-mindedly. (I am an absent-minded thief.) I am stranded in my self-made island of wretched carelessness. I mean no harm. (I am a harmless possum.)

It was empty.
Are we compelled to put things into our little boxes and spend the rest of our lives scavenging through our neighbour's backyard looking for more? I hold every shit in the morning closer to my heart than mere material wealth.
Often I drown myself in self-pity and try to justify my disregard for the enormous web of humanity that surrounds me, with vague philosophical ejaculations. They are all premature (ha, ha). It seldom works. Perhaps it is the sperm count (my philosophical penis is weak). I am like a dog without an appetite in a land of raining biscuits.
I have recurring dreams. I have recurring dreams of being followed by a dog, rabid and mangy, mouth frothing at the lips. He stalks me everywhere I go like a lonely drifting spirit, inching closer all the time but never close enough. Every morning after, I would awake with goosebumps scourging my back and no morning erections. (I still have these dreams now and then and cannot figure out why he is so intent on following me even into offices, banks and classrooms. I must be going crazy.)

I must be going crazy. People mention this all the time but seldom mean it. It is half-hearted and lethargic. It breeds loss of breath. It is death. Often it loses its meaning and observers let it go by without pausing to mull it over. Words die in conversations on the profound. (Words die in English classrooms.) Usually it is a lie. If a man were to truly realise the inevitable demise of his sanity, it would send a nerve-racking chill up his spine (And plant rabid dogs in his dreams. He will be followed everywhere forever and ever.) If I am to go insane, I will need nothing more than an empty room and a box of paint. (I have learned to keep things simple.) I will paint the room to my liking. People can watch me as I paint the walls over and over again. It will be like a zoo. (I am a majestic tiger, and the paint is my roar.) (I am Sisyphus, and the paint is my boulder) They will throw me treats now and then and I will grovel and drool on the floor like a pathetic worm. (Insanity is no joke.) I hope to goodness I don't become crazy enough to eat all of the paint. I hope it never happens (and now it will because I've thought of it. That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.) That would be a real shame. (What will I draw with?) That is bad enough to be deemed as torture. (What will I do when I'm bored?) I hope they don't put me in a straitjacket. I expect I will die out of an excess of defiance (paranoia) or claustrophobia (paranoia). It has to be paranoia. I do not trust myself. (Sometimes I feel that everyone I know are aware of something important, and keeping it secret from me) How will I draw with a straitjacket on? I will have to use my mouth. I will have to try. Apparently some people can paint with their anus. (I will have to try.)

I will have to try and put things into my little box. Maybe cut-outs of pretty girls and some money. (These days little boxes are known as banks). I hope they're worth it.

the sky is red with anger and the deserts are still yellow. in the city the streets wind down like ancient serpents, hissing in a hollow drone, its alleyways wet with dead rats and subway semen that turn up all the way from the crowded subway below. and yet the irony is, artists are still painting beautiful pictures.

blue

blue the colour of september
blue this dreary night of march
blue the skies after withered storms
blue the drunken days at hand
blue my mourning motherland
blue the skin of corpses cradled
by the lonely love of a river
(the river not so blue anymore)
blue the heart of fire
blue this world of prying prying souls
blue cockroaches in manholes
blue your grey eyes
blue my heart
where black applies.

Night-time

Tonight, under a sleeping sky,
I kissed the moon and waved goodbye.
For she, unspoken, had grabbed my heart:
Our love can tear the world apart.
And so, after our night went pale,
I checked to see if our love was stale.
And lo, behold! I found no heart:
She took that away before the start
Of the time when we slept
tangled, insane,
Of the night where she spread
into my brain,
And I smiled to myself, and I wrote her a song;
I will see you again, it won't be long.
I will see you again, it won't be long.

Dream before your time is nigh,
Dream before your turn to die.

