Of Love Songs

Midnight empties my heart--- 

-              -We might have united,

In the moment of a heartbeat

When the sun was high

And even shadows had withdrawn.

Into newspaper print.

Fluids trickle in this heated summer

Of lazy passions

Where fat flies couple unhurriedly

And secrets spill in to each other

 digging deeper in to flesh

 bellowing in to graves.

No dark corners may be found

virginal, in this city.

    And we, ever faster in nothingness

An accidental sigh

    escapes

 is caught back hastily

the viscous white silence spreads again.

A form develops

Among white sheets

It is suspect. flickers---

  indecisively.

We must trust

In false fecundity.

Let this cerebral carnage

Destroy me.

Till I am no more. Emptiness.

Only a moth remains

Nibbling  your insides

   Blood     gushes

Charades

A golden arrow

Penetrates the darkness

Adolescent thighs of furry nights

Open to receive it.

 

                                    For we are good hosts. Welcome.

And I in my lamp

Deaf to the sun’s hollering

In my safe dignity and retreat

Refuse to awaken.

Lunar madness is familiar

The frenzy of words,

A consolation

Daylight a dream.

                                 You are here now, we will not let you go.

The sun moves to other skies

Monogamy is a charade.

Stars are prone to swindling.

And clouds to inter-mingling.

                             

                                   Incest is in the air. Infidelity is the highest law. There is no loyalty.

 The river rages

Against this sudden betrayal.

Protests, like in a democracy.

The solar system is a monarchy.

                                   In the kingdom of the sun, free will is not tolerated.

 Why should I be honest?

I will allow my words to deceive.

Hypocrite lecteur! mon semblable!

Believe what you may believe.

For words, like the sun, also mislead. 

But I, eternally, safe, and asleep.

City of Melancholy

City of melancholy

Your narrow streets are full

of mystery.

Cobble-stoned serpents wind through your heart

And stitch you together.

 Like a jigsaw puzzle.

On winter evenings, I feel

That you are a dream

A lie, spun by the rain

And the fog.

As your lights grow dim

And you almost vanish.

Made up of so many little pieces

You never feel real.

Your beauty scares me.

Reminds me of my ugliness

And loneliness. Exposes

My vulnerabilities.

No, you are no city

A mere postcard

Or an old black and white photo

Bought by a tourist

At a boquinist’s

By the Seine, pour €1,05.

Let them see you outside the postcard

In the graffiti of abandoned buildings

The smell of the metro

The crowd and the broken seats

The gypsy woman who kneels in the rain

And begs.

In the rats sheltering in the crevices

Of your underground

Dancing playfully and cheering on

their human counterparts.

In this city

Rats and men are neighbours.

We are a quiet people.

Nay, we are sheep

But quieter

As we pour in to offices and homes
And homes and offices, in large numbers-

A daily exodus.

Suddenly, amid the stink

And the heat of the metro

As I am pushed and jerked

I spot a few verses

Of an anonymous poet

And love you again.

Decadent City, I am slave to you.

Of Faith

Signs are not divine

They are put up by the local municipal council.

Let that be  a lesson

To every believer.   

There is no certainity of heaven

or hell.

Only of democracy.

And sometimes, poetry.

Paris

Here, where only doors

Open and close

All is strange.

I hear through the walls

Sirens. For we are the children

Of science. We defy death

And live on our own.

Taunting laughter

Voices voices voices

Now loud, now soft

As someone makes love in the distance

I listen.

Meanwhile, doors open and close

Forever.

Among long corridors.

I see the street below

With its zebra stripes

And its elephant skin

And machines roaring

And chirping

Dreadul parrots.

Still the doors open and close

And latches click shut.

Soon it grows dark

The sun abandons us

Careless lover

Moving to other planets

Other bodies

While they only open doors

And shut them

As I listen.

Deprived of sight

By blinding light

I only smell

Fish and meat.

In this city of cannibals

I am no Tiresias.

More doors open and shut

And echo in the silence.

The day completes its loop

And I am locked out

Like always

Like I was there,

I am here too, a stranger.

Among a strange people.

And forever the doors open

And close.

And I hear.

Rituals

In the evening

The lights come on

As darkness appears

And we silently make our way home

For in the evening that is what one must do

That is what our fathers did

And before that the caveman that hunted in the forest.

That is what they said we must do

Because,

 because then everything remains normal

The T.V. blares on

While we make dinner

‘How was your day?’

Conversation

To fill the silence

While we pick at animals

With forks and knives

And pretend we’re civilized.

And eat neatly cut vegetables and leaves

Homo erectus in silk and cotton

These rituals

Are life.

Silence

I fill yellowed paper

With blackened silence.

There was a time

When I ejected words

Mass produced, industrialized and cheap.

In plastic. And well packaged

so that they wouldn’t break

An adolescent obsession

Don’t we all love to write

some poetry? Sign our name

On paper. So that we exist, at last.

Yes, there was a time

When I poured out meaningless words

With pleasure and pride.

With inspiration. And now

I fill

Yellowed paper

With a grim silence