Writer’s Bloc

He keeps me shrouded in shredded pieces

sprawled and reclusive and momentarily

locked up vanishing in mediocrity.

 

Like someone who is afraid of the sanity

and Charles Dicken’s tale of two cities

and I never get to understand Virginia

Woolf, why her heart cries like a wolf

in the night longing for words as

earnest as Oscar Wilde. Dorian must be

some kind of lover of self and boisterous

as Ernest Hemingway. Not in the league

 

of imagination pours in my cup of tea.

Blood of ink flooding in my desk.

Days and days of wandering and wondering

where the words hide in the curtains.

That great expectation.

 

Lucky is Jane Austen for she can choose

not to be shrouded and shredded but

privileged unlike some Emily Bronte’s

Heathcliffe who tries to redeem romance.

Some hearts that pound in the will of the horse

and to kill a mockingbird of Harper Lee.

I hope to catch the rye like JD Salinger.

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Vigil

On a white bed, someone is sleeping dear

deep to a dreamland of no return but only

strangers and lovers peering translucent

appearing sad as if they were caged

 

by someone whose scythe has killed

and slit the necks of flowers too eager.

And push them into garland and vases

as if sudden death is a beautiful thing.

 

And  the twin blood-red moon gave birth-

two distant runners racing past each other

galloping silken terrain but their footsteps

leave no traces- only their colorless ordeal.

 

They call them tears.

 

Like lamentations of loss, a dirge, a song

wailed and escaped through cracks

and crevices of consciousness. A proof

that breath is extinguished like candles.

 

Whose spirit wafts the room to shake

and pound the doors with its fists

while the priest can no longer hear

the trite confessions of a sinner.

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Those Sisters’ Men

When my sisters began to marry their men,

I just stop talking to them. Eagerness

suddenly plummet into nil and I began seeing

an imaginary wall that divides me to them.

Those strangers’ hand snatching spaces,

of familiarity, never uttered a word about apologies.

Plundering the blood bond, the images of innocence

running away to far places where I cannot go… I hate them.

 

Suddenly somewhere appears picket fences,

territories, boundaries and cages

which were meant as a warning

not to encroach their line, their property.

And how then, for a split-second

they ruin the emotional investment

my sisters and I build relationships.

 

Ah, they would never understand

the weightier aspects more than

the union of two bodies to breed.

They would never understand how

my sisters and I share a lifetime-

that intimate part we found eversince

we are born, out of our mother’s womb.

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Walking Along

Here, walks people

wasting not a second

navigating urgent missions.

Without halt, in cycles

coming to and from,

fast and slow. We walk

alongside the bobbing sea

of heads and shoulders.

 

There goes a man

who is in a hurry

to catch his train.

While the woman

will just be in time

to make it with an appointment.

Some guy chases a girl.

And a working mom

squeezing in the crowd while

talking on her mobile phone.

 

Like them,

this pavement

lay a mute witness

to strangers who make their way

onward to destinations-

to directions

precisely peg-marked

as milestones to life.

 

Turning left and right,

brushing past signals

and pedestrian crossings

colliding like busy ants.

Our back’s two steps ahead

to the ones whom we have left

behind. Existing as familiar

tourist walking our two legs

in an imaginary life machine.

No one notices the other.

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Sinking Deeper

I sense a dark storm is looming over.

Someone told me that I should not be afraid

of all the tragedy impending.  Even if the winds

blow me empty at will, I should not cower.

There are intruders- those unwelcomed visitors

breaking and entering the skin I lived in.

 

I forgot the keys, my memory slips

down in the labyrinth of forgetting.

I search for clues, deciphering a code

among the pages in the book of days.

 

I misplaced the sign- “don’t disturb”

among the shards of broken plates,

of broken glasses in the kitchen.

Where did I put our picture frame?

 

I can only hear whispers from strangers

whose faces I have seen for the first time.

Ruling my house as if they’re kings and queens

breaching  a territory, our serfdom of privacy.

 

I blame these disrespectful marauders

for letting me swim deeper into the pool.

I got tangled in the maze,  finding myself.

Don’t they know it’s an abyss down here?

 

Don’t they know how it feels to get lost

sinking deeper among piles and boxes

of photographs, of letters, searching-

a faint remembrance of the two of us.

 

They keep on robbing me of something.

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At The Crossroads

Farther and farther apart

the road stretches oppositely

into two directions. I came

to home only to find I did

not belong there anymore.

 

Strangers fill the rooms,

I keep communing with ghosts.

Speaking to the walls and floors

absorbing echoes and heartbeats

from a dying man.

 

Like a bird lost in migration

without a nest to lay its wings.

Through the labyrinth of dreams

I am not yet found.

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Decoupage

In the old quarter of the city,

in the nakedness of the cold walls

of this back street. I sit alone, outside.

Here. In the almost empty corner of the café.

Looking beyond many mornings

distant, from the crowd.

 

There is something.

In the stale morning air that reminds me

of one strange midnight.

 

A quiet conversation of two souls

connecting among the silver teaspoons,

teacups and porcelain.

 

Exchanged glimpses of a period

when things are new, young and free.

Reliving a story of the jaded past

within a single stretch of hours

waiting for the sunrise.

 

There is something-

which I failed to grasp

and took hold of.

 

Something in the dust-filled glass windows.

The peeled off paint from the ceiling.

The wallpaper shedding its ancient skin.

The tattered leather and cushions

of these vintage chairs.

 

There is a memory of a voice fading

like the sheen from this worn-out table.

Among the bread crumbs for the pigeons to share.

And this bronzed cup leaving off a tinge-

a certain warmth I could not forget.

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