False Positive

I hate my photograph,

it is not me-who stare

at you behind the mirror.

That false reflection

with curved lips,

chinkee-eyed to greet

a hello. To whom?

 

I don’t want witnesses

to frame me in that split-second

prison cell of disguise.

I buckle down, and sweating

my bones, electrocuted,

dead nervous of strangers’

gaze into my inner being.

 

I hate questions.

I hate it when you whitewash

a harsh reality with a soft answer.

It’s a scalpel dissecting

an organ, trying to find

hidden tumor that metastasized

blood flowing a river

and then you drowned

along with drowning the negative

until it sinked in.

 

Please,  tell the doctor.

He is not welcome here.

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The Confession

If you came here

to read my poems to rhyme,

you’ll be disappointed.

 

I do not offer a life

nor its manicured rhyme

but a disjointed rhythms

of words. Of thoughts

messed around misaligned

tensions of surviving

to live and exist.

 

I am not ashamed- to speak

the painful answers to questions

yet some are eager to clarify

the vagueness of the person-

and his art of illusion.  I do not

 

offer a solution to a malady

but I am willing to bare

the broken bones.

There is no guilt

 

for a man who stand

for what he is

and would offer no

facelift to his present

circumstance.

 

If you came here

to read my poems to rhyme,

you’ll be disappointed.

I will not offer a story

fit for a fairytale.

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Occupy Spaces

It is like me, filling the blank spaces with letters

and thoughts I- only I could understand you

and me. And why do we need to belong each other.

Balloons need to fill in with air and float. To be free.

To go to some places and leave monotony.

Car wheels imprinting its destiny on a lifetime

of wanderlust, embracing wide open spaces.

 

I try to skip around fear. Dodge people’s gazes

piercing through my self-made envelope of distrust.

Like a cloak I shielded myself away from someone’s

intrusion, uninvited to enter my world. I own. This room

of living the years full of questions of why do we need

to belong each other- keeping a stranger to my house.

 

And now I can see, that this page is getting crowded

with thoughts I- only I could understand you and me.

It is like a bottle of wine emptying its last night’s discontent.

It is like a pack of cigarettes I consumed of inhaling

and watching the wisps of smoke thin out of dreams.

Wind will carry the tides farther away to the horizon

but you know it will land on somebody else’s shore.

 

I need not to bring my own footprints.

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Aching Thread

My thoughts are as directionless

as the moths seeking for warmth.

The fire within crackles

sending cinders to my realm.

My mantra of calm are as restless

as the grasshopper hopping

to some isolated and jotted

islands of images, dark-

that painterly abstraction.

Jarring and savage.

 

Some questions will burn tonight.

And answers will die on my bed.

 

I, like a squirming maggot

will never break it out.

My wings  would never ride

the wind like the butterfly.

The ants are climbing

this white walled kingdom.

The night owl squeals a secret.

While the lizard is ready

to pounce for vengeance.

 

That’s what is left of me.

An spectator to the scenes which

I could not connect in a thread.

Bare. Hope. Chance

snapping some strings

and shout eureka. I found it.

 

How shall I fill the blanks

that never beg for words?

Naked. Lying here like a piece

of shit and this suicidal poem.

Eccentricity finds no reason,

dangerous and hangs its limit.

That yielding point.

 

Sanity is a false shelter where

no one wants to be intruder

and break down the door.

Open wide discovering

another neck is lingering

asleep forever in dreams.

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Having Said Enough

Cut the line, if you do not want to hear what I’m saying.

Burn the page, if you do not like what you see.

I don’t have the habit of repeating myself

over and over again just to be understood.

 

Somehow, there will come a time that explanations

are not required. Questions are left unsaid

out of courtesy, while your mind is bubbling

with doubts, you need to accept me of who I am.

 

Like this, we talk on the phone without expression.

The heavy tone of your voice means a disappointment.

You’re definitely upset when I can’t catch you. And you

can’t catch me as we are both lost in translation.

 

Let us stop this virtual war. This undue vexation

of words coated in the niceties of being cerebral.

Can’t we simply talk as normal humans do,

caught in the flimsiness of conduct and etiquette?

 

You see, I didn’t plan to have more than five

stanza to this poem and keep on intellectualizing

on how stupid it was to win our every argument.

You know, sometimes you do not have to fight

 

every battles you are invited in. Just choose-

the best one. And argue with me. Fine.

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The Fortune Teller

The sanctum smelled of incense and human sweat.

An airless space reverberating whispers of prayer.

She folded a piece of cloth with the holy verse

dipped in animal blood. This is an amulet.

For someone who is afraid of thieves.

 

She knelt across the table ready with her questions

“Do you need a husband? Do you need a wife?”

“Do you need another? Do you need a child?”

“The lines on your palm says you will be rich.”

“The card says you will find your true love.”

 

Then she brought in her candles, started

to light it with a match. She began to read

from a withered book- in its brittle leaves

filled with strange symbols of spells and magic.

Summoning wisdom from the invisible.

 

“Someone wants to harm you, better beware.”

“Keep this stone in a bottle and hide it in your closet.”

She has seen it all- customers come and go

leaving her money for that token of gratitude.

And accepting them as a way of getting by.

 

She keep on caressing the old crystal ball,

ignoring the signs of her grey and thinning hair.

She believed she has power to prevail death.

But  time slowly creeps like a thief in the night

when she can no longer be speaking about

 

the future.

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On The Last Chapter

The past are days

like pages in a book.

On the first few pages

you can’t figure out

what the story is all about. 

 

Prologue.

 

“There is a man struggling

to find his place in this world.

Had his share of hits and misses.

Of crossroads where-

it is hard to decide

which road to walk into, and

on which doors to knock.

Afraid, that somebody may not

be there to turn the knob.

And open up.”

 

If only, these eyes can pause reading

and stop for a while at these words

that almost made me yawn and sleep.

Insignificant hours of keeping on.

Hoping this story will not lead

into another unhappy ending.

 

“Why do we have to be serious

all the time?”

 

Don’t ask me. It’s your problem.

The questions still left

hanging in there, moments.

When pages stood unclear,

incomplete with the sentence.

Waiting for somebody

to knock the door. I’ll open up.

 

“Is that all?  Is that all?

Is that all there is to wait

and it all boils down to this?”

 

Tempted to return to the first few pages.

Back to the parts when I remember

breaking down halfway through a paragraph.

As if not knowing how did it start

somebody talking to me. It should have

been better not to have read at all.

No clues from the beginning.

 

And the countdown to the hours

remains. Finish reading parts

on the last chapter- I confront.

Today- no happy ending.

 

 

Epilogue.

 

“And fear creeps in like a mirror

he have to face everyday.

There was a time when he need

to jump into the pond of uncertainty.

Searching the man in his reality,

faced with nagging bouts of questions-

What’s next? What’s on the other side?

What’s the  future?”

 

I can’t figure out.

What this story is all about. 

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