From The Inner Space

Beyond the skin and bones,
We are all a fragile shell -
The daggers that life throws,
I used to be where they fell -
Many things would ensue then:
Perfume bottles flew off shelves,
Tears from my slit eyelids,
The first angel from heaven
Into a very dark pit,
Rain from the sky on my
Uncovered head,
Pieces off his table
The masses of doubts they fed,
When the last drop had done falling,
The sun would show itself,
Falling, too, into the distance,
There was a rainbow then
Stretching out over my hell -
It hurt to look at such a beauty strain
To, so unwillingly, delight my pain.

He came from the green sea water
Out on the shore to mourn her
To feel the tears running down his face
As if she touched him with her grace
To draw his attention to the setting sun
As it descends into the place he’s come from
To see how the darkness consumes the land
What chance did she ever stand?

He paced the beach for seven days
Sorrow creeping up in snow white waves
Until the moon released the tide
And her into the oblivious sky
The sand buried his still body as he cried
He was the only man on earth that night
Who saw the devil staring at him with spite
In the reflection of the calm see water in the moonlight

The land dried up and cracked in pain
He fell into the gap, in the shadows he lay
Dust settled on his dried lips like snowflakes
That will never melt, their eternal shape
This is where he was born, this is where she laid
Where she died, where he wanted to, too, in his shell
The bewildered lifeguard watched him bidding his farewell
The closing eyes still fixed on the spot where she fell

These words are so dark,
I wish I could write in white light -
These lines are so sharp,
Blood has been spilled tonight.

These verses are so confusing,
Minds have slipped away to the void.
The poem is sometimes bruising,
Like a razor I can’t seem to avoid.

I purge myself,
For many times I was the dirt -
Shame I never soiled your shirt,
The way you did my spirit.

Now my ego throbs
Like a cyst about to burst -
I will lap it all up in sobs
To quench my forgiveness thirst.

The pain follows me
In my unnaturally dark shadow -
Only you and I can see
My soul deep thrown.

I want to purge myself,
Hit you with the bitterness I feel -
Bite you till the pain is real,
Till blood flows as freely as my tears did.

I moved into this place, its natives heard -
Of their growing displeasure, I soon learnt.
‘Where are you from?’ demanded the herd,
“My brothers,” I said, “I’m a native of earth.”

They say I crossed many borders, it isn’t true,
None exist in this world, but ones of an attitude;
That says this land belongs to them alone, and
Because they live there, I can’t call it a home.

But, no animal has ever heard of a foreign land.
Home is where the wind blows, the sun shines:
Yet I’ve seen many foreigners who don’t understand:
Human is what we are, nationalities are the divides.

“Who are your people? Why aren’t you with them?”
I say my people from Africa came, they were the Greeks,
They were native Americans, they were called Romans, too:
But right now I’m here, for you are my people, too.

And it hurts when you frown, when your faces go long
Still you have to insist that here’s not where I belong:
I do not hope to cross the borders of your narrow mind,
Ignorance is where you live, ignorance is where you’ll die.

Death is a shameless paradox
As lives are stolen into a silent forever -
The thief itself never leaves the minds
Of those who are still spared that fate
And grieve their loss at the tomb of memory.

It’s as if the weeping eye knows that
It will never again behold your face,
So the mind picks memories from a hat
With a sad hopefulness, it tries to compensate -
I won’t even try to argue that it’s in vain:

The crumbs of your truly beyond human smile,
The everlasting summer morning in your eye -
Your funny sneeze resonates in my ear
Stronger than my own breath I hear clear
It’s as if your lively self transferred into my mind
Cold are the outside walls, but here you’ll never die.

I am grateful.

Blue eyes and brown hair
You think you know me, forgetting
I did not choose these myself.

I climb up a staircase,
But it does not elevate
My sunken spirit.

I walk across London,
Yet I am not farther from
The sorrows I long to leave.

I step inside through the door,
But I have never felt
An outsider more.

See, the world is deceptive
So how come what
I’ve written here is true?