Whisper

To you, my brother, these lines are laid bare.
To you, my brother, I weep freely.
For the needlestain junkies in the streets have flung me out,
And all the minstrels in their opera halls have spat their hatred on my face,
That boiled sickly sweet so much so that entire cavities drilled through my brain
and kissed the stars that hung around fucking and multiplying in their sky-beds above
I have been pushed into an orgy clown-box
by people who had considered me innocent,
and white and shiny like a rare diamond,
which when it looked into the mirror
saw itself in kaleidoscopic horror,
I have toiled under sack upon sack of wounded hearts
which I stitched with the skin of my shivering lips, which in turn
hung limp and loose and paranoid and unable to kiss,
I have toiled under entire mountains of protruding eyeballs squirming and staring staring staring,
staring maggotridden and stinking,
I have toiled under the stink of justice,
for I had wronged, I have wronged, I will err,
I have toiled, I have toiled, for a snail-paced decade of decadence
And with my fingernails I have scratched a stranger's face
That sat placidly on my neck, unwillingly, obscurely
Fingernails that bled profusely from their tendons
that hung bare and peeled off if you picked at it enough,
I have walked through slimy green gangrene greentown redtown blacktown downtown alleys
where angels fucked themselves over gigantic barrels of whiskey,
their dicks hanging out like some
ugly decaying stinking sucker-mouth sucking the night air,
which they briskly tucked into their trousers at nine o' clock, sharp,
their dicks, not the night,
passing greying, dying versions of themselves without a second thought, indeed, with disgust; indeed, with guilt;
I have fallen through the flickering trickholes of love
and landed on soft pillows of indifference and often I have died,
and I have called for you, brother
when I lay in bed with my brain throbbing on the far side of the room,
I have screamed, screamed for slithery electric eels
to tie themselves like a noose around my tongue,
before I cry out:
"Shit! Filth! Suckers of Satan's cock!
Mongrels! Murderers!
Fuck you! Fuck yourselves!"
And yet I refrain, I refrain
My heart is heavy,
My heart is wilting,
And to my lovers: I have forgotten you
with a sort of kindness that you must have used to forget me,
I have forgotten your eyes when we fucked day and night,
I have forgotten our kisses when I look at your silhouetted face,
only ready to show itself after
a decent diplomatic mask has been chosen,
I have forgotten our grief when we sat dawdling in empty rooms
with heavy walls that vomited nightmares and toxic ooze,
and our flowers are now scattered along an unremembered road.
I have forgotten how to awake,
I have forgotten myself, and sometimes
I forget the world.
I have toiled, brother,
I am dying, brother,
And I do not know where I am.

Love love love love love
la-la-love
makes the world go WAR

Tragedy

We laughed, we cried,
Side,
By side,
We danced, we danced; However---
The shine we held was thus expelled,
And she hid her face, forever.

I searched our cheers for years and years.
I searched, until today.
She was, perhaps, a dream, of sorts:
A dream that slunk away.

Starry-eyed

Wave goodbye to moments akin
Ferment the flesh of the fruit of sin
Sip it, now, with nonchalance
In death do I live my foreverdance.

Loop

I must have entered through the back-door, although it could have easily been the front, if I happened to looked at it that way, once, twice, thrice, or if all of us inside already chose to perceive it that way, but that was not the case, as the case may be, or must have been, and so I must have entered through the back-door, the black-door, the aging, deceased, forgotten minority of a door, even though there have been only two doors as far as I can remember, as the rest of the front and back-doors ceased to exist completely, like when you shut your eyes as tightly as possible till starshine seeps into that enveloping vacuum that floats, infinitely, infinitely, I wouldn't know, I don't know, I must have known, I must have entered through the back-door, I don't remember, I forget, I don't remember, I have forgotten all of you in the process of remembering where I have come from and how I came to be here, I have forgotten all of you for I grew fond, grew to be perhaps, perhaps too engrossed with myself, my hands, my feet, and the world around me from which you were to be rubbed off, erased, the world that I entered through the back-door, the black-door, the strong, silent, stone door, I have walked on oceans, yes, oceans deep and oceans wide, deep and wide I entered the back-door, the black-door, after which all of you were forgotten and the gaping hole that was left in my memory was filled with that back-door, that black-door, the door behind which stands a million-foot fall, I fell, I fell, I slipped away, through the back-door, the black-door, I don't think I will ever remember when we are.

A Letter of Apology To That Little Man Inside My Brain

Little man, speak;
For you have been silent for many nights
And I have made you wear silly smiles,
As you walked back,
Endlessly,
Back to your curious little cave-lair,
My head.

Little man, scream;
For you are very very angry with me,
I know,
And I would really really like to make it up to you.
Truly, honestly.

This time, we walk back together,
Endlessly,
Back to our curious little cave-lair,
My head.

Fucking Alcoholics

Wake up, wake up, little child,
And smile your toothy smile.
I have heard your calls through your little red window,
And I, I have decided to help you.
I have decided to help you
Fight the man-eating monsters under your bed.
That being said,
It will cost you a cookie,
And seventeen golden coins,
For each ghoul I slay.
And if streaks of treachery
Cross your mind even by an inch of hair,
I will sit you firmly on your chair.
And you will have to watch,
As I beat your pregnant mother with a bottle of scotch.

Call me Dad.

Agony

It was one of the brightestnights in his life and he lay on his green grass-bed blinking unblinking at the starry starry night-sky ceiling shimmering sleepily above him, like divine rosy cheeks of a white virgin goddess. He bid the world the softest of sighs, and closed his crescent-moon eyes. Inside, a massive pulsating void vast as the ocean and scarlet as the fiercest of fires engulfed his torso as he melted into a gleaming green stretch of deep-seated joy that was his happy little room. His jingling, shrieking box of kaleidoscopes. His dancing, singing, jingling, shrieking box of kaleidoscopes. His secret, silent trap-door. And yet if all was well and the world was shiny, then why, oh why so glum?

Poor child, he was colourblind. He was deaf. And he was alone, for his parents had passed away.

The end