You and I must think ourselves dramatic
And the never-seen-before kind of tragic
In our own vile spoils we so delight and
Claim to hear the whispers of the night
A convenient creation of our bored mind
Out of egoistic desire to be spoken to
Create our own heaven and hell we do
And the God and the Devils, too
We pull their strings, we decide who
Is making our time here yellow or blue
My God is the sadistic and cynical kind
Like a good writer, for pain is creative
And im the heroin he likes to see cry
He says ‘why not’ when I ask him why
My devil comes across as evasive
He’s the darkness in my vacuous mind
The darkness, my solace, where I hide
He is the one feeding me the poetry
That’s full of insights, full of blasphemy
The lines of mine which are the greatest
Shows my devil to be an atheist

Someone once told me that
The grass was much greener
On the other side
But baby they lied
With heaven on their mind

I once told somebody that
Happiness was worth nothing
On that other side
For which they long to die
But baby not you and I

But baby not you and I

Here I stood in the all revealing moonlight
Somewhere in between my dreams and yours
The nightingale sings, she knows no closed doors
I listen in envy, my soul heartily applauds
Where were we love, in what castle of clouds?
Why is English not enough to share our heart’s doubts?
You’re like the drops of the morning dew
In the red mouth of the rose, but far too few
And far in between, unspoken distances between
What I am inside and the woman that you dream
In your sleep, heavens hear you speak
Is God telling me to go?

I was hung-up, drying out under the summer sun,
In a way only he, with a shiny forehead, could understand.
My dripping tears gave freckles to the smooth sand -
He’d laugh a lot, at my strange metaphors for everything.

But I couldn’t help it; the whole world was a face.
The sea was like a great eyes always looking up the sky –
Like my man trying to see his shiny forehead,
It kept gazing at the sun, maybe hoping to be dried out too
Like me, maybe we were both done looking around –

The ground made for some very interesting hands holding me up,
When I’ve had too much to drink, it would start swaying -
I don’t know if it was to make me fall asleep so I’d stop drinking
Or make me fall over and graze my knees as punishment for being stupid -
There was too much parenting in nature, one couldn’t be themselves
Without consequences. I was tired, I was hung-up.

He understood, I think. Me trying to evaporate last night’s alcohol
In the intense summer heat and why I refused water – tears of the sea -
I don’t know if he knew that me and the sea were looking for the same thing.
An end. Not even that. Just a freedom, that cannot be found within
The parameters of shores, or in my case, the skull. 

She turned to the moon
Wanting to be that full -
Wanting to be the only
Body in her sky - 
In her bed.

There was envy for it
It meant ‘love’ without words,
She exhausted the dictionary,
How did he fail to comprehend?
She’ll try them in another order.

There was a clearness in it
Among all the bleaker stars -
She was one of many
Teary eyes and broken hearts,
Fading still in the morning light.

He watched.

Happy birthday Mama, your eyes forever green
Your lips forever full, the greatest February rose -
You lace the world with purest loves sheen,
Your arms be the strongest fortress when wind blows.

Oh Mama, my beloved February rose, the frost of years
Has gently touched your hair, lines of wisdom frame your eyes -
If there be the God that you whisper to, may he burn your fears
And bring to you the spring of joy, of smiles, of life.

You’ve taught your lessons in silence when harsher words were due,
You’ve taught me well the secrets of a dry face, when tears rose anew -
Often did your words had me lost inside, when my dreams had died,
But, mama, you were there doing your best, telling me to try.

You gaze into the blue, horizons far away
Into the black of my iris, into the stars
That you lit there, unafraid of the flame
Without a clue what currents carried me here,
Not knowing what demons I buried there –

Unaware of the empty cup that teased my lips,
Of the code with which I decipher silence -
The paragraphs I have written of things unsaid,
The lives I have lived to the full as the undead -
To the ears, quiet can bring such violence.

You gaze through my mask of daily strength -
Through my breath, through my teeth to me
To the bleeding wounds of stillborn dreams
You tend to them till I scream full of life -
And silence is self-explanatory. Night sky eyes. 

Let us all be blind to colour
And only see it when when a fellow
Brother or sister is being discriminated
Because of it.

Let us all be blind to gender
And only see it when a fellow
Brother or sister is treated different
Because of it.

Let us all be blind to sexuality
And only see it when a fellow
Brother or sister are being shamed
Because of it.

Let us tear out the eyes of prejudice.
Let us tear down the God that sanctions it.